Ruth von Kleist-Retzow

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Ruth von Kleist-Retzow née Countess von Zedlitz-Trützschler (born February 4, 1867 in Nieder Großenborau near Neustädtel , Province of Silesia ; † October 2, 1945 in Kieckow , Western Pomerania ) was a German noblewoman who was a member of the Confessing Church and in the resistance committed against National Socialism .

Life

Ruth was born as the third of six children of Count Robert von Zedlitz-Trützschler and his wife Agnes, née von Rohr-Levetzow , in the Freystadt i. Lower Silesian. born. When his father in 1881 to the district president of the administrative district of Opole had been appointed, the family moved to Opole . Here the Countess met the government referendar Jürgen von Kleist-Retzow from Kieckow in Pomerania, the son of the former President of the Rhine Province Hans Hugo von Kleist-Retzow , whom she married on February 4, 1886 in Opole. In the same year the couple moved to Köslin and then to Belgard in Pomerania, where Kleist-Retzow took over the office of district administrator for the Belgard district . Four children were born in Belgard.

Manor house in Kikowo , 2011

On December 14, 1897, shortly after the birth of the fifth child, Jürgen von Kleist-Retzow died in Dresden on the way to a sanatorium. As a 30-year-old widow, Ruth von Kleist-Retzow now had to shape and secure her own future and that of the children. In order to enable her children to get a good education, Ruth von Kleist-Retzow moved to Stettin in 1899 , where she took two foster sons into the family: the brothers Gottfried von Bismarck and Herbert von Bismarck . She transferred the property in Kieckow to an administrator.

When the First World War broke out , Ruth von Kleist-Retzow returned to Kieckow and took responsibility for the family property herself. In 1919 the 52-year-old gave up her city apartment in Szczecin entirely and moved to the Klein Krössin manor near Kieckow as a widow's residence . Now she found time to deal with the theological, political and social questions that had always moved her. A few months after the end of the Second World War , she died in Kieckow.

Act

One of Ruth von Kleist-Retzow's moving questions was the role of her social class under the changed democratic conditions of her time. In 1926 she wrote a treatise on The Social Crisis and the Responsibility of the Landlord . She demanded a sense of responsibility from the landowner in dealing with the property that he, as the “steward of God”, was obliged to use for the good of the people.

Ruth von Kleist-Retzow was also involved in the “ Berneuchen Movement ” that emerged from the youth movement , named after the headquarters of the Viebahn family in Berneuchen near Neudamm in the Landsberg (Warthe) district . It was about the renewal of the Evangelical Church, holistic piety and a binding spiritual life. Ruth von Kleist-Retzow had already lived this concern with consistent seriousness in her areas of activity in Kieckow, Klein Krössin and Stettin. In 1926 she was, along with Anna Paulsen, the only woman among the 70 signatories of the Berneuchen book .

Ruth von Kleist-Retzow was already grappling with the burgeoning National Socialism at the end of the 1920s . She entered into an intensive exchange of ideas with Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin , who published his work National Socialism - a Danger as early as 1932 . In 1935 Ruth von Kleist-Retzow moved again to Stettin to take on educational responsibility for the grandchildren of Kleist, von Bismarck and von Wedemeyer who graduated from secondary school there.

There she met the circle around Dietrich Bonhoeffer , who headed the Preachers' Seminar of the Confessing Church in Finkenwalde near Stettin (today: Zdróje) . She became a mediator between the intellectual circle around Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the conservative resistance of the military, as she also maintained intensive contacts with neighbors Hans Jürgen and Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin. The manor house in Klein Krössin became the site of regular meetings of these resistance activists, at which an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler was planned as part of the meeting . One of the grandchildren looked after by Ruth von Kleist-Retzow in Stettin was Maria von Wedemeyer , whom Dietrich Bonhoeffer met here and to whom he became engaged on January 17, 1943.

The planned assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944 failed. Ruth von Kleist-Retzow saw that many friends and relatives were sentenced to death and executed (among them Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin in Berlin-Plötzensee and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Flossenbürg concentration camp ) or chose suicide.

She herself tried to flee from the approaching Red Army on a trek . The project failed. Ruth von Kleist-Retzow experienced the invasion of the Soviet Army in Kieckow, where she died at the age of 78.

Works

  • with Carl Gunther Schweitzer : The social crisis and the responsibility of the landowner. F. Bahn, Schwerin 1926.
  • For a better Germany.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Information on Berneuchen by Elisabeth von Viebahn (1954) in the journal Quatember of the Berneuchener movement
  2. ^ Maria Frisé : My Silesian family and I. Memories . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-351-02577-7 , p. 92.
personal data
SURNAME Kleist-Retzow, Ruth von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German aristocrats, member of the Confessing Church and the resistance against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH February 4, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Lower Grossenborau
DATE OF DEATH October 2, 1945
Place of death Kieckow