Saskia von Brockdorff

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Saskia Erika von Brockdorff (born October 28, 1937 in Berlin ) became known as the daughter of the anti-fascist resistance fighter Erika Countess von Brockdorff and a contemporary witness .

Life

Saskia von Brockdorff is the daughter of Erika Gräfin von Brockdorff and Cay-Hugo von Brockdorff . Her mother was active in the anti-fascist resistance group Rote Kapelle . Saskia von Brockdorff grew up with her grandparents in what was then East Prussia . When she was five years old, her mother was executed in Berlin-Plötzensee . Her father took her to a Nazi children's home and later to a boarding school.

In 1946 the father came back from captivity. From 1948 Saskia von Brockdorff lived in Kallinchen with him and his second wife, the resistance fighter and writer Eva Lippold . Saskia von Brockdorff learned nothing about her mother from her father. There were no photos or mementos of her at home.

In 1969 she married the Peruvian Luis de Núñez († 2011), who studied architecture in the GDR . A year later she emigrated with him to Lima , where she found a position as chief secretary at the West German company Bayer. In 1973 they went back to Germany in the Federal Republic. The family lived in Coesfeld , where de Núñez worked as an architect. In 1979 she separated from him, moved to Münster and has lived in Berlin since 2001.

Saskia von Brockdorff hadn't received a farewell letter from her mother. For decades she tormented herself with the question of why the mother put herself in such danger and why she had abandoned the child. In her documentary novel Who We Are , Sabine Friedrich tells of Saskia von Brockdorff's childhood and the girl's trauma. Although already in 1970 from the Institute for Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the SED the double band German resistance fighters 1933-1945. Biographies and letters with a photo of Saskia on her mother's lap and excerpts from a farewell letter was only handed out to Saskia after the fall of the Wall , which Erika von Brockdorff had written to her daughter in 1943. She read the letter for the first time at the German Resistance Memorial Center . “If I had received the letter as a teenager [...] my life would have been really different. But the way it went, I only got the letter 63 years later. ”(Saskia von Brockdorff in the documentary Die gute Feinde by Christian Weisenborn, 2017) The verdicts against the 120 resisters arrested in 1942, including Saskia von Brockdorff's mother, were not lifted until 2009. Saskia von Brockdorff began to deal with the work of the Rote Kapelle and the life of her mother. As a contemporary witness, she gives lectures at schools.

Saskia von Brockdorff is the subject of the documentaries Verräterkinder (2014) and Die gute Feinde (2017) by Christian Weisenborn . The Germany radio culture dedicated her early May 2018 a contribution. Saskia von Brockdorff's life story is documented in the Museum German Emigration Center in Bremerhaven. There are photos and personal items, especially documents from her time in Peru.

Movies

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Saskia von Brockdorff in the German Emigration Center
  2. ↑ The Daughters and Sons of the Resistance. Traitor children SWR television, July 19, 2015
  3. ↑ Sabine Friedrich: Who we are (novel), DTV Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2012, ISBN 978-3-423-28003-7 ( Google Books view )
  4. ↑ Luise Kraushaar : German resistance fighters 1933-1945. Biographies and letters. Volume 1, Dietz Verlag: Berlin 1970. Photo p. 160, excerpt from letter p. 161
  5. ↑ Alan Posener: Naked Bathing Against Nazis , Welt Online, July 25, 2017
  6. ↑ Documentary "The Good Enemies". My father, the Rote Kapelle and I , MDR, July 27, 2017 ( Memento from May 12, 2018 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ^ Resistance to the Nazis. "I only thought of you in my cell" . Ulrike Timm in conversation with Saskia von Brockdorff and Kolja Unger, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, May 29, 2018
  8. ↑ My father's legacy - Weisenborn documentary "The good enemies" (Der Tagesspiegel, July 27, 2017)
personal data
SURNAME Brockdorff, Saskia von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brockdorff, Saskia Erika
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German contemporary witness of the anti-fascist resistance
DATE OF BIRTH October 28, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin