Sophie Jansen

Sophie Jansen (born March 26, 1862 in Hamburg , † July 17, 1942 in Hamburg-Blankenese ) was a German writer and poor carer.

biography

Stumbling block for Sophie Jansen in Blankeneser Hauptstrasse 56 in Hamburg-Blankenese

Sophie Rahel Jansen, née Schlossmann, was born in Hamburg in 1862 but grew up in Breslau and Dresden, and became a Hamburg resident through marriage to a well-known and wealthy Jewish lawyer. In 1888 she and her husband were baptized as a Christian. She raised seven children, managed a property she had acquired in Grande near Trittau and achieved literary fame in Hamburg when she wrote down her experiences as an overstrained landlady and busy mother in three books. The book "Bebi and Bubi" published in 1910, in which she described the childhood of her two youngest children, became a local bestseller.

As a thirty-year-old confronted with the social issue during the devastating cholera epidemic of 1892 , she later became a pioneer of the newly organized poor system. In 1908 she was the first woman among hundreds of men to be appointed as a public poor carer.

In 1913 she moved with her husband to Hamburg-Blankenese , initially in a villa in what is now Breckwoldtstrasse. Due to the early death of her husband in 1916, her economic situation deteriorated dramatically and in 1919 she moved to a small house on Hauptstrasse. During the First World War she was involved in a variety of social initiatives, e.g. B. a people's kitchen for relatives of soldiers in need, an infant care facility and a day nursery.

Then the misery and despair of the post-war years required all of her strength: As a volunteer poor carer, she tried to provide help and relief in the “poor house”. In Blankenese she gained respect and recognition. In 1919 she was honored by the community with a commemorative coin for her active charity.

It had been integrated into local life for a long time. The fact that she was Jewish only became a problem for the Protestant Christian and for those around her because of the Jewish laws and the persecution of Jews after 1933 . In 1935 she was deprived of her right to vote and was not allowed to hold public office. The social death began with the expropriation of her house in 1940. At the beginning of July 1942 she received the deportation order for Theresienstadt , dated July 19. On July 17, 1942, the 80-year-old opened the gas tap on her stove and put an end to her life.

A stumbling block was laid for her in front of her home on Blankeneser Hauptstrasse .

Web links

• [1] : Jewish fate in Blankenese

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://stolpersteine-hamburg.de/index.php?&MAIN_ID=7&p=98&BIO_ID=759 : Sophie Rahel Jansen, short biography of the Stolperstein, accessed January 17, 2014