Susanne Dreß

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Susanne Dreß , b. Bonhoeffer (born August 22, 1909 in Breslau ; † January 15, 1991 in Berlin ) was the eighth child of Karl Bonhoeffer and Paula Bonhoeffer and the youngest sister of the theologian and resistance fighter Dietrich Bonhoeffer . She was active as a pastor in the Confessing Church in Berlin and has documented her life and that of her family members in an extensive biography.

Live and act

Childhood and youth

Susanne Dreß was born as the eighth and last child of Paula and Karl Bonhoeffer into an upper -class family of scholars in Breslau. She had four brothers (one of whom died as a soldier in World War I) and three sisters. Her father was director of the psychiatric clinic at the Charité in Berlin; therefore the family moved to the capital of the then empire when Susanne was three years old and in 1916 they moved into a villa in the "professors' colony" in Berlin-Grunewald. In the first three years of school she (like her older siblings) received home schooling together with friends from her mother, who was trained as a teacher. Then she went to the private school for senior daughters with Adelheid Mommsen and later to the private school Wellmann. At Easter 1922 she started school in the public college on Bismarckstrasse; in autumn 1922 she moved to the neighboring lyceum, which she only attended for half a year. The lively, imaginative and headstrong child found it difficult to fit into the discipline of everyday school life; she also had dyslexia (in today's terms) . In addition, her class attendance was quite irregular due to frequent accidents and illnesses. So she switched back to the Wellmann private school, where she graduated from secondary school on Easter 1925 .

1925–1926 she attended the one-year housekeeping school in the Pestalozzi-Froebel-Haus in Berlin, because she was preparing for a job as a lung nurse to care for tuberculosis patients . She had chosen this renunciation task after she had had an experience of conversion on March 20, 1924.

Because she could not begin her vocational training until she was 18, she then lived with her parents as a house daughter for a year. One day after her 18th birthday, she secretly got engaged to the future pastor Walter Dreß, who was a college friend of Susanne's three years older brother, the Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer . Susanne then gave up her career aspirations.

A two-year engagement period followed, during which Walter Dreß completed his studies and qualified as a professor at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin in the subject of church history. During this time, Susanne Bonhoeffer worked as an infant care helper in the municipal hospital in Frankfurt an der Oder and attended courses in calligraphy, typewriting and white sewing in Berlin.

marriage and family

On November 14, 1929, Susanne and Walter Dreß married in Berlin and moved into their first joint apartment in Berlin-Charlottenburg at Dernburgstrasse 50. At that time, Walter Dreß was working as a private lecturer at Berlin University. In the first few years of her marriage, Susanne Dreß suffered several miscarriages and went through long periods of illness and depression. From February 1931 to April 1932 Walter Dreß held a lectureship in church history at the Luther Academy in Dorpat ; therefore the young couple spent this time in Estonia . Because of tensions between the young Baltic state and the German-Baltic minority, they were expelled as undesirable foreigners, and the Dreß couple returned to Berlin, where Susanne lived until she died.

In 1935, after a complicated pregnancy, which Susanne had to spend lying down largely because of insatiable vomiting (hyperemesis gravidarum) , her son Michael was born (he later became a pianist and died in London in 1975); In 1938, after an equally difficult pregnancy, the second son Andreas followed (who taught as a mathematics professor in Bielefeld; often also wrote Andreas Dress ). In 1945, after an unexpected pregnancy and forced abortion, she was critically ill for months.

After returning from the Baltic States, Walter Dreß was initially again a private lecturer in Berlin; Because of his work for the Confessing Church , his scholarship was revoked in 1935 and the venia legendi in 1936 . The family lived in Prettauer path 8 from his vicarious position in Berlin-Lichterfelde, which he also lost in 1937. Since August 1, 1938, Walter Dreß has represented the pastor of the imprisoned Martin Niemöller in the Berlin- Dahlem parish , which was a center of ecclesiastical resistance against the National Socialists. The family lived since then at Helfferichstrasse 18 in Dahlem and was involved in community work and in the church fight. Susanne Dreß's siblings, their spouses and children, as well as their parents Karl and Paula Bonhoeffer, were critical of the Nazi regime, so that the Bonhoeffer family formed a protected space where information could be exchanged and cohesion was provided for resistance activities .

Susanne's sister Christine von Dohnanyi was arrested on April 5, 1943 together with her husband Hans von Dohnanyi and Dietrich Bonhoeffer . Brother Klaus Bonhoeffer was arrested on October 1, 1944 ; soon afterwards, Susanne's brother-in-law, Rudiger Schleicher, was also sent to prison. Susanne, her sister Ursula Schleicher and her parents looked after the imprisoned family members and tried to make their detention easier as far as possible. Susanne's sister Sabine had been in exile in Oxford with her husband Gerhard Leibholz and their two daughters since 1938 because Gerhard was of Jewish descent. While Christine von Dohnanyi was released after several weeks of imprisonment, the four imprisoned brothers and brothers-in-law of Susanne Dreß were executed on April 23 and April 9, 1945, shortly before the collapse of the Third Reich.

Walter Dreß was able to avert his conscription for military service several times due to health problems with the help of the relationships of Susanne's family. In the summer of 1943, the Dreß family's apartment was badly damaged by a bomb attack; the two sons were then evacuated together with other family members to the Bonhoeffers' holiday home in Friedrichsbrunn in the Harz Mountains . On February 10, 1944, the apartment was uninhabitable due to another bomb attack; the family was assigned two rooms at Pücklerstrasse 24. From November 1944, Susanne brought her two sons back to the hard-fought capital of the Reich because she wanted the family to stay together during this difficult time.

After the Russians marched in, the Dreß family looked for temporary accommodation in various places until they could move into the house at Im Gehege 16 in Dahlem. From 1958 she moved into the former parsonage of Martin Niemöller at Pacelli-Allee 16. There Susanne began to write down her memoirs. From 1959 she began to give lectures about her family's commitment in the Third Reich - an activity that expanded as public interest in Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Nazi resistance increased. Walter Dreß held a teaching position for church history at the Humboldt University in East Berlin since 1946 . After the Wall was built in 1961, he finally received a professorship at the Church University in West Berlin, and in 1965 the couple moved to an apartment at 4 Asternplatz in Berlin-Steglitz.

Walter Dreß died on February 6, 1979; Susanne Dreß then moved to the Lutherstift retirement home in Berlin-Steglitz, where she resumed and completed her work as a writer on her autobiography. She died there on January 15, 1991 and was buried in the forest cemetery in Berlin-Zehlendorf. The grave intended for her and her husband in the cemetery of the Sankt Annen Church in her long-standing parish in Berlin-Dahlem was released for Rudi Dutschke .

Church work

In 1925, when Dietrich Bonhoeffer was in the third semester of his theology studies, he gained his first practical experience in his Grunewald parish, where he set up a children's church service with great success; his sister Susanne supported him as a helper at his request. In 1932, after returning from Dorpat, Susanne Dreß asked her parish priest in Berlin-Lichterfelde to work on visiting services, women's groups and other tasks - also because she was looking for a job due to her unwanted childlessness. When her husband took over the vicarious position in Berlin-Dahlem in 1938, she led the life of an extremely active family and pastor's wife. It seems that she has largely taken over the duties of her husband (who was much calmer and more inclined to theological science). She was involved in helping women, in the church choir and at community festivals, held children's services, led various groups for children and girls, held summer camps, took over religious instruction at school for a time, set up a mothers' group and pedagogical work group and a reading group, and took care of things around the community kindergarten. From 1945, when community life was rebuilt after the collapse of the Third Reich, Susanne received support from the young, capable community helper Anneliese Schwarz, with whom she had a kind of kinship and long-term friendship and who later moved in with the family. Above all, however, Susanne Dreß was keen to establish the “Dahlemer Hilfswerk”, a charity for destitute returnees and refugees from the eastern regions, which she set up in May 1945. A large amount of clothing and household items have been collected, repaired and distributed to the needy here over the years. In addition, Susanne Dreß was committed to the reintroduction of the World Day of Prayer for women in Berlin .

Although she and her family were among the victims of National Socialism, Susanne Dreß campaigned for the rehabilitation of perpetrators and fellow travelers of the Nazi regime in her environment. For example, she employed former party comrades in the Dahlem relief organization to give them the opportunity to make practical reparations. On New Year's Eve 1945 she wrote in her diary:

“It is almost unbelievable that we have taken this pressure off. All the hatred that one wore for years (long before it was their turn) against these criminals and madmen, which one has fomented wherever possible - it has now become irrelevant. To hate now would be desecration. To have pity would be sentimental. Punishment for the guilty; Extermination of those who are still dangerous, who still do not want to understand and cannot find their way out of their narrow-minded attitude - but peace and love for all who are of good will. That the PG agitation is just as unworthy as all other persecutions that people do to other people is the opinion of all true 'victims of fascism' and 'anti-fascists' I know. May the new year bring new insights. "

Susanne Dreß also turned against the self-righteousness of the Confessing Church , which had apparently emerged victorious from the dispute with the German Christians .

Fonts

Susanne Dreß: From the life of the Bonhoeffer family. The notes of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's youngest sister Susanne Dreß , ed. Koslowski, Jutta. Gütersloher Verlagshaus, Gütersloh 2018, ISBN 978-3-579-07152-7 . ( Buchhandel.de )

Web links

References

  1. ↑ Susanne Dreß: From the life of the Bonhoeffer family. The notes of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's youngest sister Susanne Dreß . Ed .: Jutta Koslowski. Gütersloh publishing house, Gütersloh 2018.
  2. ↑ Eberhard Bethge: Dietrich Bonhoeffer. A biography . Gütersloh publishing house, Gütersloh 1993.
  3. ↑ Susanne Dreß: From the life of the Bonhoeffer family . S. 393-394 .
  4. ↑ Susanne Dreß: From the life of the Bonhoeffer family . S. 836-840 .
  5. ↑ Archive material on the manuscript by Susanne Dreß in the Berlin State Library, estate 537.
  6. ^ Exhibition of the Bonhoeffer family in Friedrichsbrunn. Retrieved April 15, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Susanne Dreß: Resistance out of responsibility. A lecture by Susanne Dreß in memory of her brothers Klaus and Dietrich from 1966 . In: From the life of the Bonhoeffer family . S. 829-833 .
  8. ↑ Rudi Dutschke's grave. Retrieved April 15, 2018 .
  9. ↑ Susanne Dreß: From the life of the Bonhoeffer family . S. 400-402 .
  10. ↑ Susanne Dreß: From the life of the Bonhoeffer family . S. 695 .
  11. ↑ Susanne Dreß: From the life of the Bonhoeffer family . S. 642-648 .
  12. ↑ Susanne Dreß: From the life of the Bonhoeffer family . S. 637 f .
personal data
SURNAME Dreß, Susanne
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bonhoeffer, Susanne (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pastor's wife, daughter of Karl Bonhoeffer and Paula Bonhoeffer, youngest sister of the theologian and resistance fighter Dietrich Bonhoeffer
DATE OF BIRTH August 22, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Wroclaw
DATE OF DEATH January 15, 1991
Place of death Berlin