Maud von Ossietzky

Maud Hester von Ossietzky (née Lichfield-Woods; 12 December 1888, Hyderabad – 12 May 1974, Berlin) was a suffragette and the wife of German journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Carl von Ossietzky.

She was born in Hyderabad, India, to a British colonial officer and the descendant of an Indian princess.[1] Despite her Indian heritage, she is almost always referred to as an "Englishwoman."[2][3][4][5]

She was active in the British suffragette movement in her youth.[1]

Life with Carl von Ossietzky

In Hamburg (or perhaps Fairhaven, England)[6] on 19 August 1913, she married Carl von Ossietzky, a pacifist and later a writer for and editor-in-chief of the leftist German weekly Die Weltbühne (The World Stage).[7][8][4] The couple met in 1912 in Hamburg, but not much is known about their early life together.[8] It seems that her wealthy family opposed the marriage.[9] Early in their marriage, she paid a fine on his behalf after he published an anti-war article.[5] Surviving letters attest to Carl's devotion to his wife. While Carl served in World War I, he wrote Maud a letter that described her as an igniting force in his life: "You are the magnet that first touched the rigid iron."[9] In 1922, he wrote to her that he "blessed the fate that sent her."[9]

Their daughter Rosalinde was born on 21 December 1919.[3]

While Carl worked as a writer and political activist, Maud organized lectures for him.[6] In 1931, Carl von Ossietzky was imprisoned for "treason and espionage" because of his role in publishing details of German remilitarization; he was released in 1932.[10]

After the Reichstag Fire in April 1933, von Ossietzky wanted to flee Germany, but her husband chose to remain.[9] He was quickly arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in a series of prisons and concentration camps.[3] Whether she was a supportive wife[9] or incapable of helping her husband,[11] neither she nor her husband's famous international friends could release him from Nazi concentration camps.

In 1936, Carl von Ossietzky contacted tuberculosis and was moved to a hospital in Berlin.[1] He was awarded the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize during this period, though his sickness did not allow him to accept it in person. His wife nursed him until he died on 4 May 1938.[9][6] Carl von Ossietzky was buried in a municipal cemetery, and Maud would spend the next years fighting to move his body to a cemetery in the Berlin neighborhood of Pankow.[12]

Von Ossietzky spent time in a psychiatric clinic after his death.[1] One author has claimed that the Gestapo ordered her to stop using her late husband's name and lived as "Maud Woods."[1]

Von Ossietzky invested the money awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize with lawyer Kurt Wannow, but Wannow embezzled the sum in 1937.[13][3]

Historical Inconsistencies

Many sources state that by the time the Nazis imprisoned her husband, von Ossietzky was an alcoholic,[11] with one writing that her alcoholism "caused [her husband] great pain ... but may have protected her from retribution under the Nazis."[2] Others have claimed that her husband's death caused her alcoholism.[1] Their daughter has blamed Die Weltbühne for her mother's (unspecified) "illness."[9]

During World War II, Rosalinde was sent to a Quaker boarding school in England through the support of Ernst Toller and the Quakers.[11][14] Another source claims that Maud and Rosalinde emigrated to Sweden via England,[13] though there are no other sources that place Maud in Sweden. A third source states that Maud remained in Berlin when Rosalinde traveled from England to Sweden.[14] Rosalinde died in Sweden in 2000 or 2001.[12][14]

German sources tend to ascribe Maud a more positive and active role,[9][6] while English-language scholarship often describes her in less complimentary terms.[1][2][11]

Later Life

On 1 June 1946, Die Weltbühne reappeared in the Soviet sector of Berlin with Maud von Ossietzky and Hans Leonard listed as editors.[15][16][1] Leonard, her neighbor, had a career in publishing ended by Nazi antisemitic discrimination.[16] Von Ossietzky and Leonard revived a Weimar-era publication that endures to this day.

In 1966, von Ossietzky published her memoir, Maud von Ossietzky erzählt: ein Lebensbild (Maud von Ossietzky Explains: a Life Story).[17] German academic Wolfgang Schivelbusch describes the book as "admittedly unreliable,"[1] while István Deák calls it "charming and straightforward."[15]

She died in 1974 in Berlin and is buried next to her husband in Pankow.[12][18]

Further reading
  • Maud von Ossietzky erzählt: ein Lebensbild (Berlin: Buchverlag der Morgen, 1966). It was republished in 1988. There is currently no English translation.
  • An album containing Carl's letters to Maud is held in the Carl von Ossietzky Archive at the Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg, Germany.
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References
  1. Schivelbusch, Wolfgang (1998). In a Cold Crater: Cultural and Intellectual Life in Berlin, 1945–1948. Berkeley, CA: UC Press E-Books Collection, 1982-2004; California Digital Library. pp. 171–174.
  2. McCormack, W. J. (11 January 2011). Blood Kindred: W. B. Yeats, the Life, the Death, the Politics. Random House. pp. [no page numbers online]. ISBN 978-1-4464-4424-5.
  3. "Der Namensgeber". Carl-von-Ossietzky-Schule (in German). 28 April 2017. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  4. Wistrich, Robert S. (4 July 2013). Who's Who in Nazi Germany. Routledge. p. 186. ISBN 978-1-136-41388-9.
  5. "Carl von Ossietzky," from Nobel Lectures, Peace 1926-1950, Editor Frederick W. Haberman, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1972. Originally written in 1935.
  6. Grathoff, Dirk (1999). "Ossietzky, Carl von". Deutsche Biografie. Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German). pp. 610–611. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  7. Himmler, Katrin; Wildt, Michael (8 March 2016). The Private Heinrich Himmler: Letters of a Mass Murderer. St. Martin's Publishing Group. p. 309. ISBN 978-1-4668-7089-5.
  8. Goeller, Tom (29 May 2013). Freimaurer: Aufklärung eines Mythos (in German). be.bra verlag. pp. [no page numbers online]. ISBN 978-3-8393-0102-9.
  9. "Das Gefühl für die Republik". Spiegel Online. 16. 18 April 1988. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  10. Haberman, Frederick W. Peace 1926–1950 (1999), World Scientific, pg. 211.
  11. Oppermann, Paula (19 March 2015). "Beyond a Biography: Hilde Walter's Testimony and a Research Journey through the Wiener Library Archives". Wiener Holocaust Library Blog - Wiener Library. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  12. Wähner, Bernd (18 May 2018). "Erinnerung an einen Pazifisten: Carl von Ossietzkys Ehrengrab befindet sich in Pankow". Berliner Woche (in German). Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  13. Tietz, Tabea (3 October 2019). "Carl von Ossietzky and Political Reason". SciHi Blog. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  14. Singer, Kurt D. (April 2001). "Addendum to 1935 Carl von Ossietzky biography: The peace hero in the concentration camp". The Danish Peace Academy. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
  15. Deák, István (1968). Weimar Germany's Left-wing Intellectuals: A Political History of the Weltbühne and Its Circle. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. pp. 221. Maud von Ossietzky.
  16. Forner, Sean A. (23 March 2017). German Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democratic Renewal: Culture and Politics After 1945. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 32. ISBN 978-1-107-62783-3.
  17. Haberman, Frederick W. (1999). Nobel Lectures in Peace. World Scientific. p. 213. ISBN 978-981-02-3415-7.
  18. "Maud Lichfield-Woods von Ossietzky". Find a Grave. Retrieved 22 November 2019.
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