Maria von Maltzan

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Maria von Maltzan
Righteous
Among the Nations
By country

Maria Helene Françoise Izabel Gräfin

Nazi party
, saved the lives of many Jewish people in Berlin.

Biography

University of Breslau, a rare occurrence for a girl during this time. Her family was strictly against the idea, but her teachers supported her and she got permission. In 1928, she enrolled at the University of Munich where she received her doctorate in natural sciences five years later.[3]

When the

deserters, and forced labourers, arranging for them to escape to safety.[6] She falsified official visas and other documents, and helped many Jews escape from Berlin in trucks that she often drove herself.[7]

Before World War II, she got to know the Jewish author Hans Hirschel, the former editor of Das Dreieck, an avant-garde German literary journal founded in 1925. From 1942 to the end of the war, she sheltered Hirschel in a special hiding place inside a couch in the living room of her apartment in Wilmersdorf, thus saving his life at the peril of her own. Von Maltzan became pregnant with Hans's child. She later recalled how the new-born baby was placed in an incubator and the hospital was bombed. The electricity running the incubator stopped and the baby died. Shortly afterwards, she adopted two little girls from a children's camp.

After the war von Maltzan married Hans Hirschel ,but the marriage failed. They separated after two years, then remarried in 1972. During the post-war-years, Maria had many difficulties, but grateful Jews, who never forgot her heroism, helped her survive bitter years. Because of the horrors of the war, she became addicted to drugs and at times lost her approbation as a veterinarian. She later recalled how she was even brought to a psychiatric hospital, and had to scrub floors day after day to afford a living.

Post-war life and legacy

Maria Gräfin von Maltzan's gravestone in Berlin

After Hans Hirschel died in 1975, Countess Maria von Maltzan, aged 66, decided once again to build up a new existence with her own veterinary practice in Berlin, from 1981 on located in the

Righteous among the Nations award from the Israeli Government one year later. She died in Berlin in 1997.[6]

Stage and Screen

  • Forbidden, a 1984 film by Anthony Page modeled on the life of Maria von Maltzan, played by Jacqueline Bisset.
  • Maria von Maltzan: A Play in Two Acts, a 2021 play by Australian playwright, David Logan, based on the life of Maria von Maltzan [8]

Additional information

  • German Resistance
  • Walther von Reichenau
  • Gross, Leonard (1982). The Last Jews in Berlin.
    ISBN 0-671-24727-1
    . Retrieved 2009-12-18.

Notes

  1. ^ Regarding personal names: Until 1919, Graf was a title, translated as Count, not a first or middle name. The female form is Gräfin. In Germany, it has formed part of family names since 1919.
  2. Freiin
    .
  3. ^
    ISBN 9781556529610
    .
  4. ^ von Maltzan, Maria. "The Righteous Among The Nations". Archived from the original on 2018-10-30. Retrieved 2015-06-30.
  5. ^ a b "Maria Countess von Maltzan". Archived from the original on 2019-08-06. Retrieved 2008-06-25.
  6. ^
    ISBN 9781556529610
    .
  7. ISBN 9781556529610
    .
  8. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2021-09-28. Retrieved 2021-09-28.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)

External links

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