THEIR BEAUTIFUL PEACE: THE DEATH OF THE GOTTSCHALK FAMILY
Today in Berlin: 6 November 1941
He was a star. Both on cinema screens and on stage. Joachim Friedrich Hermann Gottschalk, born in 1904 in Calau, actor, was celebrated and cherished by audiences across Germany and beyond. He lived in a beautiful house in Berlin-Grunewald, had a beautiful and talented wife, theatre actress Meta (actually Gertrud Meta) Wolff, and in February 1933, still in Leipzig, their first child, a boy they named Michael, was born.
Yet only eight years later, on this day in 1941, the UFA-star, his wife, together with their 8-year-old son, committed suicide at their Grunewald home.
Pressed by the Nazi authorities and threatened with a work-ban (which he was eventually and to a great extent put under), the non-Jewish Gottschalk refused to divorce his Jewish wife and, once she and their young son were to be deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp (Ghetto Theresienstadt), he expressed his wish to be deported with them.
The order for the deportation - which was scheduled for November 7, 1941 - was signed personally by the vengeful Nazi Propaganda Minister, J. Goebbels. Like all mean little men with a grudge and too much power over others, he acted to satisfy his own ego - damaged by perceived sense of suffered wrongdoing.
The story has it that (allegedly, for as so often there are no hard records to prove it) during a rare event attended by Joachim Gottschalk’s wife, Meta, the spiteful little Joseph kissed her hand - clearly unaware that the said hand belonged to a Jewess. For the likes of him, not so much paranoid as chillingly manipulative and calculating as well as drunk on power they had been given, this was reason enough to send a mother and a child to a dreaded ghetto in today’s Terezin.
Gottschalk’s plea to accompany them was rejected. Instead, he was enlisted for the Eastern Front. His celebrity status did not protect them from the fate which under the Nazis befell millions. After saying farewell to Berlin’s Volksbühne Theatre - the theatre, where Gottschalk had still been occasionally performing, was forced to fire the actor - the actor said: "In times like these, you either harden up or you drown."
On November 4, 1941 Meta Wolff wrote to Frau Weber, a friend and her brother’s -Friedrich’s - mother-in-love:
“Liebe Mutti Weber
"Thank you a thousand times for the good news and for the valuable parcel! Your kindness and devotion shine through all of this. I know that what I must write now will be hard for you to grasp, but you will understand and forgive us. New regulations are coming out that will separate our marriage, just as everything has been tightened up in this matter, and now even these small exceptions and benefits are to be abolished as well.
You can probably guess what that means.
Michael, who as yet has no idea, should not have to find out what is waiting ahead of him. The child is so happy, and we are happy with him. They should not tear the three of us apart. When you read this, we have found our peace. We are not sad at all, on the contrary, we are happy to be able to end our lives healthy and free. Don't think that we haven't considered everything, tried everything and are recklessly throwing in the towel. There is no other way, we held out until the end.
We believe that my parents and siblings don’t need to know. They think we're doing well, which is comforting and true, even if in a different sense. I ask you, with all my heart, not to be sad and above all to know that we are happy. Nothing but separation and humiliation would await us. Humiliation of all kinds - everyone who knows and loves us will grant us our beautiful peace. I am glad that you can hope for an earthly reunion with your children. How wonderful that will be.
Our very best wishes for you all! Let me thank you once again for your love and loyalty and wish you all the best with our warmest regards.
Joachim, Meta & Michael"
On November 5, 1941, having returned home late in the evening, Joachim Gottschalk and his wife gave their 8-year-old son Michael a glass of milk spiked with crushed sleeping pills. Then Meta swallowed her Veronal. Joachim Gottschalk took a mouthful as well, turned the gas on in the kitchen without lighting the flame. Before that he wrote several shorts letters himself. In the one addressed to his mother, Anna, who lived at the time in Cottbus, he wrote: “Meta and the boy are already asleep…”
Joachim, Meta and Michael Gottschalk were buried at Berlin’s Stahnsdorf Cemetery. Their grave still exists.
By 1945 nearly 2,000 Jews committed suicide in Berlin alone.
* translation of the letter from Meta Wolff to Frau Weber my own. The text from the story “Meta Wolff, aus der Kaufmannsfamilie Hanau in Dudweiler” by Hubert Schneider and Reinhard Jakobs.
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A tragic story of a brave couple, told beautifully. There is too little said about those who chose not to be deported, taking their lives into their own hands.
A most tragic story, but as you noted one of too many.