Additional Employees and Domestic Personnel | ||
"Like the director himself, the small number of employed by the Institute (including domestic and office workers) appear to be homosexual. And there was a young man, a supposed student, evidently feeling quite at home, who left a strong impression of being homosexual. Of course, no evidence of any improper conduct could be established", senior medical health officer Schlegtendal wrote in a report of 1920 on a visit to the Institute on behalf the Ministry of Public Welfare. Caretakers P. Schulz (1920), gateman M. Straube (1921), toolmaker Anton Sablewski employed 1922-27 as plumber and caretaker. He was also the house "slide and film operator." His wife Margarethe Sablewski (née Harendt) applied for a liquor license in 1922 for the Institute's front garden. This request was denied by the Surveyors' Office. Andreas Janclas (1928) Ernst Kloß (1929) Erich Wenslaff (1932) Housekeeping Hinrike Friedrichs employed 1927-33 as the Institute's household-manager. Frau Krügeremployed from 1926 on; cook in the communist shared apartment of Willi Münzenberg, Babette Groß, Heinz Neumann (among others) in the Institute. Babette Groß remembers: "At the same time that he recommended this home, Magnus Hirschfeld recommended Frau Krüger, a former chief cook at a Mecklenburg estate as well as an occasional aid for Hirschfeld. Every morning she came with her snow-white Pomeranian from Wedding and cooked for us. She knew our exotic guests, but she was discrete and was not surprised about anything. Politically she was more than likely not of the same opinion as Münzenberg, but she was enchanted by his charm. In 1933, at the interrogations by the police during the trial surrounding the burning of the Reichstag, a number of photos of our visitors were presented to her. She remained true to her statement that she did not know them. She believed that she had seen Dimitroff, because she had made him coffee often." Erwin Hansen In 1930, as arranged by Karl Giese, Erwin Hansen was employed as a cook and housekeeper for the archaeologist Turville-Petre, who was living at the Institute. "Erwin was a muscular giant of a man with short-cropped blond hair and used to be in the army. Now he was playing the part of the 'girl Friday' and getting on the fat side," Christopher Isherwood recalls. "He was forever grinning at Christopher provocatively. Sometimes he even pinched his bottom. But Erwin was a Communist. So his non-bourgeois manner was not really spontaneous but, rather, a part of how he saw himself politically." Erwin hired a boy named "Heinz" as additional help. After the plundering of the Institute in May 1933, Isherwood, Heinz, and Erwin Hansen went to Greece to join Turville-Petre on the [rented ??] island of St. Nicolas, near Athens. After returning to Germany, Erwin was reported to have been arrested by the Nazis and to have died in a concentration camp. Reception Helene Helling (1930-34), 1 a widow, moved into the Institute as a tenant "After living there for a while," Ellen Baekgaard recalls, "she saw how disorderly things were in the private house, and so she one day had a desk put in the entrance hall and there [...] she settled down, and she also had an internal telephone connected on her desk. From that day on, noone dared enter without an appointment [...]" Mrs. Helling was not employed by the Institute, nor was she on its pay-roll. She simply belonged there. Around 1930, she was a middle-aged woman, or rather lady, a perfect lady in the real sense of the word. She sympathized with the Nazis after they had raided, ransacked and plundered the Institute in May 1933, and she stayed on there until 1934. Administration Joachim Schreiber (in 1924) He managed the Ernst-Haeckel-Hall of the Institute. Arthur Röser (1926-33) He overtook the management of the Ernst-Haeckel-Hall by early 1926 (at the latest). By 1933, Rösler had become a Nazi. Friedrich Hauptstein As from 1924, he worked temporarily as secretary of the Institute-based office of the "International Conferences on sexologically based Sexual Reform," and then became the Institute's administrative head. In 1933, he was among the coworkers at the Institute who proclaimed their loyalty to Göring in writing. Doctor's help Ewald Lausch began working in the Institute's radiological department for Dr. Schapiro in 1924. He dissociated himself politically from Hirschfeld in the early 30s. Lausch was characterized as a Nazi by all who knew him. He also signed the declaration of loyalty to Göring. |