Edith Hahn (verh. Hahn-Beer)
| Born: |
01-24-1914 |
| Faculty: |
Law School |
| Category: |
Expelled student |
Edith HAHN (married HAHN-BEER), born on January 24th, 1914 in Vienna/Austria (entitled residency ('heimatberechtigt') for Vienna/Austria, Citizenship: Austria), daughter of Leopold Hahn (died 1936) and Klothilde Hahn, lived in Wien 4, Argentinierstraße 29/43 and was enrolled at the Law School of the University of Vienna from fall term 1933/34 until finally in spring term 1937 in the 4th year of her studies.
On October 11th, 1937 she passed the judicial State Examination and planned to do her final exams at Easter 1938, but after the "Anschluss" she did not get the admission anymore:
"Im April 1938 ging ich zur Universität, um meine letzten Prüfungsaufgaben abzuholen und mir einen Termin für das dritte Staatsexamen geben zu lassen. Eine junge Sekretärin – eine Frau, die ich kannte – sagte zu mir: 'Sie werden diese Prüfung nicht ablegen, Fräulein Hahn. Sie sind an unserer Universität nicht mehr erwünscht.' Damit gab sie mir meine Papiere und die Abschriften meiner Zeugnisse. 'Leben Sie wohl.'
Fast fünf Jahre lang hatte ich Jura, Verfassungsrecht, Schadensersatzrecht, Psychologie, Volkswirtschaft, Politische Theorie, Geschichte und Philosophie studiert. Ich hatte Arbeiten geschrieben, Vorlesungen besucht, Rechtsfälle analysiert und dreimal die Woche mit einem Richter fürs Examen gepaukt. Und nun ließen sie es mich nicht machen." (
HAHN-BEER 2000, 59-60)
Her sisters left the country, but Edith Hahn and her mother were sent to the ghetto in Vienna in 1939. In 1942 her mother was deported to Poland. With copies of a friend’s identification card, she went to Munich/Germany and got new identity papers. She lived with the name "Margarethe Denner" and worked as a seamstress. She met Werner Vetter, a member of the national socialist party, whom she informed about her real identity, they moved to Brandenburg an der Havel and got married. Their daughter Angelika was born on April 9th, 1944 in a "Reichskrankenhaus". Her husband was called up to serve in the German army and was arrested in a Siberian labor camp by the end of the war.
Following the war, she quickly reclaimed her true identity as "Edith Hahn" using her hidden identity card. With her law education she was appointed as a judicial officer judge at the court in Brandenburg under the soviet military administration. After her husband returned from the labor camp, they got divorced in 1947.
Pressed to work as an informer for the KGB, she emigrated with her daughter to her sisters in London, where she worked as a housemaid and a corset designer. In 1957 she married Fred Beer. After his death in 1984 she moved to Netanya/Israel.
In 1997, a collection of her personal papers and letters was sold at auction at Sotheby‘s in London – today the Edith-Hahn-Archive is part of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. She published an autobiographical novel in 1999 and in 2003 the A&E USA, (arts and entertainment USA) produced a documentary about her biography.
Edith Hahn-Beer died in March 2009 in London.
On January 14th, 2010 a plaque, that commemorates her, was unveiled in the building of the district attorney of Brandenburg/Germany.
Lit.: HAHN-BEER 1999; Film "The Nazi Officer’s Wife" 2003; Matthias Kamleitner, Verfolgung zwischen "Anschluss" und Holocaust, in: Florian Wenninger u. Jutta Fuchshuber, Hg., Ich bin also nun ein anderer. Die jüdische Bevölkerung der Wieden 1938-1945, Wien 2017, 28-69, 63 bzw.: http://www.juedischewieden.at/edith-hahn/.
Katharina Kniefacz and Herbert Posch
