Dienstag, 27. Mai 2008

The story of Aenne Nau

My Grandma, Aenne Nau, was born in the December 1909 in Frankfort on the Main. She spend her childhood in long periods in Pomerania, in Dzimbowo (wich is located in Poland today) on a manor of the Family “von Klitzing”, where her Grandpa was an administrator. In the age of 16, she was admitted at the “Friedrich Ebert Acting School of Frankfort on the Main” (I think today it has another name). Until the theatres where closed because of the Second World War, she was engaged at different theatres in the East of Germany – finally in Rostock.

Because she grew up with jewish friends and because a jewish doctor had saved her live when she fell ill with diphtheria, she and her mother disapproved Hitler from the beginning on. So my grandma took pride in never having been a member of the NSDAP (the nazi-party). She told very impressive, how she cried at the farewell of a jewish actress, who had to emigrate. She is told, to have said: “Aenne, you can not stop history.”

I found a diary, from the time of World War II. Then my Grandma worked as an actress for the „Armytheatre Metz, Theatre of the State Saarpfalz“, wich played at the border to France and later for the “Theatre of the Seatown Rostock” in Warnemünde. Later she worked as a receptionist for a doctor in Rostock, until she fled together with her mother to relatives in Nienburg on the Weser, near Hannover, because the Army of the Sowjetunion came closer.

After the War, when the theatres opened again, she played in Oberhausen, where she got to know my Grandfather (Ludwig Hayn). My Grandfather was born in 1903 in Berlin-Spandau, was also an Actor, married my Grandma in 1952 and died in 1954 of cancer, just three days before the birth of my mother. Because my mother never got to know him she does not know much about him.

He was the son of a professional soldier, who got demoted because he did not want to swear on Hitler. (He argued that he had already sworn on the Emperor and felt him self bound on that oath.) I do not know exactly where my Grandfather played theatre before World War II but I have found pictures and scripts which tell that, he played in Memel (today Klaipèda) in 1939, in 1940 he was in Rostock and 1943 in Posen.

In the end of the war he got drafted, but I do not know where he was as a soldier. After 1945 he helped building up the broadcasting service of Bremen by working as a narrator and played at the Theatre of Bremen. In 1951 he met my grandmother at the Theatre of Oberhausen.

3 Kommentare:

Bensl.R hat gesagt…

Hallo Blogger Felix
Ich bin eine entfernte Verwandte, immerhin wir haben einen "gemeinsamen" Großvater
Leider bin ich mit den Spielregeln des bloggens nicht vertraut, wie kann ich mit dir in Kontakt kommen?

Unknown hat gesagt…

Aenne war meine Grosstante .

Unknown hat gesagt…

Dann müssten wir auch Verwandte sein