Hans Aufrichtig & Käthe Schröder

 

 

Hans Aufrichtig was born 19 February 1901 in Haus Dunerstrasse Nr 990, Teplice [Teplitz] Czech Republic, the son of shopkeeper Viktor Aufrichtig and Else Ernestine Löwy-Aufrichtig. He had two sisters, Stefanie, born two years earlier, and his twin, Margarethe.

Käthe, eight years his senior, was born 25 September 1893 in Stendal, Germany, the daughter of a Prussian official. They met when journalist Hans was barely out of his teens and she, in her twenties, and with a showbusiness career.

The couple married in 1927, following which Käthe switched her artistic talents to writing, gaining acceptance as an authoress, playright and journalist.

Following the Nazi rise to power, Hans and Käthe fled to Italy where they lived, undisturbed, for two years in Rome. They were deported to two separate camps in Italy where conditions were quite different to the infamous sites in Poland and Germany. It was during their internment that they exchanged poetic love letters that were dramatised at a Reading by Carole Schmitt and Ulrich Schmissat.

Following their release from captivity, Hans and Käthe returned to Rome where they remained until his death, in August 1969, aged 68, and hers in October 1980 at 87.

 

 

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Self portrait by Käthe in Italian concentration camp

Together in Rome

 

 

 

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Hans & Käthe Aufrichtig

Carole Schmitt