Charlotte Margarete Eckart, geb. Schwarz

Lotte, as she calls herself, is the youngest daughter of Karl and Anna Schwarz.¹ At the end of the 19th century, her father moves from Steppach to Augsburg. Here, he acquires a stately property at 9 Predigerberg which, apart from flats of various sizes, also houses the historical “Mohrenkopf Inn”, as well as the hardware store he runs together with his brother Heinrich.² From 1920 on, the family lives in a generous rented apartment at 13 Schaezlerstrasse. ³

Like her two clearly older sisters Emmy and Hansi, Lotte, too, attends high school, the protestant “Von Stetten”.⁴ The big sisters are already married and have children, when their father dies in 1926. Lotte is training to become a secretary and works in Spain for three years, presumably in the local office of an Augsburg mechanical engineering company.⁵

In 1933 she marries the businessman and Captain (ret.) Wilhelm Eckart⁶ , a non-Jewish Catholic - also in church, due the different religions with the help of an exemption by the archdiocese Munich and Freising.⁷ Eckart, however, dies already in 1934.⁸

In the following year, the young widow visits Cardinal Faulhaber, the archbishop of Munich and Freising, who knew and appreciated her late husband from the World War. Lotte wants to be baptized. Faulhaber puts her off, but takes on a fatherly attitude, supports her repeatedly with money and, until 1940, meats with her fourteen times for personal conversations. ⁹

In 1936, Charlotte Eckart becomes a breathing instructor in Liechtenstein, where she opens a breathing school.¹⁰ In Liechtenstein, she also becomes pregnant. She does not disclose the presumably non-Jewish father, in order to avoid the suspicion of “Rassenschande” (racial disgrace).

In 1937, based on the recommendation of Cardinal Faulhaber, she is eventually baptized¹¹ and, thirteen days later, also her newborn daughter Gabriele.¹² Since the birth is “illegitimate”, the child receives her mother’s maiden name, Schwarz, while the mother herself keeps the marriage name, Eckart. Little Gabi is accommodated as foster child on a farm in the Allgäu area¹³ and grows up in idyllic nature.

Lotte Eckart with her daughter Gabi.

(Archive of Leo Hiemer)

On December 27, 1937, Lotte is confirmed by Cardinal Faulhaber¹⁴ and equipped with a recommendation for America.¹⁵ In summer 1938, she visits the US as a tourist¹⁶ , presumably to explore the employment options as breathing instructor. Back in Germany, with the help of the Catholic Association St. Raphael in Hamburg and the support center of the Berlin bishop, she keeps trying to emigrate together with her daughter. ¹⁷ But all efforts fail.

By order of the Munich Gestapo of September 27, 1941, Lotte is arrested in Augsburg¹⁸ and, on November 8, 1941, deported to the women’s concentration camp Ravensbrück.¹⁹ Within the framework of “special treatment 14 f 13“ she, being Jewish, is murdered in the NS killing facility Bernburg by carbon monoxide.²⁰ Date and location of her death are falsified by the SS.

In 1943, her five-year-old daughter Gabriele is murdered in Auschwitz.²¹

Leo Hiemer (Translation by Michael Bernheim)