Johanna Maria Magdalena "Magda" Goebbels (11 November 1901 – 1 May 1945) was the wife of Nazi Germany's Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. A prominent member of the Nazi party, she was a close ally and political supporter of Adolf Hitler.
As Berlin was being overrun by the Red Army at the end of World War II, she murdered her six children with Goebbels and then committed suicide.
Biography
Childhood and youth
Magda was born in 1901 in Berlin, Germany to 22-year-old Auguste Behrend, the acknowledged daughter of engineer Oskar Rietschel (sometimes spelled 'Ritschel'). Rietschel and Behrend married later that year and divorced in 1904. Some sources, including Hans-Otto Meissner (son of Otto Meissner) suggest that the marriage took place before her birth, and that she was legitimate, but there is no particular evidence to support this.
When Magda was five, her mother sent her to stay with Rietschel in Cologne. Rietschel took her to Brussels, where she was enrolled at the Ursuline Convent in Vilvoorde. At the convent, she was remembered as "an active and intelligent little girl".
Magda's mother Auguste married a Jewish manufacturer named Richard Friedländer and moved with him to Brussels in 1908. Richard Friedländer later died in Buchenwald concentration camp. They remained in Brussels, on cordial terms, until the outbreak of World War I, when all Germans were forced to leave Belgium as refugees, to avoid repercussions from the Belgians after the German invasion.
They moved to Berlin where Magda attended the high school Kolmorgen Lycée. Auguste Behrend divorced the now impoverished Friedländer in 1914.
It was at this time that Magda met and became close to another refugee from Belgium, Lisa Arlosoroff. It is commonly claimed that she later dated Arlosoroff's brother Haim Arlosoroff. He was to become a prominent Zionist and was assassinated in Palestine in 1933.
In 1919, Magda was enrolled in the prestigious Holzhausen Ladies' College near Goslar.
Marriage and son with Günther Quandt
At the age of 17, while returning to school on a train, Magda met Günther Quandt, a rich German industrialist twice her age, whose holdings later grew into VARTA batteries among other businesses. He also had large shareholdings in BMW and Daimler-Benz. It is claimed that although a physically unremarkable man, Quandt courted Magda at school by posing as a family friend and swept her off her feet with courtesy and grand gestures. He demanded that she change her name back to Rietschel (having borne the name of her mother and stepfather, Friedländer, at her own request, for many years) while converting from Rietschel's nominal Catholicism to Protestantism. She and Quandt were married on 4 January 1921, and her first child, Harald, was born on 1 November 1921. Harald was her only child to survive the war.
Magda soon grew frustrated in her marriage, because Quandt spent little time with her, and at the age of 23 she became attracted to her 18-year-old stepson Helmut Quandt. However, he died of complications from appendicitis in 1927. She and Günther Quandt then went on a six-month automobile tour of America, where she captured the attention of a nephew of the U.S. President Herbert Hoover. Later, after her divorce from Quandt, he travelled back from America to visit her and ask her to marry him, an episode that ended in a car crash in which Magda was seriously injured.
Their brief stay in the United States began when the RMS Berengaria (Cunard Line; previously, SS Imperator of the Hamburg America Line) entered the Port of New York (New York Harbor), Friday morning, October 28, 1927. Gunther and Maria M. (Magda) Quandt boarded the steamship at the Port of Cherbourg, France, Saturday morning, October 22, 1927. Whereupon, RMS Berengaria departed for half-day visit at the Port of Southampton, England, and then departed that Saturday evening for the United States. Gunther and Maria M. Quandt were listed with personal details on the steamship's manifest list. According to this same ship's manifest list it was documented that Gunther last visited the United States for three months in 1924 visiting in Chicago, Illinois. On this visit to the United States Gunther (with Maria M.) was traveling to conduct business with the H. Lloyd Electric Storage Battery Company located on Allehenny Avenue in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At this time period, practically every city in the United States had several electric storage battery companies. Gunther reported this business trip was to last two months.
Quandt hired detectives and divorced Magda in 1929, but was ultimately generous with the divorce settlement.
Marriage and family with Joseph Goebbels
Main article: Goebbels childrenYoung, attractive, and with no need to work, on the advice of a friend, Magda attended a meeting of the Nazi Party, where she was impressed by one of the speakers, Joseph Goebbels, then the Gauleiter of Berlin. She joined the party on 1 September 1930, and did some volunteer work, although she has not been characterized as politically active. From the local branch, Magda moved to the party headquarters and for a brief period became secretary to Hans Meinshausen, Goebbels' deputy, before being invited to take charge of Goebbels' own private archives.
Otto Wagener claims that Magda met and was attracted to Adolf Hitler, who was impressed by her, and that her marriage to Goebbels was somewhat arranged. Since Hitler intended to remain unmarried, it was suggested that as the wife of a leading and highly visible Nazi official she might eventually act as "first lady of the Third Reich". Magda's social connections and upper class bearing may have influenced Goebbels' own enthusiasm.
Meissner, on the contrary, makes no suggestion of this, claiming rather that Hitler (though undoubtedly impressed by Magda) was an exceptionally close friend of the couple in the earliest days, who would often arrive late at night and was as likely as Goebbels to sit with the baby Helga on his lap while they talked into the night. He also claims that after an abortive attempt to poison him at the Kaiserhof Hotel in Berlin in January 1933, Hitler asked Magda to prepare all his meals.
Magda married Goebbels on 19 December 1931, at Günther Quandt's farm in Mecklenburg, with Hitler as a witness.
Joseph and Magda Goebbels subsequently had six children :
- Helga Susanne
- Hildegard " Hilde " Traudel
- Helmut Christian
- Holdine " Holde " Kathrin
- Hedwig " Hedda " Johanna
- Heidrun " Heide " Elisabeth
Joseph Goebbels had many affairs with other women during his marriage to Magda. One of the most widely known was with the popular Czech actress Lída Baarová. He was so smitten with Baarová that he even contemplated marrying her. Magda resorted to asking Hitler for permission to divorce Goebbels, and Baarová was eventually sent away, while Goebbels was in such disgrace that for a time it was rumored that he might be sent to Japan as German ambassador. Magda was also rumored to have had affairs, including one with Goebbels's deputy Karl Hanke.
War years
Both Magda and Goebbels derived personal benefits and social status from their close association with Hitler. Joseph (as propaganda minister) and Magda remained loyal to Hitler and publicly supported him. Privately, Magda expressed doubts, especially after the war began to go badly on the eastern front. On 9 November 1942, during a gathering with friends listening to a speech by Hitler, she switched off the radio exclaiming, "My God, what a lot of rubbish". In 1944, she reportedly said of Hitler, "He no longer listens to voices of reason. Those who tell him what he wants to hear are the only ones he believes".
There is no evidence that Magda intervened to save her Jewish stepfather from the Holocaust. Though his fate has not been established, it is widely assumed that he perished in the camps, perhaps misnamed as 'Max Friedlander', a man known to have died in Sachsenhausen. A plea from a Jewish school friend on behalf of her daughter seems to have also fallen on deaf ears. Asked about her husband's antisemitism, she answered: "The Führer wants it thus, and Joseph must obey".
At the beginning of the war Magda threw herself enthusiastically into her husband's propaganda machine. Her other official functions involved entertaining the wives of the foreign heads of state, supporting the troops and comforting war widows.
Magda's first son, Harald Quandt, became a Luftwaffe pilot and fought at the front, while, at home, Magda strove to live up to the image of a patriotic mother by training as a Red Cross nurse and working with the electronics company Telefunken. She insisted on traveling to work on a bus, like her co-workers.
Towards the end of the war, Magda is known to have suddenly begun to suffer from trigeminal neuralgia. This condition affects a nerve in the face, and although usually harmless is considered to cause more intense pain than any other condition and can be notoriously hard to treat. This often left her bedridden and led to bouts of hospitalization as late as August 1944.
Suicide
In late April 1945, the Soviet Red Army entered Berlin, and the Goebbels family moved into the Führerbunker, beneath the bombed out Reich Chancellery. One of the rooms they occupied had been recently vacated by Hitler's personal physician Theodor Morell. The only bathroom with a bath was Adolf Hitler'
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