Antifascist resistance: Eva Mamlok and Pieter Siemsen: Love in cruel times

Cristina Siemsen came all the way from Buenos Aires to Berlin. But the 78-year-old psychologist consciously took the journey across the Atlantic. Ultimately the reason for this has to do with her father Pieter Siemsen. He left Germany for Argentina in 1937 for political reasons. He lived in exile there until 1952 before he decided to start a new life in the GDR. He died in Berlin in 2014 shortly before his 90th birthday.

The specific occasion is an exhibition that is currently taking place in… FHXB-Museum can be seen in Berlin-Kreuzberg. This is about the resistance of a group of Jewish women against the Nazi regime. The protagonist Eva Mamlok was Pieter Siemsen’s partner in the mid-1930s.

The exhibition tells the story of how the young couple bought wedding rings from Woolworths for “90 pfennigs” – at a time when the Nazis had already banned marriage between Jewish and non-Jewish people. Pieter then emigrated to South America alone.

Cristina Siemsen’s family contributed a letter from Eva Mamlok to the exhibition. This is dated December 13, 1937, when Pieter had already arrived in Argentina, according to exhibition curator Alexandra Weltz-Rombach. In it, Eva explains why she thought it would be better to end the relationship.

»Two years in which feelings and reason fought with each other wore me down. But these are the hardest fights. The feeling received its nourishment from fantasy, the mind from reality. Finally, reason has triumphed.” In the letter, Eva Mamlok complains that her partner tried to “instill” her opinions and morals. The woman from Kreuzberg speaks of the “impossibility of living together.” Cristina Siemsen suspects that the letter was formulated so clearly so that her father would no longer have any illusions.

Curator Weltz-Rombach says: “Pieter obviously underestimated the extent of his partner’s commitment.” Siemsen came from a “large SPD family.” His father August Siemsen sat for the Social Democrats in the Reichstag – and Pieter (born in 1914) was also a politically conscious person from a young age. In comparison, the protest of Eva, who was four years younger than her, may have seemed rather “wild” in those years, explains Weltz-Rombach.

Nevertheless, Eva’s courage is admirable. The Kreuzberg native was just 14 years old when she wrote “Down with Hitler” in large letters on the roof of the Hertie department store at Halleschen Tor in 1933. This was the reason for her first arrest. However, she was released due to her young age.

“It’s impressive how many people met here,” says the curator. However, not much is known about the actual relationship between the two.

In his autobiography “The Beginner of Life,” Pieter Siemsen mentions how he came into contact with opposition circles in the military, of all places. That’s how he met Eva. »This friendship was incredibly important for me, because up until then I was pretty much alone.«

He romanticizes his love for the teenager: “Eva and I were very fond of each other.” He mentions the wedding rings. “We proudly put them on our fingers.” He wore the ring for a long time. He tried to catch up with Eva from Argentina. But the efforts were unsuccessful.

Cristina Siemsen says about her father’s relationship with Eva Mamlok: »I knew about a friend. But not that it was a great love.« Only recently her son Adrián Feferbaum Siemsen found the letter mentioned in his grandfather’s estate. The 45-year-old architect from Buenos Aires deals with the history of his ancestors. In May of this year he gave a lecture on this topic at the Polyrama Museum for Life Stories on Stuttgarter Platz in Charlottenburg.

The lives of Pieter Siemsen and Eva Mamlok were very different after their separation. Eva’s fate is presented in the exhibition. She defends herself against the Nazi regime through “resistance in everyday life,” is how the curator describes her activism. Through leaflets or slogans critical of the regime on walls. Like-minded people organize meetings to discuss the content of banned books.

Because of her resistance, Eva was locked up in the Moringen concentration camp in Lower Saxony at the age of 16. This terrible experience did not stop her from continuing to be politically active after her release. In the first years of the war she had to do forced labor at a screw factory in Berlin. At the beginning of 1942 he was deported to Riga. The young woman’s ordeal continued Stutthof concentration camp continued. According to official information, she died there at the end of 1944 due to “general physical weakness,” which is probably a euphemistic formulation.

A CV that won’t leave you indifferent. The horrors of Nazi rule are clearly visible in the fate of an individual. “This makes direct identification possible,” says Weltz-Rombach. She spent two years researching the exhibition with other historians.

The curator draws attention to the present, which is characterized by the rise of right-wing populist parties. This makes the theme of the exhibition more important. So when you look at history you can ask yourself: Are we facing something like this again?

The upheavals of the last century are also reflected in Pieter Siemsen’s life. After the Nazis came to power, he and his parents initially left Germany for Switzerland. Then they parted ways temporarily. His father August Siemsen, a teacher by profession, accepted an invitation to Buenos Aires in 1934. There, the publisher of the “Argentinisches Tageblatt”, Ernesto Alemann, planned to found a new school that would serve as a liberal counterpoint to the German schools abroad in Argentina, which were aligned in the Nazi spirit. The resulting Pestalozzi school still exists today.

However, Pieter Siemsen had to return to Germany because he could not find any employment opportunities in Switzerland. He went into labor service and later into the military. From Argentina in 1937, his father let him know that he absolutely had to leave Germany. The German embassy in Buenos Aires had research carried out on August Siemsen and his family. Pieter was also at risk. With the help of an officer, the son was able to obtain the documents necessary to leave the country and followed his parents to Argentina.

»This friendship was incredibly important for me, because up until then I was pretty much alone.«

Pieter Siemsen

Pieter Siemsen found work in the Alemann family’s newspaper company, where he was trained as a typesetter in their printing company. However, he lost this position again because of his involvement in a strike. This was followed by employment at other printing companies and as a warehouse worker.

He was politically active in the association “The Other Germany,” founded in 1937, an association of German emigrants in Buenos Aires. One of the founders was the teacher Erich Bunke, whose daughter Tamara later fought alongside “Che” Guevara under the battle name “Tania”. The group was about reflecting on German culture – especially Goethe, Schiller and Brecht – and opposing it to Nazi ideology.

Looking back, Pieter Siemsen described his years in Argentina as the “most productive time” in his life. He really liked the mentality of the people there, as he emphasized in an interview with the “Information Center for Latin America”.

Nevertheless, he decided to leave the country on the Río de la Plata. His marriage to Lene Laub, a Jewish emigrant from Vienna, with whom he had two daughters, had broken down. Pieter Siemsen returned to Germany alone. “My mother got the children, my father got the typewriter,” says Cristina Siemsen, who was six years old when she separated from her father.

Apparently Pieter Siemsen had more hopes for a new social beginning after the Nazi era in the GDR than in the Federal Republic. “He was an idealist. He probably thought that the new people would grow up in the GDR,” says Cristina Siemsen.

In order to be able to live in the GDR at all, Pieter Siemsen had to be patient. The authorities were apparently suspicious of newcomers from the Western Hemisphere. Only by marrying a GDR citizen was Pieter Siemsen able to move to the eastern part of Berlin.

In the GDR, Pieter Siemsen found his niche as a Spanish editor at a publishing house. He also accompanied GDR delegations on trips to Latin American countries several times.

There was a lively correspondence with his daughters. In 1976, Cristina visited her father in East Berlin for the first time. She still remembers the climate at the border crossing at Friedrichstrasse train station. »You were a number! There was a lot of screaming. It was very unpleasant.”

Pieter Siemsen lived in Berlin until 2014. “He was a very warm person, quite Argentinian,” remembers Cristina Siemsen. Today her daughter Sandra lives in Berlin. The 39-year-old recently initiated the “Now Time Memoirs” project, which is about immigration between Germany and Argentina.

“I’m pleased that my children are interested in this story,” says Cristina Siemsen. With a generation behind us, access to the eventful but tragic history seems easier.

The exhibition about the stories of resistance surrounding Eva Mamlok can be seen in the Museum Berlin-Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg until September 22nd.