Margarete Himmler also known as Marga Himmler was the wife of Reichsführer-SS
Heinrich Himmler. Life
= Youth, first marriage, and divorce = Margarete Boden was born the daughter of
landowner Hans Boden and his wife Elfriede, whose maiden name was Popp.
Margarete had four brothers and a sister. In 1909, she attended the Höhere
Töchterschule in Bromberg, a city in northern Poland. Margarete trained and
worked as a nurse during the First World War followed by a stint at a German Red
Cross hospital at the war’s end. Her first marriage was short and she
remained childless. Due to the economic support of her father, she was able to
operate and direct a private nursing clinic in Berlin.
Marriage to Heinrich Himmler Himmler met his future wife, Margarete
Boden in 1927. They met during one of his lecture tours and remained
thereafter in written contact with one another. In one surviving letter,
Margarete refers to Himmler as the "Landsknecht with the hard heart" but
she was nevertheless impressed by his romantic style of writing and his
sincere love for her. The blonde, blue-eyed nurse Margarete corresponded
perfectly to Himmler's ideal woman. Seven years his senior, Margarete shared
his interest in herbal medicine and homoeopathy, and was part owner of a
small private clinic. They shared an excessive propensity for efficiency,
neatness, longed for strict domesticity, and both preferred a parsimonious
lifestyle. From Himmler she received a consistent diet of anti-Semitism and
diatribes against Communists and Freemasons. Her anti-Semitism was
evident in a letter to Himmler dated 22 June 1928, in which she made disparaging
remarks about the co-owner of the private clinic in Berlin, gynecologist
and surgeon Bernhard Hauschildt, exclaiming, “That Hauschildt! Those Jews
are all the same!" Heinrich and Margarete were married in
July 1928. Initially, Heinrich struggled with the decision to reveal his
relationship with Margarete to his parents, partly due to her being seven
years older, but also because she was a divorcee, and foremost, because she was
a Protestant. None of Himmler's family members attended the wedding, so
Heinrich’s groomsmen were the father and brother of the bride. Ultimately,
Himmler's parents accepted Margarete, but the family kept their distance from
her and remained that way throughout the length of the relationship. The couple
had their only child, Gudrun, who was born on 8 August 1929. Besides the
parents of Gudrun, the couple were foster parents to a boy named Gerhard
von Ahe, son of an SS officer who had died before the war. Margarete sold her
share of the clinic and used the proceeds to buy a plot of land in
Waldtrudering, near Munich, where they put up a prefabricated house. Himmler
was constantly away on party business, so his wife took charge of their
efforts—mostly unsuccessful—to raise livestock for sale. After the Nazis
seized power in January 1933, the family moved first to Möhlstrasse in Munich,
and in 1934 to Lake Tegern, where they bought a house.
Himmler later obtained a large house in the Berlin suburb of Dahlem free of
charge as an official residence. The couple saw little of each other as
Himmler became totally absorbed by work. Gebhard, Heinrich Himmler's older
brother, characterized Margarete as a "cool, hard woman with extremely
delicate nerves who radiated no warmth at all and spent too much time moaning"
who had in spite of these characteristics, been an "exemplary
housewife", one who devotedly loved Heinrich and remained true to her
husband. Margarete Himmler joined the Nazi Party as early as 1928. Due to
Himmler's enormous responsibilities, the relationship with Marga was strained.
The couple did unite for social functions; they were frequent guests at
the home of Reinhard Heydrich. Margarete saw it as her duty to invite the wives
of the senior SS leaders over for afternoon coffee and tea on Wednesday
afternoons. Despite her best efforts and the fact that Margarete was married to
the Reichsführer-SS, she remained unpopular in SS circles. Former Hitler
Youth leader Baldur von Schirach wrote in his memoirs that Heinrich Himmler was
constantly "henpecked", essentially had zero influence at home, and had to yield
to Margarete’s will. During the Nuremberg Rally 1938,
Margarete had conflicts with most of the wives of the highest-ranking SS leaders,
who as a group refused to take any directions from her. According to
Heydrich's biographers and historian Robert Gerwarth, Lina Heydrich harbored
a "violent dislike" of Margarete Himmler, something which was likely
reciprocated. After the war, Lina Heydrich made disparaging comments to a
reporter from Der Spiegel. Margarete was described as a "narrow-minded,
humorless, blonde-haired woman" who suffered from agoraphobia.
Hedwig Potthast, Himmler's young secretary starting in 1936, became his
mistress by 1939. She left her job in 1941. Himmler fathered two children with
her: a son, Helge and a daughter, Nanette Dorothea. Margarete, by then
living in Gmund with her daughter, learned of the relationship sometime in
1941. Margarete and Himmler were already separated, and she decided to tolerate
the relationship for the sake of her daughter.
= Second World War = Once World War II began, Margarete
helped operate a military hospital affiliated with the German Red Cross. By
December 1939, she was supervising the Red Cross hospitals in Military District
III. In this position, she led missions into the territories and countries
occupied by the German Wehrmacht. In March 1940, Margarete recorded a
business trip to German-occupied Poland, so she was certainly a witness to events
there. In her journals, written while serving, Margarete wrote, "Then I was in
Posen, Łódź and Warsaw. This Jewish rabble, Polacks, most of them don't look
like human beings and the dirt is indescribable. It's an incredible job
trying to create order there." For her efforts, Margarete reached the
rank of colonel in the German Red Cross. In February 1945, in writing to Gebhard
Himmler, Margarete said, "How wonderful that he has been called to great tasks
and is equal to them. The whole of Germany is looking to him."
Himmler was close to his first daughter, Gudrun, whom he nicknamed Püppi; he
phoned her every few days and visited as often as he could. Hedwig and Margarete
both remained loyal to Himmler. Margarete and Heinrich Himmler last saw
one another in April 1945, sharing time together with their daughter Gudrun at
their Gmund residence. = Post-war =
In 1945, Margarete and Gudrun left Gmund as Allied troops advanced into the area.
After the invasion of Bolzano, Italy, by the U.S. Army in May 1945, Margarete and
Gudrun were arrested. They were held in various internment camps in Italy,
France, and Germany. During her internment, Margarete was interrogated,
but it became clear that she was not informed of the official business of her
husband, and was described as having a "small-town mentality" which persisted
throughout her questioning. In September 1945, Margarete Himmler was
again interrogated, but this time it was during the Nuremberg Trials. Margarete
and Gudrun were then detained at the Flak-Kaserne Ludwigsburg internment
camp. Since they were not accused, she and Gudrun were released in November
1946 from internment. They took refuge for a time with the Bethel Institution
of Bielefeld. Margarete's stay there was expressly endorsed by the Executive
Board of the Bethel Institution, but this was not without controversy. On 4
June 1947, in the European edition of the New-York Tribune, an article
appeared entitled, "Widow of Heinrich Himmler Lives Like a Gentlewoman".
Margarete was categorized in 1948 at Bielefeld as a lesser offender and was
to be denazified accordingly. In 1950, Margarete retained a lawyer to challenge
this classification, since she claimed that her early Nazi Party membership was
no more than "nominal" and that her high rank resulted from her early service
with the German Red Cross, in which she had served since 1914. Margarete
maintained that while she had been the wife of the Reichsführer-SS, she
remained far from the spotlight. Nevertheless, the denazification
committee in Detmold revised her classification, and contended that she
likely supported the goals of the Nazi Party and endorsed the actions of her
husband. Her lawyer insisted during the follow-on appeals process that Margarete
could not be held responsible for the actions of her husband, and countered
that the official decision was guided by the idea of Sippenhaft, which meant she
was responsible by familial connections. On 19 March 1951, she was finally
classified as Mitläufer. According to this judgment, she was not
to be held accountable for the crimes of her husband, despite the fact that she
had not been distant from them. Additional arguments were presented that
she and her daughter had benefited from the rise of her husband. Because of this
fact, another denazification proceeding, started by the Bavarian Prime Minister
Hans Ehard, resumed in the British occupation zone. These proceedings
focused on the unresolved question of ownership of Margarete and Heinrich’s
home in Gmund. On 15 January 1953, at the final hearing against Margarete in
Munich, she was classified as a beneficiary of the Nazi regime and thus
placed in Category II, and sentenced to 30 days' special/punitive work. She also
lost her pension rights and the right to vote.
Gudrun left Bethel in 1952. From the autumn of 1955, Margarete lived with her
sister Lydia in Heepen. Her adopted son Gerhard also lived with them in her
apartment. Margarete’s final years were spent with her daughter in Munich.
Gudrun emerged from the experience embittered by her alleged mistreatment
and has remained devoted to her father's memory.
Assessment Peter Longerich notes that Margarete
Himmler probably did not know about the official secrets or planned projects of
her husband during the Nazi era. She claimed after the war not to have any
knowledge of Nazi crimes, but she remained a committed National Socialist
and was certainly anti-Semitic. Jürgen Matthäus described her as a typical Nazi
who wanted the Jews gone, and observed that despite any efforts contrariwise to
isolate herself from the regime and its crimes, she profited from them.
See also List of Nazi Party leaders and officials
Women in Nazi Germany Notes
References Flaherty, T. H. [1988]. The Third Reich:
The SS. Time-Life Books, Inc. ISBN 1-84447-073-3.
Gerwarth, Robert. Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-11575-8.
Himmler, Katrin. Michael Wildt: Himmler privat. Briefe eines Massenmörders.
Piper, München. ISBN 978-3-492-05632-8. Himmler, Katrin. The Himmler Brothers.
London: Pan Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-330-44814-7.
Longerich, Peter. Heinrich Himmler: A Life. Oxford; New York: Oxford
University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-959232-6.
Manvell, Roger; Fraenkel, Heinrich [1965]. Heinrich Himmler: The Sinister
Life of the Head of the SS and Gestapo. London; New York: Greenhill; Skyhorse.
ISBN 978-1-60239-178-9. Matthäus, Jürgen: „Es war sehr nett“.
Auszüge aus dem Tagebuch der Margarete Himmler, 1937–1945. In: Werkstatt
Geschichte 25, p. 75–93. Staff. "Shadowy Nazi support group still
honours daughter of SS head". sify.com. Sify News. Retrieved 1 July 2012.
Wittler, Christina. Leben im Verborgenen. Die Witwe des
„Reichsführers SS“ Heinrich Himmler Margarete Himmler In: Bärbel
Sunderbrink: Frauen in der Bielefelder Geschichte. Verlag für
Regionalgeschichte, Bielefeld 2010, ISBN 978-3-89534-795-5, p. 193–205.
Further reading Himmler, Katrin & Michael Wildt. Himmler
privat. Briefe eines Massenmörders. Piper, München. 2014, ISBN
978-3-492-05632-8. Himmler, Katrin. Die Brüder Himmler.
Eine deutsche Familiengeschichte. S. Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 2005, ISBN
3-10-033629-1. Longerich, Peter. Heinrich Himmler.
Biographie, Siedler, München 2008, ISBN 978-3-88680-859-5.