Marie Anna Maetzig née Lyon

Location 
Boothstr. 20 c
District
Lichterfelde
Stone was laid
03 July 2010
Born
22 August 1881 in Hamburg
Escape into death
09 February 1944 in Berlin

Marie Maetzig came from Hamburg. Her husband Robert Maetzig owned a film laboratory in Berlin. The well-known DEFA film director, Kurt Maetzig, was her son. In 1947 he made a film titled “Marriage in the Shadows” (Ehe im Schatten) in memory of his mother.

As a Protestant of Jewish descent, Marie Maetzig was targeted by the Nazis’ racial laws. She evaded deportation until 1944 by fleeing to different cities across Germany, where non-Jewish friends and relations took her in. On 9 February 1944, she escaped imminent deportation by taking her own life in Berlin.

People of various denominations made it possible for Marie Maetzig to die in dignity and have a Christian burial, at considerable personal risk. They were: Prof. Werner Leibbrand, the doctor who granted her son’s request to admit her to Westend hospital, from which Jews were barred; Vicar Fritz Siems of the Lietzensee parish, a member of the Confessing Church who accompanied her on her last journey; and staff at the Protestant forest cemetery in Stahnsdorf who carried out her burial without the requisite papers.
These were small gestures of human kindness at a time of inhuman cruelty.