Lilli Kurowski was born in July 1939 in Königsberg, East Prussia (1). Her father was a barber, her mother a shop assistant. Her parents were Baptists and had met at a church choir. Of the four children her mother gave birth to, only Ulrich and Lilli survived. (Their siblings born in ‘36 and ‘43 died within a year, of diphtheria.) In 1944 Lilli’s father, who was then stationed in eastern France, came home for a two day visit and, as usual, took his children to the zoo. This was to be their last time together.
At the end of January 1945 the Russian army besieged the city of Königsberg. A German counter-offensive gained the population temporary reprieve and access to the sea port of Pillau. Because of the freezing cold, an ice breaker was needed for the small boat carrying Lilli, her mother, Ulrich and others to Pillau. In Pillau they got on another boat and went to the much larger port of Gotenhafen across the bay. Once they had disembarked there, they had to wait in a school hall packed tightly with refugees. Finally, Lilli’s mother was assigned a place on a ship heading for Kiel (North Germany). Well aware that this journey was risky, Lilli’s mother asked a sailor where they would be staying on the ship. The first place he showed her, she refused, because it was on the lowest deck, the second one, because it was too close to the machinery. Exasperated, the sailor told her she could take a cabin which was close to the upper deck or leave the ship. Satisfied, Lilli’s mother took the cabin. The ship had hardly left the port and was passing the peninsular Hel when it was torpedoed by a Russian submarine. It sank within minutes. Of the five hundred passengers, mainly women and children, only forty-five managed to get onto the rescue boat, among them Lilli, Ulrich and their mother. They were doubly lucky, because another German vessel passed by, took them on board and brought them safely to Copenhagen.
When Lilli’s mother later recalled this episode, she referred to herself as having “a second face”. Lilli, however, felt that “like so many mothers at that time, all of her mother’s emotions, senses and mind were focused on securing the survival of her children and herself.”
About 2.4 million Germans were brought across the Baltic sea to avoid being captured by the Russians, 30 000 died during the journey (2). Like Lilli and her family not all of the refugees actually made it to Germany. In late 1945, 238 000 refugees were still living in Denmark, unable to travel any further. When the ship heading for Germany had begun to sink, Lilli’s mother had thrown away the bag with all of their documents so that she could hold on more tightly to both of her children. Since they no longer had any documents and no relatives in the post-war German zones, Lilli’s family was among the last allowed to leave Denmark.
From 1945 to 1949 they passed through various Danish internment camps before ending up at the biggest, Oksbøl. With more than 30 000 refugees, Oksbøl relied to a large degree on self-organization with Danish supervision and financial support. The Danish preferred working with former opponents of Hitler, so the organization of the camp’s schools, for instance, was entrusted to a member of the SPD. The Oksbøl camp library offered books by left leaning authors and writers that had been forbidden by the Nazis. The camp’s newspaper, the Deutsche Nachrichten, was published by socialists and communists. Among those writing for the Deutsche Nachrichten was Fritz Bauer, the lawyer who later became chief prosecutor at the Auschwitz trials in Frankfurt.
Lilli believed her political education began with her teachers and the literature available at the Oksbøl camp. Although still a child, she also became aware of the social hierarchy within the camp: There were those like her own family who had literally lost everything, whereas others had been able to salvage valuables, clothes, etc. or had an education that enabled them to get better work (her mother worked in the camp’s kitchen). The most important influence, however, was Lilli’s mother who seems to have accepted her fate without self-pity, saying that “it was the Germans who started the war.” Lilli stated that her mother's attitude made both her and her brother immune to the reactionary politics of German refugee organizations. Although life in the camps was often tough, Lilli felt grateful to the Danish. (3)
In February 1949, Lilli and her family left Denmark for Germany. Lilli’s mother was given two options where to live and chose the location closer to the place that her sister had been sent to. She was then assigned a flat in a village about an hour from St. Goar on the Rhine. After four years of largely being confined to camp sites, Lilli relished roaming around the countryside. The lack of money and documents, however, remained a huge problem.
Having grown up in a city, Lilli’s mother didn’t enjoy village life and wanted to move to a bigger town. She also hoped there would be better opportunities for Lilli and her brother there. After her husband had been declared dead, Lilli’s mother decided to marry a widower who lived in Recklinghausen. The widower was a builder and twenty years older than Lilli’s mother. Since he was already supporting his own daughter with her invalid husband and six children, he had little money to spare for his new family. Despite good grades, both Lilli and her brother had to leave school after the obligatory eight years. Aged 14 Lilli began a three-year apprenticeship as a shop assistant. Lilli struggled in a job she neither liked nor wanted and took the first opportunity to get out. With the help of a head librarian, their Baptist community and other friends who saw their potential, both Lilli and Ulrich managed to continue their schooling. Firmly rooted in the working class, they became politically active and joined Germany’s oldest party, the SPD.
From 1963 to 1971 Lilli worked as a social worker, first in the Ruhr area, later in Hasenbergl, the poorest part of Munich. Belonging to the left wing of the SPD, she then began to work for the town council in Munich. In the early Seventies, however, the political atmosphere in West Germany had begun to change. After the Radikalen Erlass, a law banning “extremists” from working for the state, leftists came under increasing pressure. Lilli handed in her notice and, at age 35, decided to finally fulfill her dream of studying law. Despite initial difficulties she was able to finish her studies and write a PhD about a topic close to her heart. Her thesis had the title “Bigger than Life: Shame” and dealt with the role of shame in the life of offenders.
Lilli believed that shame is an underrated emotion that influences a person far more than is generally recognized. Her own experiences of poverty as well as her social work convinced her that feelings of shame have a huge impact on a person’s attitude to themselves and to others.
After finishing her PhD she worked for two years as a lecturer and legal adviser. Despite serious health problems she then founded the Frauenrechtsschule with the aim of providing women in difficulties with the necessary information to make best use of their rights. During the twelve year existence of the Frauenrechtsschule a team of lawyers provided much sought after legal advice and general information on different areas (work, family/divorce, further education/qualification). They also published a paper with information on legal changes and new laws.
In Lilli’s experience, single mothers were given a particularly raw deal: Fathers often didn’t pay alimony and working full time was difficult, because of the general lack of day care. The service industries in particular tended to exploit their employees and single mothers as well as foreign and older women, were most affected by this. (4)
In 1993 Lilli supported Munich’s campaign “Women’s rights are human rights” and her name appeared on the campaign posters. When the first posters had been put up in the city, she began receiving death threats on the phone. Fortunately the police took these threats seriously and gave her protection. Nonetheless it took her long time to get over her fear of appearing in public again.
In 2004, when Lilli turned 65, the city stopped financing the Frauenrechtsschule. Some of the lawyers and social workers involved in the project then started a new one called Einspruch (objection) and asked Lilli to become their managing director. The founders of Einspruch foresaw considerable legal problems with the introduction of Hartz IV in 2005. As it turned out, they were right and the legal advice provided by Einspruch was much in demand right from the start.
Lilli received various awards for her work, among them the prestigious Bundesverdienstkreuz, a national award of merit.
Lilli’s childhood experiences and work had made her keenly aware of the inequalities within German society and the importance of human rights. She thought civil and political rights are not enough, because these rights only have a meaning if you have the means and the knowledge to make use of them. So she fought for education, for social and economic rights.
Lilli was interested and interesting. She loved nothing better than having a beer and a chat about everything under the sun. I miss her charm and quiet determination.
(1) I’m using the now dated German place names here, because those were the names during Lilli’s childhood. Here are their modern day equivalents:
Königsberg = Kaliningrad
Pillau = Baltiysk
Gotenhafen = Gdynia
(2) These figures are estimates, so they vary slightly from one source to another. These figures are taken from Mix, Karl-Georg, Deutsche Flüchtlinge in Dänemark 1945-1949, München 2005
(3) After the last refugees had left for Germany in 1949, the Danish government estimated they had spent 428 million Danish crowns on the German refugees. At a conference in London in 1953 the debt was reduced to 190 million. This remaining debt was paid off by the German government during the following five years.
“As I’m writing these lines, I have to think of the negative attitude of the German government towards a debt reduction for poor EU member states. In regard to EU policies wealthy Germany has forgotten that it too was once dependent on the generosity of other countries. When I think of the bickering about the number of Syrian refugees allowed into Germany, I cannot but remember the Danish in 1945. They had every reason to hate us Germans. In retrospect their example shines all the more brightly.” (Lilli Kurowski, Tod Not Brot, Rettungsgeschichten, 2019, p.22)
(4) I’m using the past tense here, but Lilli didn’t necessarily think, the general situation for women had changed for the better. Working conditions in the service industries have actually deteriorated considerably. In Germany in general but in Bavaria in particular, there is little upward social mobility. The chances of children of getting better qualifications than their parents have remained shockingly low.