Marie Kahle – Her Story

Imagine you woke up in Bonn
one morning to hear that a shop in your street had been broken into and
ransacked..   What would you do?   Offer to help clean up?   Seems a natural reaction one would
think.

Marie Kahle did just that in
Kaiserstrasse.  Months later, fearing for
her life, she fled to England where she remained  with her family until her death.  A plaque in the Bonngasse ‘Walk of Fame’  is dedicated to her, as is a Street name.
Here is her moving story.

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The year was 1938 and the Kahle family were highly respected, non-Jewish, residents in Bonn.
Professor Paul Kahle was a man of some influence and instrumental in developing Eastern Studies in
the curriculum at the University and had many influential friends worldwide. He was to need them when his
world began to fall apart.

On 10 November a Pogrom took place in Bonn
(as it did in many German Cities around this time). Jewish residencies were systematically ransacked
and their occupants beaten. Only days before, the Bonn Synagogue had been set ablaze  with firemen standing by only
to ensure that the flames did not spread to nearby houses. Marie Kahle’s children had tried to warn
local shopkeeper Emilie Goldstein (22 Kaiserstrasse) that the Nazis were on the
march but had not found her; half an hour later they returned to find the shop
door ripped open and the shop itself a shambles.

Site of the Goldstein Corsetry Shop (Kaiserstrasse 22) today.

Marie’s son, Wilhelm, spent most of the following day helping clear up.  It was forbidden by the Nazi authorities to enter Jewish shops but Marie had many Jewish friends and, to show moral support, she often visited them after dark. Whilst she was at Emilie Goldstein’s however the shop was also
visited by a policeman and both Marie and Wilhelm were reported to the local Right Wing Press. A week later the aptly named ‘Westdeutsche Beobachter’ (West German Observer) included the headline  A Traitor To The German People and the lives of Marie, Paul and their family
fell apart. The house was watched day and night. By day stones broke the
windows, by night thugs hammered at the front door. A caricature of Marie with hangmans noose was erected in the street and  ‘Here lives a Jew Loving Traitor’ painted on the pavement before her house. Compounding the danger was the fact that the Kahles also had an unregistered Jewish student staying at their house.  Marie herself fled to a nearby Convent; her husband (who also had a Polish Rabbi
Assistant) was forced to vacate his post at the University. Wilhelm was expelled from the University and could have fared worse had the Duty Policeman reported that he had not conclusively seen the boy cleaning up in the shop – which would have merited a much greater punishment.

Possibly the lowest point was reached when a former family friend, probably on Nazi Party orders, told Marie the only hope of saving her family lay in committing suicide. He ‘graciously’ even offered to provide the poison if throwing herself before a train was too traumatic! She was ‘requested’ to attend a hearing at the Nazi Headquarters and there possibly only escaped being tortured  through the intervention of a local, lowly paid policeman, two of whoms children had been clothed from head to foot through Marie’s local charity work.

Site of the Kahle House today

Due largely to the many internationally influential friends that Marie and particularly
Paul had, an escape to England was planned. Under the guise of a holiday, first Marie and later her husband and children, all fled to Holland and then on to England. The children arriving only hours before a new
rule forbidding all but Hitler Youth members travel outside Germany.

Marie herself never again returned to Bonn.
Suffering a long time from ill health, she died at only 55 years of age in 1948.
Her husband became an honorary Doctor at Oxford University and only returned to Germany at the request of his son Theo.  He died in Düsseldorf in 1963. John Kahle returned to Bonn in 1950.  William (Wilhelm), the eldest of the brothers, cared for Marie until her death and became a priest at Westminster Cathedral.  He died in 1993.  John Kahle became a ‘Post-War’ German as he himself said – “Charged with the task of rebuilding the world-view of the German people” The youngest brother, Ernest, also settled back in Germany after the War.  He studied Economics in Bonn and married here.

Marie Kahle published her story in England under the title ‘What would you have done?’ in 1945.

It took fifty years for the book to first appear in German language and even now it has only been sporadically re-published, last time in 1996 along with a chapter by her son John and a longer article by husband Paul detailing the rise of Nazism in Bonn
University up to his departure to England in 1939. The English version has long been out of print but if you see one in German it makes a fascinating (and rather
frightening) read.

Having found out what Marie Kahle endured after her and her sons act of kindness on that black day in November 1938 ask yourself, truly – would you have done?

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