Democracy Sunday at Schopf2: Women - National Socialism - Freiburg

Our theme is: "Women in National Socialism - Women in Resistance - Women in Freiburg during the National Socialist Era". We start the Sunday afternoon (19.10.2025) at 2 pm with a vernissage with paintings by Gretel Bechtold. The Freiburg artist was born in 1922. She produced numerous paintings and drawings until her death in 2017. She worked as an art teacher and documented her artistic talent as a painter at numerous exhibitions in Germany and abroad. The very personal records, letters, notes and drawings of the young Gretel Bechtold are more impressive and disturbing than any description in history books. They not only show the horror of the war, but also the immediate impairments, fears and doubts that it brought with it. Gretel Bechtold's childhood and youth are significantly influenced by this, but also by her reflections, her thinking and observations, which allowed her to recognize and expose many things at a very early age that many adults at the time accepted without question or criticism.

Dr. Phil. Frauke Geyken will speak at 3.30 p.m. on the subject of "Women in the resistance against Adolf Hitler". Afterwards, Irmgard Meiners-Schuth (retired senior teacher) will focus on Gertrud Luckner, who campaigned for the persecuted in Freiburg during National Socialism, survived the Ravensbrück concentration camp and remained active in Freiburg for a long time after the war. In the subsequent panel discussion, the two speakers will then discuss the topic of "Women under National Socialism in Freiburg and women in the resistance" with Julia Wolrab, the director of the Documentation Center for National Socialism in Freiburg, and Ms. Rombach, an almost 98-year-old contemporary witness from Freiburg, as well as a young woman from the Nemory project in Freiburg.