Eva Siewert (1907-1994)

(this text can also be heard in the audio clip)

Eva Siewert was born in Breslau on February 11, 1907 and spent most of her youth in Berlin. She attended the Hohenzollern Lyceum in Berlin until 1923.

After a stay in Tehran in 1930/1931, she impressed with her voice in radio lectures, which earned her a job at Radio Luxembourg. From 1932 to 1938, she was the trilingual chief speaker and chief editor. However, her career was brought to an abrupt end by National Socialism. As the daughter of a Jewish mother, she was considered a “first-degree half-breed” and was banned from her profession.

Eva was courageous in living out her queer identity as a woman-loving woman, which was socially taboo and sometimes even persecuted. Even though Paragraph 175 only applied to men, lesbian women had to suffer protective custody or other harassment by the criminal authorities. It is not known exactly how Eva met her girlfriend Alice Carlé. They became a couple from 1938, and Alice often spent the night in Eva’s apartment at Keithstraße 6 in Berlin-Tiergarten, where she felt safer than with her own family. Their relationship offered both women emotional support in a threatening environment.

But the increasing threat led to attempts to leave the country, which Eva describes in “The Oracle”: “It was then that we realized that staying meant risking our lives. Until November 9, 1938, the desire to emigrate had been the desire for freedom. Now it became a necessity. We had to save ourselves. We didn’t miss a consulate. There was no state in the five continents to which we did not present our request. There was no application form for entry visas that we didn’t fill out together […] But now the war was here. Long feared. Often predicted. How were we supposed to get out of it?”

The two also visited a fortune teller, who told Eva: “First you get away.” Then she looked at Alice: “Then you come away, very far away.” She paused because we breathed a sigh of relief. She dashed our hopes again, or at least dampened them considerably: “Then you’ll never see each other again.”

Siewert was arrested for the first time in May 1941 and sentenced to two months in prison for making anti-fascist jokes in letters. Shortly afterwards, in 1942, Siewert was arrested again. This time, she was denounced by work colleagues for “subversion of military strength” – she had described the war as lost. She was sentenced to nine months in prison.

From March to December 1943, Siewert served her sentence in the women’s prison at Barnimstraße 10. Despite her poor health, she had to perform forced labor, including for AEG and in the Aschinger bread factory.

During this time, Alice visited a bakery opposite the prison twice a week. They at least tried to see each other.: “Nothing more was allowed. Even a smile or a nod meant grave danger for her and punishment in the cellar for me.”

While in prison in August 1943, Alice Carlé and her sister Charlotte were arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Auschwitz, where they were both murdered.

In a letter to Kurt Hiller, Siewert wrote that Alice’s life could not be protected due to her prison sentence: “That cost me the lives of my best Jewish friends, who were usually hidden with me when the air was thick, but who now escaped my protection at the most critical moment. No one came back from Auschwitz.”

After the war, Siewert worked as a journalist in Berlin. She created a touching memorial to her partner Alice in the story “The Oracle”. She recorded: “I often dreamt that Alice knocked on my door and asked me to hide her, as we had agreed. She was always on the run.” [….] “I wrote to Tel Aviv. The brother lived there, the only one of the family who had escaped abroad in 1934. We never received a reply. There was never a knock at my door. The oracle had been fulfilled.”

Eva Siewert also campaigned for the rights of queer people. Around 1950, she was the only woman to join the board of the newly founded Berlin Scientific-Humanitarian Committee (WhK). Her commitment in the post-war period also brought her into contact with Kurt Hiller, an influential activist for gay rights. Hiller even described Siewert as one of the most important essayists of her time.

From the mid-1950s, Siewert lived in seclusion in Berlin. She dreamed of living abroad, especially in France, but could not afford to move. On December 3, 1994, she died in her apartment at Südwestkorso 33 in Wilmersdorf, Berlin.

The story of Eva and Alice was rediscovered by the historian Raimund Wolfert. In 2018, a digital memorial space was set up at eva-siewert.de, which honors their lives.