Beate Hahn
Beate Hahn was a German-American horticulturist. She was born Sophie Charlotte Beate Jastrow on April 21, 1894, in Berlin-Zehlendorf and died on June 3, 1970, in Ossining, north of Tarrytown, in Westchester County, New York.
Childhood and youth in Berlin
Beate was the daughter of the historian and social politician Ignaz Jastrow, professor at the University of Berlin, and teacher Anna Seligmann Jastrow who was "vitally interested in community work". Together with her older sister, the classical archaeologist, Elisabeth Jastrow, Beate grew up in Wilhelmine Berlin. As the daughters of an educated middle-class family of assimilated Jews, both sisters received a good education.According to Beate's own words, she was fascinated when she discovered yellow and purple crocuses in her parents' garden one day. The longing for a garden, which she had last seen at the age of five, later became the driving force behind her efforts to convey this experience in a garden to as many children as possible. She wrote: "At the age of eight, I had made up my mind to become a gardener. I never changed my mind — I never repented my decision. All my life I enjoyed fully my early choice which made it possible to build up gardens for better living!"
Her parents leased their own plot for Beate on Spandauer Berg, where she could garden. At the age of twelve, she met the renown horticulturist, Karl Foerster for the first time when she purchased lily of the valley from him. This contact developed into a lifelong friendship.
Beate received lessons in Latin, French and English from private teachers. At the age of 15, she built a garden together with children who lived in a home for juveniles. After graduating from high school, she attended Horticulture College in Marienfelde, Berlin, from 1913 until her graduation with the highest grades in 1915. She then took a job at the Friedenthal Manor near Hildburghausen in Thuringia. During this time, she began to write articles about horticulture and wrote her first book Hurra, wir säen und ernten! However, it was not published until 1935. In 1917, she took over the role of estate gardener in Hirschfelde, which included a lush park and garden. After this temporary position, Beate returned to her parents' home and looked after some private gardens. When Beate was 22, she repeatedly rejected the offer of the owner of the house Bergstraße 2 in Berlin-Wannsee to work for her as head gardener. Finally, the lady suggested that she would take lessons from Beate herself. But Beate replied that she had no intention of teaching ladies of Berlin society. When asked why she did not want to join her, the gardener said: "Because I don't like your business." When the lady asked further, "And what does a business that you like look like, Beate?", she answered: "It must show a happy harmony between fruit, vegetables and life in the garden." – "Then I will just rearrange my garden according to your wishes", the lady replied and did so, perhaps also a little for the sake of her future daughter-in-law. The happy harmony between fruit, vegetables and life in the garden mentioned by the young gardener could be a hidden indication of an early interest in Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy.
Marriage and her own family
Beate Jastrow married engineer Franz Hahn on September 11, 1920, on Berlin's Pfaueninsel. The young couple studied economics for a year at the Technische Hochschule Aachen, Germany. Franz then worked in the Ruhr mills of the family's ironworks company. Franz and Beate Hahn had three daughters:- Anna Elisabeth Cornelia Miriam Hahn
- Marianne Dorothea Bettina Hahn
- Charlotte Anna Eveline Hahn
Life in Angermund
The Hahns had come to Angermund because Franz worked at the Hahnsche Werke in nearby Großenbaum. In 1923, Beate created a youth garden for the workers' children, where they received practical and theoretical gardening lessons four times a week. In addition, a nursery building with an information room and a horticultural library was built. The nursery grew vegetables for the plant's canteen and hotel. A head gardener and his team looked after the gardens of the company directors, senior staff and workers. "Of all the gardens in which I worked, none was as close to my heart as the youth garden and the other facilities in Großenbaum. Chimneys were the background of this garden, soot and dirt were all around in the streets. Children who worked with delight in the garden, that was the youth garden." Beate Hahn described the situation in Angermund during the occupation of the Ruhr by Franco-Belgian troops in an essay entitled Dem Gefährten – Dezember 1930. This abstract-expressionist text of 16 handwritten pages remained unfinished, but it is the only known description of the events in Angermund during the occupation. Therefore, it is of outstanding importance for local history. At the same time, Hahn's inclination towards her own creative writing style is also recognizable in this text.
Return to Berlin
At the end of 1927, Franz and Beate Hahn moved back to Berlin. They lived in a large villa at Bernhard-Beyer-Straße 3 in Steinstücken, a location that belonged to the municipality of Neubabelsberg. Angelika Schweizer continued to care for Cornelia, Marianne and Charlotte. In 1928, when she required more care, the Hahns placed their daughter Marianne in an institution for the disabled. A heartbreaking decision for the parents and their daughters. Almost seventy years later, Charlotte recounted in the Shoah Foundation interview with a laboriously controlled voice: "Although I was only two years old, I knew that Marianne was sick, but she was my sister! --- I never saw her again."In Berlin, Beate Hahn continued her writing and gardening with children. She published books and developed games with which inspired children and adults to learn about horticulture. In 1928, her husband went to the USA for a year, where he studied with industrial engineer and psychologist Lillian Moller Gilbreth the analysis and optimization of work processes. After his return, he worked very successfully as a consulting engineer with his own office in Berlin for companies in Germany and abroad. From a trip to Romania in the early 1930s, he brought back a hand-embroidered traditional blouse for each of his daughters. Perhaps this is an indication that the parents visited Marianne more or less regularly, but only Cornelia and Charlotte were portrayed in these blouses in the summer of 1932. Sabine Lepsius painted them in these traditional blouses against the background of the cactus window in the conservatory. The painting and the three original blouses are in the Jewish Museum Berlin since 1997 and 2020 respectively. After Franz Hahn died in a skiing accident in the Swiss Alps in January 1933, Beate and her daughters inherited his fortune so that they could continue to live in the style they had become accustomed to in a villa with a cook, servants, car and driver. In 1935/36, the Nazis banned Beate Hahn from further publications because of her Jewish origins. Initially, she believed that as a baptized Jew and widow of a front-line fighter from the First World War, she did not have to fear more serious reprisals.
Escape from National Socialism
Franz and Beate had decided in 1932 to emigrate to the USA for Franz's professional work and because of the rise of National Socialism. Franz Hahn's death before the seizure of power initially stalled the idea, while the brothers of her late husband, Kurt and Rudolf Hahn emigrated to England in 1933 and 1938 respectively. For the time being, Beate Hahn tried to live as normally as possible with her daughters Cornelia and Charlotte in the villa in Steinstücken where she continued to write books on garden education. In 1938 she decided to leave Germany and managed to call on Himmler after Kristallnacht. When she was asked why she wanted to emigrate, she replied that her daughters should learn many foreign languages. She was then told that she and her daughters would be provided with passports if 240,000 Reichsmarks were received by 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Beate Hahn paid the money from her already blocked bank account and received passports issued on November 18, 1938. Her brother-in-law, Kurt Hahn a renowned educator and founder of Schule Schloss Salem in Germany, Gordonstoun in Scotland as well as Outward Bound and the Duke of Edinburgh's Award then asked his friend Sir Alexander Waldemar Lawrence, who was at a congress in Leipzig, to help Beate Hahn and her daughters escape. Cornelia and Charlotte described the journey. Cornelia wrote: "We met Sir Alexander on November 23, 1938 at the Adlon Hotel in Berlin and went directly to the Zoo station to take the train to Ostend. When we stood at the border, an SS man shouted, 'Mrs. Hahn, get off!' Sir Alexander rose from his seat and asked the SS man: 'Why should the lady get off?' At the same time, the train started up again, and the SS man jumped out of the window. We breathed a sigh of relief. Uncle Kurt had saved us from sinking with the help of Sir Alexander."The younger daughter Charlotte, who was only 12 years old at the time of escape, described crossing the border in more detail: "At the Bentheim border station, an SS man shouted 'Hahns get off'. My mother was arrested, Cornelia and I stood on the platform while Sir Alexander negotiated with the SS men in a small office. When he finally came out, we were allowed to get back on the train. Since the train had already started, I had to be the last to jump on the moving train. But I made it! Four days after we arrived in London, I asked my mother: 'When is Marianne coming?' – My mother answered: 'She's not coming.' I really wanted to go back to Germany to get Marianne, but my mother and Cornelia prevented me from doing so..." Since Beate Hahn and her daughters were considered Reich Refugees after emigration, their assets were confiscated. In February 1939, Beate, Cornelia and Charlotte Hahn arrived in the USA; they had been able to travel from Cherbourg to New York on the Queen Mary. Daughter Marianne, who was accommodated in the Anthroposophical Institute Lauenstein in Altefeld in northern Hesse because of her disability, died there on March 3, 1939 of pneumonia.