Else Ury was a best-seller author of German children's books including "Nesthäkchen" (baby of the family - Germans call a spoiled child or family pet a Nesthäkchen), a series of 10, which follow the Christian protagonist Annemarie Braun's life from infancy to old age and grandchildren. Her books are still available in German bookshops, albeit in shortened and modern-language form; they were directed at female readership, expounding a traditional view of the bourgeois family and the woman's role.

Her book "Nästhäkchen und der Weltkrieg" (Nästhäckchen and the World War) was however problematic in that it glorified war. To "Jugend voraus!" (Youth advance!) Else Ury's last published book of 1933, Marianne Brentzel moreover states:

"Else Ury was an apolitical, conservative, bourgeois, German woman, who observed the massive suffering of the unemployed with great human interest but with the slipstream of mass enthrallment for Hitler, saw a possible solution for the country's deep crisis. In 1933 she shut her eyes to the political reality, as she had done all her life, regarding all matters in the public eye. She once again tried to consecrate the status of the idealised, German family."

Marianne Brentzel: Nesthäkchen kommt ins KZ, S. 154
(Translation from German T.U.)

Although half of all German women have read her stories (over 7 million copies were sold altogether), the fact of her murder was only publicised in Germany 50 years later; even the TV Xmas series of 1983 that was often repeated in Germany, suppressed this information.

Bibiligraphy
www.ebookmall.com
http://de.wikipedia.org
www.mariannebrentzel.de

Post Script 2008

While researching for this work I discovered the German Wikipedia site; the first line read:

“Else Ury (* 1. November 1877 in Berlin; † 13. Januar 1943 im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz)“

I contacted Wikipedia to say how inappropriate the cross symbol as an appendage to Else Ury’s death date was - to employ the cross, a Christian symbol, in the case of a murdered Jewish women is a double faux pas. I suggested the expression “date of death” would be more suitable in this case.

Wikipedia replied that a debate regarding which symbol to utilise when denoting a person’s death had taken place online a couple of years previously; a consensus had been found and it was agreed that the cross glyph would be employed as a format on all Wikipedia web pages. The matter was now closed.

In the light of their decision I was surprised to discover the following explanation on the English-speaking Wikipedia:
“Since it (the cross typographical symbol) also represents the Christian cross, in certain predominantly Christian regions, the mark is used in a text before or after the name of a deceased person or the date of death, as in Christian grave headstones. For this reason, it should not be used as a footnote mark next to the name of a living person. The religious connotations of the symbol can also make this usage inappropriate for persons from non-Christian cultures.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagger_(typography)
On German Wikipedia, descriptions of the use of the symbol are not augmented with the statement vis-à-vis religious sensibilities.
(See: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kreuz_(Schriftzeichen))

Tanya Ury

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx***