Gertrude Luckner was a heroic figure of the German
opposition to the Nazis whose Christian efforts to help those suffering at
their hands led to her being imprisoned in the Ravensbruck concentration camp
for two years. But although she spent virtually all of her life in Germany,
that life began in Liverpool with the name Jane Hartman.
She was born on 26th September 1900 to Robert
Hartman, a marine engineer, and his wife Gertrude (née Miller) who lived at 115
Salisbury Road, Wavertree, L15. Her parents were German and returned to Germany
when she was a young child. Sadly, they both died when she was seven and being orphaned she was
sent to foster parents who changed her name to Gertrude Luckner.
She studied at various German Universities, and also for a
time at Woodbrooke, the Quaker college in Birmingham. She gained her doctorate
in 1938 at Freiburg, her dissertation being written on self-help among the
unemployed of England and Wales. From the early 1930’s she had been working for
the Catholic aid organisation Caritas, and having been raised a Quaker
she entered the Roman Catholic church in 1934. She worked tirelessly to support
German Jews and try to find ways for them to escape the Third Reich. These
efforts continued underground after the war began and having been under
surveillance for some time she was arrested by the Gestapo in March 1943 and spent
the rest of the war in the Ravensbruck concentration camp.
After the war she returned to social work, assisting the
victims of Nazi oppression and striving to improve Jewish-Christian
understanding. She died in Freiburg aged 94 in 1995.
