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Doctors newspaper online, 06.09.2019
"Crazy story"
History has often been written in the Berlin Reichstag. However, one chapter is hardly known and explored: In the war he also served as the birth station.
By Stefan Kruse
© Monika Skolimowska / EG / dpa / picture alliance
BERLIN. Mareile Van der Wyst is proud of her birthplace. So proud that even a photo of the building graces her business card. The Reichstag can be seen from this, before the fire in February 1933 – a symbol of the temporary end of German democracy after the Nazis seized power.
Because what many do not know: The moving history of the magnificent building completed in 1894 in the center of Berlin includes a chapter that has nothing to do with parliamentarism. In the last years of the war, a birth ward was placed in the cellar – to enable women in the night of the bombing to achieve a reasonably safe delivery.
And so on Van der Wysts birth certificate, issued by the registry office Berlin-Tiergarten: "Born on September 15, 1944 in Berlin in the Reichstag building". The 74-year-old, whose last name was Dieckhoff, keeps her at home in Großbeeren near Berlin like a treasure in the safe.
Where exactly was the maternity ward?
"I am a Reichstag baby. This is just a crazy story, "says the fun-loving pensioner. "For a long time it was not clear to me that this was the case." Only when the Bundestag moved into the rebuilt Reichstag building and she was invited to a ceremony did she learn more about her birthplace. "That must have been 1999", she says and leafs through a thick folder in which she has been collecting everything related to the topic for 20 years.
Much is not known today about the provisional birth ward of the then 2nd University Women's Hospital of the Charité. "From the sources, it can not be deduced from when until when the Charité used the Reichstag cellar as a night shelter for pregnant women, women who had recently given birth and their newborns," the Bundestag said.
It is also unclear how many babies were born there. Not even the exact location of the station in the basement, whose premises have been changed by renovations, is known. The Department of History of Medicine of the Charité can not help either.
Documents probably burned
"Probably many documents are burned in the war turmoil," says the Rostock CDU member of parliament Peter Stein, who has been dealing with the issue for some time. Experts assume that was released in the underground of the Reichstag of 1943 and 1945.
As reference is made to the birth books of the registry office Tiergarten. A similar birth station was also temporarily in the bunker of the former Chancellery, says the Charité-visiting scientist Susanne Doetz, whose research focus is medicine in National Socialism.
"My parents used to live in Berlin-Lichtenberg at that time," says Van der Wyst, describing her family's situation in 1944. "For days, my pregnant mother commuted to the Reichstag bunker every evening and back to her apartment in the morning."
That's ten kilometers back and ten kilometers back. "I have no idea how she managed that in the heavily destroyed city, where there were frequent air raids and bomb attacks." Finally, the mother gave birth to a healthy little daughter and named it Mareile.
Almost exactly 75 years later, this Sunday, she meets up with other "Reichstag babies". Fifteen people have registered after a call for Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) published in April and are now able to witness a very special day in parliament. Those who, like Van der Wyst, were born in 1944 celebrate a milestone birthday this year.
Inlet without long checks
"Today's jubilees were children who gave hope for our country in a dark time," Schäuble explained. And Stein, on whose initiative the meeting goes back, sees important witnesses in the Reichstag babies. "I'm really looking forward to the people and the great stories they have to tell."
This is also what the former teacher Van der Wyst, who has been regularly in "her" Reichstag for years, is looking forward to. Meanwhile, she has a lifelong visitation right in parliament, as she emphasizes: "I was promised that I can come at any time and with anyone."
And she always insists on it when she passes by the queue of visitors at the security checkpoint and resolutely seeks entry. "Often the security people know nothing at first, but a few calls later I'm in there then." (dpa)
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