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Old August 22nd, 2016 #1
Karl Radl
The Epitome of Evil
 
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: The Unseen University of New York
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Was Magda Goebbels Jewish?


Recently the German tabloid Bild published an article which claimed to have proof that Joseph Goebbels’ wife, Magda Behrend, was born to a jewish father named Richard Friedlander. (1) The Forward summarises the claim, derived from biographer Oliver Hilmes, as follows:

‘It shows that the father of Magda Goebbels was a Jewish businessman named Richard Friedlander, who married Magda’s mother, Auguste Behrend, when Magda was about 7 years old. Friedlander had an affair in 1901 with Behrend before she married German engineer Oskar Ritshel, who had been blamed for impregnating Behrend before their wedding.

Friedlander’s residency card, the document found in the archives, states that Magda is his biological daughter, according to the Jewish Chronicle.’ (2)

This is typical of the kind of semi-hysterical overstatement that often mars discussions involving the personalities of the Third Reich. The claim that Friedlander is Magda’s father apparently made by Hilmes is based upon a residency permit issued by the German government to Friedlander after he had married Auguste.
The problem with this is simple: information on German residency permits of the time was provided by the individual concerned and not by the state. This information is not derived from the actual records, which, as I have pointed out elsewhere, record Oscar Ritschel as Magda’s biological father.

The residency permit concerned doesn’t describe Magda as Friedlander’s ‘biological daughter’ either, but rather as Friedlander’s daughter which was (and is) a common way of describing adopted, step and biological children in German.

To quote my own previous comments on this subject:

‘Johanna Maria Magdalena Behrend was born on the 11th November 1901 to a former hotel chambermaid named Auguste Behrend. Auguste was twenty and a low-born girl of either working class or peasant origins. (3) She was Protestant by religious confession and had been lately working for a wealthy family in Berlin's exclusive Bulowstrasse where she fell pregnant.

Magda's father; and Auguste's paramour, was a prosperous engineer named Dr. Oskar Ritschel; a devout Catholic and also something of a dandy, who tended to sleep around a lot in contradiction to his apparently ardent religious principles.

Auguste Behrend and Oskar Ritschel married soon after Magda was born (hence she changed from Magda Behrend to Magda Ritschel) in order to confer some kind of legitimacy on Magda, but it did not last although Ritschel did very much remain the major father figure in Magda's life (he did after all pay for all her rather expensive schooling).’ (3)

This is the story of Magda’s early life according to all of her biographers and indicates that we absolutely no reason to suppose that Magda was Friedlander’s love child. All that the residency card actually tells us is that Richard Friedlander viewed Magda as his daughter after he had married her mother Auguste several years after she was born.

The Jewish Daily Forward and Hilmes claim that because Magda’s stepfather described himself as her father on a residency document. This therefore makes him her biological father when he was actually her stepfather at the time. What is more natural for Magda’s stepfather, who was genuinely fond of his wife’s first child, to describe her as his daughter on a document of this kind?

Hilmes’ claim really makes about as much sense as a chocolate tea pot and is certainly not credible evidence that Magda Goebbels was half-jewish.


References


(1) http://www.bild.de/bild-plus/politik...ogin.bild.html
(2) http://forward.com/news/breaking-new...father-in-law/
(3) http://www.semiticcontroversies.blog...-ancestry.html

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This was originally published at the following address: http://bit.ly/2bZIb3C
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