Joachim Gottschalk - Life and Work

Life and Work

Gottschalk, who was born in Calau, Brandenburg, Germany, married a Jewish woman, Meta Wolff, shortly before Hitler came to power, and they had a half-Jewish son, Michael. The Gottschalks managed to avoid the anti-Semitic Nuremberg laws and rising tide of anti-semitic violence in Nazi Germany because of "Joschy" Gottschalk's immense popularity with the public. Then, Gottschalk took his Jewish wife to a social function and introduced her to some of the prominent Nazis who were present. Although the Nazis were charmed, the Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels (a virulent anti-Semite) learned about this incident, and decreed that Gottschalk would be required to separate from his Jewish wife. When Gottschalk refused, Goebbels ordered Gottschalk's wife and child transported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Gottschalk insisted on accompanying Meta and Michael to Theresienstadt, but Goebbels ordered Gottschalk inducted into the German Army, the Wehrmacht.

In November 1941, minutes before the expected arrival of the Gestapo, Gottschalk and his wife committed suicide by gas poisoning after sedating their son, who died with them. They are buried at the Südwestkirchhof Stahnsdorf ("Stahnsdorf Southwest cimetery") of Berlin.

Goebbels ordered no further mentions of Gottschalk in the German newspapers, but word got out anyway and millions of German women mourned his death. Because of Nazi censorship, most of his devoted fans did not learn the awful circumstances of his death until after the war.

This incident poisoned the already-tense relationship between Goebbels and the German film community, which used to refer to the Reich Propaganda Minister (behind his back) as "Mickey Mouse" because of his pinched face and huge ears.

In a bizarre parallel, Goebbels and his wife committed suicide a few years later in Hitler's Berlin bunker and poisoned all six of their young children. In Goebbels' case, the motive for his suicide (and murder of his children) was his fear of being captured by the advancing Soviet Army, which was less than a mile away. Goebbels was aware that his decades-long involvement with the Nazi Party and the Adolf Hitler regime would have led to his trial and execution by the Russians had he been captured alive.