Marion Yorck von Wartenburg

Marion Countess Yorck von Wartenberg, born Marion Winter ( born June 14, 1904 in Berlin, † April 13, 2007 ibid ) was a German lawyer and judge. She was a resistance fighter against National Socialism and member of the Kreisauer circle.

Life

In her school days in the Grunewald Gymnasium (now the Walther -Rathenau- high school ) in Berlin was Marion Winter, later Countess Yorck von Wartenberg, classmate of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Then she began to study law, which they 1929 with the degree of Dr. jur. completed. Just before she met Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenberg, whom she married in 1930. Together with her husband she joined after 1933 in opposition to the Nazi regime and was active in Kreisauer circle in the resistance against the Nazi regime. After the failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler on 20 July 1944, her husband was executed, they came for three months into custody.

After the war worked Marion Yorck von Wartenberg as a trainee in Berlin municipal authorities in East Berlin. In 1946 she was appointed by the Allies to the Judge at the District Court Lichterfelde in West Berlin. In 1952 she became the first woman in Germany to chair an Assize. She ran until 1969 as the 9th District Court of Director Large Criminal Court of Berlin. Yorck von Wartenberg fought in their time as a judge homosexuality with exemplary deterrent punishment. Among other things, they advocated that homosexual concentration camp inmates no compensation was awarded.

After 1952 she lived with the Berlin CDU politician Ulrich Biel.

Works

• The strength of silence. Memories of a life in the resistance, Brendow 1994 ( in 1987 ), ISBN 3-87067-717-1