Camilla Ullmann, 1997
(Photo: Gottfried Heuer) |
On 28 May 2000 Camilla Ullmann died after a brief illness in
Hamburg. She was the daughter of Otto Gross and the Swiss writer
Regina Ullmann (1884-1961). Camilla Ullmann was born in Munich
on 18 July 1908. She worked as a nanny and as a nurse and from
the 30's onwards she lived in Northern Germany together with
her partner Maria Becker. She has been buried in Feldkirchen
near Munich where she grew up with foster parents.
The following text are excerpts of an interview
conducted with her by Gottfried Heuer in the summer of 1997.
Camilla UlIman was born on 18 July 1908 in
Munich. Soon after her birth she was given to foster parents.
Her foster father was a joiner. "We used to play hide and
seek in the coffins standing around", she remembers. Else
Jaffé tried indeed to integrate her into her own family.
"We owe this to Otto Gross", Frau Ullmann has heard
her say, and she says, "Well, one thought, this child of
Otto Gross must not get lost", and she laughs. "Maybe
one thought quietly, that something might become of me. But the
world she had grown up in was a different one than that of Else
Jaffé. I was supposed to become a bit more civilized".
But "I was different from what they had imagined ... I had
been with very simple people ... A rural and farmerlike element
had been added and given me a different direction." She
stayed with her foster parents until the age of four and was
then put into a convent boarding school. "That was an absolutely
catholic perspective." Camilla Ullmann visited the Jaffé
family often and stayed with them during holidays. Every four
weeks the children were allowed to have visitors. Sometimes her
mother would visit. "I always suffered terribly because
my mother was wearing a low-cut dress that did not fit with the
convent. And I thought, 'Can't she wear dresses like normal people?!'"
In her late teens, after attending a housekeeping
college for some time, Camilla Ullmann was sent to England for
several years to learn the language. She stayed in Brighton with
a lady who was a Quaker, "maybe not an absolute one, but
in the spirit of the Quakers." She passed an examination
in Manchester and her Abitur (final school examination) in London.
She did some nursing in England and then went back to Germany
as a nanny and stayed with families in Berlin and Hamburg to
look after their children and teach them English. In Hamburg
she trained to become a nurse. In the 30's, at nursing college,
she became friends with Maria Becker. They started living together.
"I could not take my examen because for the Nazis I was
not 'house-trained' - My mother was not 'Aryan'." The two
friends were separated for a while during the later years of
the war. Camilla Ullmann went to Munich to work in hospitals
while Maria Becker stayed in Northern Germany. Frau Ullmann was
only able to pass her examen after the war. She then met up again
with Frau Becker and they have been living together near Hamburg
since then.
Frau Ullmann was not really able to ask her
mother much about her relationship with Otto Gross. "I had
to spare her feelings there, It was and remained a painful issue
for her ... She could not and did not want to talk about it.
And I respected that. I could not but respect that". She
nursed her mother during the last months of her life until her
death in 1961.
"What did I get from my father?
There is a warmth for which I am grateful". She says about
Otto Gross, "He did have bad manners and the other psychoanalysts
did not want to tolerate that. He did go to extremes. And it
was good that that was not repeated because on the one hand,
I believe, it was very profound and creative, but it could be
very destructive, too, in the wrong hands ... He cut off his
own path." But "My father, as I have found out, has
been passed over in silence by a certain category of ... scientists."
I mention Freud's statement to Otto Gross, "We are physicians
and we should remain physicians" to Frau Ullmann and she
says, "I think Freud saw his own limitations there. And
my father saw that in that respect he was, again, the more creative
one." I refer to Freud's concern vis a vis Gross about intellectual
ownership. "He steals!" Frau Ullmann exclaims. "The
creative person - Freud sensed that. On the one hand it gripped
him, and on the other he was afraid, too. Partly, that was justified,
because with my father that developed in such a way that he was
no longer fit for good society. That was the time when he took
morphine and every other stuff. And my father was just very curious
and did everything very thoroughly, in a way which Freud and
Jung did not want. They deemed themselves to be somehow too good
for that, if I understand correctly ... But that is a dangerous
path, of course, and I believe my father did not know the boundaries
or was unable to hold them ... I do believe that he was wrongly
blamed and that ideas were stolen from him, ideas he had creatively
worked out."
"He has brought a lot of unrest into
this century, and a lot of fertility, too, especially intellectually.
- And somewhere, sometimes, I have a notion of that, you know,
I get a glimpse; and I feel, you did not only burden my life
but you gave me something very positive, too, the saying 'Yes'
to life! He must have had a warmth ... and a purity, too ...
Sometimes I say, 'My dear father, I have got that from you, that
I can say 'Yes' to life'."
When I ask her if I may take a photo
of her she replies, "Well, yes, if you think that it won't
tear your camera apart! - I could put my tongue out, that would
be nice!"
