Maria von Maltzan

After completing grade school in Berlin in 1927, she decided to undertake studies in zoology at the University of Breslau, a rare occurrence for a girl during this time.

[4] As the brutality of the Nazi Régime accelerated with murder, violence and terror, the seeds of their plan for the total extermination of the Jews dawned on Maria von Maltzan in all its horror - and she immediately decided to act.

Throughout the war, the Countess von Maltzan, in cooperation with the Swedish Church, provided a safe haven for more than 60 Jews, deserters, and forced labourers, arranging for them to escape to safety.

[7] Before World War II, she got to know the Jewish author Hans Hirschel, the former editor of Das Dreieck, an avant-garde German literary journal founded in 1925.

From 1942 to the end of the war, she sheltered Hirschel in a special hiding place inside a couch in the living room of her apartment in Wilmersdorf, thus saving his life at the peril of her own.

After Hans Hirschel died in 1975, Countess Maria von Maltzan, aged 66, decided once again to build up a new existence with her own veterinary practice in Berlin, from 1981 on located in the Kreuzberg district, where she became famous for the cost-free treatment of dogs owned by local punks and her struggle for improvement of the living conditions of immigrants.