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Obituary
Camilla Ullmann 1908-2000

Camilla Ullmann
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!"

Maria Becker and Camilla Ullmann

Maria Becker and Camilla Ullmann, 1997
Photo: Gottfried Heuer
S. Templer-Kuh and Camilla Ullmann

Sophie Templer-Kuh and Camilla Ullmann, 1999
Photo: Maria Becker

 
 

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