The story of Dorothea “Mopsa” Sternheim is one of resilient resistance.
Gift #6 – Dorothea “Mopsa” Sternheim
Born to playwright Cal Sternheim and writer Thea Sternheim on January 10, 1905, Dorthea “Mopsa” Sternheim was known as a child with “the intelligence of a 50-year-old woman.”[i]
Mopsa began her studies at the Dresden Art Academy in 1923 and was drawn into the world of set and costume design where she began an apprenticeship in 1924.
Despite her struggles with depression, difficult relationships and even some documented suicide attempts, she found herself playing a significant part for the refugee aid groups in war-torn Paris.
Her contribution to the anti-fascist newspapers was significant during her time in France, but her Austrian citizenship (gained upon her marriage to Rudolph von Ripper) and her eventual expatriation from the German Reich made it difficult to stay in France.
Mopsa became increasingly involved with the war and eventually joined a resistance group through the British Special Operations Executive in early 1942.
In late 1943, after helping a persecuted Jewish friend flee to England, she was arrested, tortured and all her teeth were knocked out.
She was transferred from prisons to concentrations camps and eventually ended up in Ravensbruck in January 1944.
Her ability to speak German allowed her to serve in a supervisory role and assist many sick in the infirmary before her resistance to the SS caused her reassignment to a work detachment, hard-labor-as-punishment.
This was her circumstance in the spring of 1945 when the Swedish White Buses came to the camps; she was taken to Sweden and eventually returned to Paris with her mother at the end of the war.
She struggled to find work in post-war Europe, but eventually found herself in costume and set design once again.
Only two years later, on September 11, 1954, she was stricken with cancer and died at the age of 49.
Her diary entries about Ravensbrück, partly in French, have been preserved, and were published in 2004, and many works of literature have been written about her curious life over the years.
A woman racked with the torments of mental illness and scarred by years of difficulties in relationships and employment, she found a way to resist the atrocities of the German Reich.
Despite being imprisoned for it, she continued to help fellow prisoners to survive the hell that they all faced.
Mopsa lived a difficult life, but her legacy is a gift of bravery. Bravery to face not only the emotional trials that raged throughout her life, but the physical enemies harming her Jewish friends and fellow prisoners.
Hers was the gift of resilient resistance.
[i] (Mopsa Sternheim – zxc.wiki)
