Practical Aid for Christians of Jewish Descent

A church social welfare worker in Berlin, Marga Meusel endeavored to help Christians of Jewish descent concretely. She took on welfare workers, who were no longer allowed to be employed in the civil service as the result of the “Aryan paragraph”, as volunteers.

In 1935, she attempted to obtain an overview of the opportunities for vocational training and employment in the Inner Mission in order to be able to provide specific information to people seeking assistance. Meusel disapproved of the establishment of a motherhouse for Christian “non-Aryan women”, as the ecumenical movement had proposed, as discriminatory. On April 15, 1935, she inquired among all of the deaconess motherhouses of the Kaiserswerther Verband whether Protestant non-Aryan women could join or receive vocational training there.

Of the twenty-seven replies received, only nine were yeses, albeit extremely qualified in part. An inquiry of Meusel’s in February of 1936 among all of the diaconal institutions whether they also accepted diaconal students who were not purely Aryan had a similar outcome: Only three of eighteen replies were positive. Most of the others pointed out that “non-Aryans” would not find any jobs later.