Beate Hahn (also known as Charlotte Beate Hahn or Lotte Beate Hahn) was a German-American horticulturist. She was born Sophie Charlotte Beate Jastrow on April 21, 1894, in Berlin-Zehlendorf and died on June 3, 1970, in Ossining, north of Tarrytown, in Westchester County, New York.
Childhood and youth in Berlin Beate was the daughter of the historian and social politician Ignaz Jastrow, professor at the University of Berlin, and teacher Anna Seligmann Jastrow (1858–1943) who was "vitally interested in community work".Beate Hahn in her self-written curriculum vitae. Part 1 (typed 1960, with hand-written additions until 1969). The Original in the archive of the Deutsche Gartenbaubiliothek e.V.., which is affiliated with the University Library of Technische Universität Berlin. Together with her older sister, the classical archaeologist, Elisabeth Jastrow, Beate grew up in Wilhelmine Berlin. As the daughters of an educated middle-class family of assimilated Jews, both sisters received a good education.Julia K. Koch: Unpublished and forgotten – the research of Elisabeth Jastrow. In: AktArcha – Actors of archaeological research and their histories. 2024. (online, accessed on 3 January 2025.)
According to Beate's own words, she was fascinated when she discovered yellow and purple crocuses in her parents' garden one day.Monique Humbert: Beate Hahn – Ein Leben für Gärten. Excerpt from an undated article in the Weltwoche, Zurich c. 1959, in the estate of Beate Hahn. The longing for a garden, which she had last seen at the age of five, later became the driving force behind her efforts to convey this experience in a garden to as many children as possible.Beate Hahn: Preface in Kindergarten - Ein Garten der Kinder, 1936. She wrote: "At the age of eight, I had made up my mind to become a gardener. I never changed my mind — I never repented my decision. All my life I enjoyed fully my early choice which made it possible to build up gardens for better living!" Her parents leased their own plot for Beate on Spandauer Berg, where she could garden. At the age of twelve, she met the renown horticulturist, Karl Foerster for the first time when she purchased lily of the valley from him. This contact developed into a lifelong friendship.
Beate received lessons in Latin, French and English from private teachers. At the age of 15, she built a garden together with children who lived in a home for juveniles. After graduating from high school, she attended Horticulture College in Marienfelde, Berlin, from 1913 until her graduation with the highest grades in 1915. She then took a job at the Friedenthal Manor near Hildburghausen in Thuringia. During this time, she began to write articles about horticulture and wrote her first book Hurra, wir säen und ernten! However, it was not published until 1935. In 1917, she took over the role of estate gardener in Hirschfelde,Hirschfelde, since 2007 part of the city of Zittau in Southeast Saxony. which included a lush park and garden. After this temporary position, Beate returned to her parents' home and looked after some private gardens. When Beate was 22, she repeatedly rejected the offer of the owner of the house Bergstraße 2 in Berlin-Wannsee to work for her as head gardener. Finally, the lady suggested that she would take lessons from Beate herself. But Beate replied that she had no intention of teaching ladies of Berlin society. When asked why she did not want to join her, the gardener said: "Because I don't like your business." When the lady asked further, "And what does a business that you like look like, Beate?", she answered: "It must show a happy harmony between fruit, vegetables and life in the garden." – "Then I will just rearrange my garden according to your wishes", the lady replied and did so, perhaps also a little for the sake of her future daughter-in-law.This lady was Charlotte Hahn, née Landau; Reproduction of the conversation after Monique Humbert: Beate Hahn – Ein Leben für Gärten The happy harmony between fruit, vegetables and life in the garden mentioned by the young gardener could be a hidden indication of an early interest in Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy.
Marriage and her own family Beate Jastrow married engineer Franz Hahn (1891–1933) on September 11, 1920, on Berlin's Pfaueninsel.Franz was the second son of Oskar Hahn (1860–1907) and Charlotte Hahn née Landau (1865–1934). The young couple studied economics for a year at the Technische Hochschule Aachen, Germany. Franz then worked in the Ruhr mills (Oberhausen, Mülheim and Großenbaum) of the family's ironworks company (Hahnsche Werke AG). Franz and Beate Hahn had three daughters:
Anna Elisabeth Cornelia Miriam Hahn (1921 Mülheim/Ruhr – 2021 Vancouver, Canada) Marianne Dorothea Bettina Hahn (1923 Düsseldorf – 1939 Altefeld, Werra-Meißner-Kreis) Charlotte Anna Eveline Hahn (1926 Düsseldorf – 2011 Ossining, Westchester County, N.Y.)
Life in Angermund From the end of 1922 to the end of 1927, Franz and Beate Hahn lived in Angermund. During this time, Beate gave birth to daughters Marianne (born 1923) and Charlotte (born 1926) in Düsseldorf clinics. Marianne was mentally and physically disabled due to a birth defect.University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Institute Testimony of Charlotte Hahn Arner, Interview 4/9/1996, 5 Tapes, Interview Length 2:22:12 Angelika Schweizer (1900–1976) joined the family as a nanny for the three daughters and this was the start of a lifelong friendship between the Schweizer and Hahn families. At the address Angermund 105 1/4, the Hahn family lived in a country house with six rooms, three attics and hot-water central heating. This included a garden of almost 3,000 m² and an orchard of about 10,000 m²,Christian F. Seidler: Die französische Besetzung der Bürgermeisterei Angermund im Jahr 1923. which Beate Hahn cultivated herself. In 2008, her daughter, Cornelia, recalled the move to Angermund: "We moved near Düsseldorf to a village, and we had a beautiful garden. The lawn was [full of] daisies. [As a small child] I kept picking the daisies and amusing myself in the garden. This is my first experience of remembering very clearly what I did in the garden." Cornelia Hahn Oberlander: Biography – Coming to America., retrieved 20 April 2024 The Hahns had come to Angermund because Franz worked at the Hahnsche Werke in nearby Großenbaum. In 1923, Beate created a youth garden for the workers' children, where they received practical and theoretical gardening lessons four times a week. In addition, a nursery building with an information room and a horticultural library was built. The nursery grew vegetables for the plant's canteen and hotel. A head gardener and his team looked after the gardens of the company directors, senior staff and workers.Beate Hahn: Mein Leben mit Gärten und Menschen – ein Gärtnerleben auf zwei Kontinenten. Undated typoscript, original in the archive of the Deutsche Gartenbaubiblothek e.V. "Of all the gardens in which I worked, none was as close to my heart as the youth garden and the other facilities in Großenbaum. Chimneys were the background of this garden, soot and dirt were all around in the streets. Children who worked with delight in the garden, that was the youth garden." Beate Hahn described the situation in Angermund during the occupation of the Ruhr by Franco-Belgian troops (1923–1925) in an essay entitled Dem Gefährten – Dezember 1930 (translated as "The Companion – December 1930").Beate Hahn: Dem Gefährten – Dezember 1930. Original in the archive of the Deutsche Gartenbaubiblothek e.V. This abstract-expressionist text of 16 handwritten pages remained unfinished, but it is the only known description of the events in Angermund during the occupation. Therefore, it is of outstanding importance for local history. At the same time, Hahn's inclination towards her own creative writing style is also recognizable in this text.
Return to Berlin At the end of 1927, Franz and Beate Hahn moved back to Berlin. They lived in a large villa at Bernhard-Beyer-Straße 3 in Steinstücken, a location that belonged to the municipality of Neubabelsberg.Neubabelsberg was a villa colony established during the German Empire on the territory of the municipality of Klein Glienicke in the district of Teltow, which was renamed Neubabelsberg in 1925 and incorporated into Potsdam in 1939. For this reason, the files on the property of the Hahn family from the Third Reich are also in the holdings of the Brandenburg State Archive in Potsdam. Today, Steinstücken belongs to the district of Berlin-Wannsee in the district of Steglitz-Zehlendorf and is almost completely enclosed in the territory of Potsdam. Angelika Schweizer continued to care for Cornelia, Marianne and Charlotte. In 1928, when she required more care, the Hahns placed their daughter Marianne in an institution for the disabled. A heartbreaking decision for the parents and their daughters. Almost seventy years later, Charlotte recounted in the Shoah Foundation interview with a laboriously controlled voice: "Although I was only two years old, I knew that Marianne was sick, but she was my sister! --- I never saw her again."
In Berlin, Beate Hahn continued her writing and gardening with children. She published books and developed games with which inspired children and adults to learn about horticulture. In 1928, her husband went to the USA for a year, where he studied with industrial engineer and psychologist Lillian Moller Gilbreth the analysis and optimization of work processes. After his return, he worked very successfully as a consulting engineer with his own office in Berlin for companies in Germany and abroad. From a trip to Romania in the early 1930s, he brought back a hand-embroidered traditional blouse for each of his daughters. Perhaps this is an indication that the parents visited Marianne more or less regularly, but only Cornelia and Charlotte were portrayed in these blouses in the summer of 1932. Sabine Lepsius painted them in these traditional blouses against the background of the cactus window in the conservatory. The painting and the three original blouses are in the Jewish Museum Berlin since 1997 and 2020 respectively.The Jewish Museum Berlin: The Museum is a Memory Repository - Embroidered Traditional Blouses last accessed on January 13, 2025 After Franz Hahn died in a skiing accident in the Swiss Alps in January 1933, Beate and her daughters inherited his fortune so that they could continue to live in the style they had become accustomed to in a villa with a cook, servants, car and driver. In 1935/36, the Nazis banned Beate Hahn from further publications because of her Jewish origins. Initially, she believed that as a baptized Jew and widow of a front-line fighter from the First World War, she did not have to fear more serious reprisals.
Escape from National Socialism