Mathilde Maier
1896 - 1997

Mathilde Wormser, known as Titti, was born in Dinslaken on June 14, 1896 as the second daughter of Leopold Wormser (1855-1925) and Bertha Wormser, née Kahn (1867-1942). Her older sister Betty, born in 1893, died in 1918. Her father was a teacher at the Jewish elementary school in Dinslaken and director of the local Israelite orphanage. Their grandfather Joseph Samuel Wormser (1807-1892) was the last district rabbi in Gersfeld in the Rhoen. Her father was also related to the famous Rabbi Seckel Loeb Wormser (1768-1847) in Michelstadt in the Odenwald. The Wormser family belonged to Orthodox Judaism, but Mathilde says she broke away from this way of life at an early age. Her parents moved to Frankfurt on the Main in 1913. Mathilde Maier's mother Bertha died in the Theresienstadt ghetto in September 1942 due to the terrible living conditions there.

Mathilde came to Trier in 1909 to attend the newly founded girls' grammar school and lived with her aunt Clementine. She later attended the Realgymnasium in Dieburg and, from 1913, the Schiller School in Frankfurt on the Main. She graduated from there in 1915.

"In der Stadt zu wohnen, in der Paul Ehrlich am Speyer-Institut seine bedeutenden Arbeiten zusammen mit dem Japaner Hata veröffentlicht hatte, in der es den Palmengarten gab, großartige Stadtanlagen, den Zoologischen Garten, eine Stadt, in der ein vielfältiges und lebendiges geistiges Leben herrschte, das gab meinem Leben einen ungeheuren Auftrieb" (To live in the city where Paul Ehrlich had published his important work at the Speyer Institute together with the Japanese Hata, where there was the Palmengarten, magnificent urban facilities, the Zoological Garden, a city in which a diverse and lively intellectual life prevailed, gave my life a tremendous boost; Mathilde Maier 1978, p. 31).

She first studied philosophy and mathematics for two semesters at the University of Frankfurt on the Main and then chemistry for four semesters in Munich (Bavaria). Her role models were Marie Curie (1867-1934), who received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903 and the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1911, Sophie von Kowalewsky (actually Sofja Wassiljewna Kowalewskaja, 1850-1891), the first female professor of mathematics in 1884, and Liesel Meitner (1878-1968), a nuclear physicist and the first female professor of physics in Germany in 1926.

She regularly traveled from Munich to the Alps: "Aber in der drückenden Atmosphäre des Krieges waren Wandern, Bergsteigen und Skilaufen im Winter eine notwendige Entspannung. Ich lernte zum erstenmal das Hochgebirge kennen" (But in the oppressive atmosphere of the war, hiking, mountaineering and skiing in winter were a necessary relaxation. I got to know the high mountains for the first time; Mathilde Maier 1978, p. 36).

Mathilde Wormser married Max Hermann Maier in May 1920. The religious wedding was performed by Dr. Jakob Horovitz (1873-1939), a rabbi and friend from Frankfurt on the Main. The marriage was childless.

After passing the chemical association exam, Mathilde Wormser returned to Frankfurt on the Main and was active in the Jewish youth movement "Blau-Weiß", including as a group leader. From April 1918, she was again enrolled at the University of Frankfurt. She conducted research for her doctoral thesis at the Institute of Physical Chemistry there. Finally, in December 1919, she passed her oral doctoral examination with the grade "very good". Her doctoral thesis was entitled "Investigation of resistance limits in the Au-Cu solid solution series using the electrochemical method". Her doctoral supervisor, Prof. Dr. Richard Lorenz, gave her a very positive assessment:

"Die Verfasserin hat sich hierbei als eine geschickte Experimentorin erwiesen und sie hat durch Fleiss und Gewissenhaftigkeit all' die manigfaltigen methodischen Schwierigkeiten und dank gründ[licher] Einarbeitung in die Theorie die oft nicht leichten Schwierigkeiten der Deutung der Versuche überwunden. Ausserdem ist aber diese Arbeit mit ganz besonderem Geschick niedergeschrieben, denn es liegt ihr ein ungewöhnlich reiches und bei einer experimentellen Beschaffung vielfach geradezu verwirrendes Tatsachenmaterial zu Grunde. Die Art der Darstellung, welche die Verfasserin gewählt und durchgeführt hat[,] bezeugt die Beherrschung des Gegenstandes derselben" (The author has proved herself to be a skillful experimenter and, through diligence and conscientiousness, has overcome all the manifold methodological difficulties and, thanks to thorough familiarization with the theory, the often not easy difficulties of interpreting the experiments. In addition, this work has been written with particular skill, as it is based on unusually rich factual material, which in many cases is almost confusing when obtained experimentally. The manner of presentation chosen and carried out by the author testifies to her mastery of the subject matter; UAF Abt. 146, Nr. 319).

Essential parts of her dissertation were published in 1921 in the "Zeitschrift für anorganische und allgemeine Chemie" (Journal of Inorganic and General Chemistry)--under the authors' names of Lorenz, Fränkel, Wormser. However, in March 1925, the University of Frankfurt on the Main announced that her doctoral examination would be forfeited if Mathilde Maier did not submit the required four copies of her dissertation by the end of June. She then submitted these copies in May 1925, so that she was now officially allowed to use the title of doctor.

From 1931 to 1933, she worked for the newly established soup kitchens for the unemployed in the city of Frankfurt on the Main, of which there were ultimately 31 in the various districts of the city. Mathilde Maier was the chairwoman of the association for the unemployed.

Mathilde Maier joined the Frankfurt section of the German and Austrian Alpine Club in 1923, presumably recommended by her husband and Dr. Gustav Spier. From the documents we have seen so far, it is not possible to say whether she actively participated in events organized by the Frankfurt section, such as the Sunday hikes in the Frankfurt area. It also remains unclear for the time being whether she resigned from the section or was expelled, as no documents have yet been found. In view of the changes to the statutes after the beginning of the Nazi dictatorship, Mathilde Maier could no longer have been a member by 1934 at the latest, as she was neither a so-called "Frontkämpfer" (front-line fighter) nor had she joined the section before 1914. In view of her own very strong Jewish identity, however, it can be assumed that she had already left the section in 1933, at the latest after the new leadership under Dr. Ernst Wildberger had explicitly chosen National Socialist ideology as the yardstick for the section's work.

Mathilde Maier does not mention the Alpine Club in her memoirs, although she hiked a lot in the low mountain ranges, where the Frankfurt section also offered regular Sunday hiking tours. "Aber die Sonntage waren den Wanderungen bestimmt: in die Rhön, aus der die Familie meines Vaters stammte, in den Vogelsberg, den Spessart, den Taunus und in den Odenwald" (But Sundays were dedicated to hiking: in the Rhoen, where my father's family came from, in the Vogelsberg, the Spessart, the Taunus and the Odenwald mountains; Mathilde Maier 1978, p. 48).

From 1934 to 1938, Mathilde Maier worked at the Frankfurt advice center of the Jewish Colonization Association and in this way helped persecuted Jews to emigrate. This work repeatedly took her to small Hessian villages to visit Jewish families who made a living from farming and livestock trading and were therefore selected for emigration to Argentina as part of the Jewish Colonization Association. The Maiers also accommodated friends in their house in Kleeberg street in their last days before emigrating. After the National Socialists deported Jews with criminal records to concentration camps in June 1938, the couple decided to emigrate as well. In November 1938, together with their niece Margarete Maier, they managed to emigrate to Brazil via Amsterdam and Southampton. They traveled from England on the Cap Arkona ship and reached Brazil in December 1938.

Mathilde Maier ran a coffee plantation with her husband Max Hermann Maier in Rolândia, Brazil, from January 1939--together with the Jewish farmer Heinrich Kaphan (1893-1981), who had emigrated from Pomerania (Prussia) in April 1936, and his wife Käte, née Manasse (1906-1995). Their fazenda was located on the Jaù river. They also planted maize, rice and cotton. There was also an ornamental garden and a kitchen garden for self-sufficiency, which Mathilde looked after.

"Es gibt eine ganze Mappe voll schöner Blumenbilder von Titti, und man merkt es dem Garten an, daß eine Malerin ihn angelegt hat. Jeder Winkel, jeder Aspekt könnte ein Ausschnitt aus einem Bild sein" (There is a whole portfolio full of beautiful flower pictures by Titti, and you can tell that the garden was created by a painter. Every corner, every aspect could be a detail from a painting; Benary-Isbert, p. 214).

In 1945, her niece Margarete Maier went to the USA, where her two siblings were already living. Mathilde Maier repeatedly traveled to the USA to visit friends and relatives. She became a Brazilian citizen in 1953. In 1957, she and her husband visited Europe again for the first time and were also in Frankfurt on the Main. Both repeatedly visited former friends in Israel, such as Dr. Eugen Meyer, the syndic of the Jewish community in Frankfurt from 1919 to 1933, who had already emigrated to Palestine in October 1933. According to Margot Benary-Isbert, Mathilde taught Hebrew and Israelite history to children from Jewish families in Rolândia. In 1978, she researched the life of her ancestor Seckel Loeb Wormser, the miracle rabbi of Michelstadt, in Michelstadt in the Odenwald. This resulted in a small book published in 1982. She died in 1997 at the age of 101.