The Cellar - March, 12th, 2018: Straw Man

In Germany, before the Big One, WW II, giving the powers that be trouble meant you disappeared and nobody questioned it.
But before WW I they were more circumspect, give them trouble and they’d declare you nuts and lock you away in the asylum.

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Katharina Detzel was put in the mental institution in 1907 after performing abortions and sabotaging a railway line as a political protest. She persistently fought against her internment and tried to escape several times. In her desire for freedom she made a whole series of runners and keys out of wood. She made figurines from bread dough (e.g. Shakespeare). Detzel also worked on a human figure with wings and made the photographed life-size male, which she hanged in her single cell. With the help of this figure ("which exuded a certain authority with glasses, penis and beard, it reminds us of the ideal type of a scientist or physician of that time")

Rumor has it when she was happy she would dance with it and beat it when she was pissed.

http://cellar.org/2017/dummy.jpg

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Detzel tried to be relocated from the cell to the dormitory, from where she could escape. She explained to the doctors that she would soon be like this doll: should she continue to be isolated, then she too would soon be lifeless in the cell. Detzel was unsuccessful: The doctors did not respond to her threat, but removed almost all items from the cell: "Mattress, canvas, clothes (even her shirt) was taken from the patient, she has only chaff in the cell.”

After 19 years, she finally managed to escape from the institution. She moved in with her daughter. In 1939 Detzel was arrested again. This time because of theft and forgery. She was soon institutionalised, this time in Andernach. In 1941 she moved to another institution, Johannestal in Süchteln. It is uncertain if she survived the war and the Nazi Euthanasia Program.

Probably not, by then they were killing undesirables en mass.

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