Margarete Himmler
| Margarete Himmler | |
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Margarete Boden in 1918, ten years before her marriage to Heinrich Himmler
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| Born | September 9, 1893 |
| Died | August 25, 1967 (aged 73) |
| Nationality | German |
| Occupation | Nurse |
| Known for | Wife of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler |
Margarete Himmler (née Boden) also known as Marga Himmler (9 September 1893 – 25 August 1967) was the wife of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler.
Margarete Boden was born the daughter of landowner Hans Boden and his wife Elfriede, whose maiden name was Popp. Margarete had four brothers and a sister. In 1909, she attended the Höhere Töchterschule (Higher Girls School) in Bromberg, a city then in the German Empire. Margarete trained and worked as a nurse during the First World War followed by a stint at a German Red Cross hospital at the war’s end.
Her first marriage was short and produced no children. Due to the economic support of her father, she was able to operate and direct a private nursing clinic in Berlin.
Himmler met his future wife, Margarete Boden in 1927. They met during one of his lecture tours and remained thereafter in written contact. In one surviving letter, Margarete refers to Himmler as the "Landsknecht with the hard heart" but she was nevertheless impressed by his romantic style of writing and his sincere love for her. The blonde, blue-eyed nurse Margarete corresponded perfectly to Himmler's ideal woman.
Seven years his senior, Margarete shared his interest in herbal medicine and homoeopathy, and was part owner of a small private clinic. They shared an excessive propensity for efficiency, neatness, longed for strict domesticity, and both preferred a parsimonious lifestyle. From Himmler she received a consistent diet of anti-Semitism and diatribes against Communists and Freemasons. Her anti-Semitism was evident in a letter to Himmler dated 22 June 1928, in which she made disparaging remarks about the co-owner of the private clinic in Berlin, gynaecologist and surgeon Bernhard Hauschildt, exclaiming, “That Hauschildt! Those Jews are all the same!"
Heinrich and Margarete were married in July 1928. Initially, Heinrich struggled with the decision to reveal his relationship with Margarete to his parents, partly due to her being seven years older, but also because she was a divorcee, and foremost, because she was a Protestant. None of Himmler's family members attended the wedding, so Heinrich’s groomsmen were the father and brother of the bride. Ultimately, Himmler's parents accepted Margarete, but the family kept their distance from her and remained that way throughout the length of the relationship. The couple had their only child, Gudrun, who was born on 8 August 1929. Besides the parents of Gudrun, the couple were foster parents to a boy named Gerhard von Ahe, son of an SS officer who had died before the war. Margarete sold her share of the clinic and used the proceeds to buy a plot of land in Waldtrudering, near Munich, where they put up a prefabricated house. Himmler was constantly away on party business, so his wife took charge of their efforts—mostly unsuccessful—to raise livestock for sale. After the Nazis seized power in January 1933, the family moved first to Möhlstrasse in Munich, and in 1934 to Lake Tegern, where they bought a house.
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