Ritter, Elisabeth (gen. Else), née Ott, later verehel. Speck

innkeeper

born: 27.10.1900 in Mutzig (Alsace)

died: 07.06.1986 in Wiesbaden

Together with Emil Ritter, her first husband, Ritter had taken over the restaurant of the same name, Unter den Eichen, from his father, who had died in 1925, and it remained a very popular excursion destination under both of their management.

In 1944, the SS had five wooden barracks built in the immediate vicinity by prisoners from the Wiesbaden police prison, which were separated from the rest of the area by barbed wire. From March of that year, political prisoners from the Hinzert SS special camp in Hunsrück were interned here. They had to build new accommodation and bunkers on site for the SS and the police. They were also deployed at Erbenheim airfield, in various local businesses and private households and to clear rubble after air raids. Three quarters of the maximum 100 prisoners in the small concentration camp detachment came from Luxembourg. The others came from the Netherlands and France, and there was also a Belgian and a German among them.

In 1944/45, the Ritters employed two Luxembourg concentration camp prisoners in their café and restaurant. As their comrades' food supply situation deteriorated, they were repeatedly allowed to smuggle food that could no longer be used in the kitchen and leftovers into the camp to supplement the meagre prisoner diet. Ritter also ensured the uncensored exchange of letters with their families. On several occasions, she also made it possible for wives arriving from Luxembourg to secretly make contact with their husbands imprisoned here from the ladies' toilet in her restaurant, which was directly adjacent to the camp at the back. She also organized medication for the prisoners among her friends and acquaintances. And in the last days before the US troops marched into Wiesbaden, the courageous restaurateur even hid and fed some escaped Luxembourgers who were actually scheduled to be shot in Frankfurt-Heddernheim together with their comrades, despite the draconian punishment she was threatened with.

After the American invasion on 28.03.1945, Ritter provided the Luxembourgers who had stayed behind in Wiesbaden or who had returned here from their "evacuation march" to the east or northeast with ribbons in the national colors of their home country, which they immediately pinned to their lapels as a sign of their liberation after they had removed their identification marks as political concentration camp prisoners. At the end of March 1945, the camp elder Nicolas Braun attested to Josef Speck, a friend of the Ritter couple at the time, that he had not "treated the Luxembourgers as prisoners, but as friends and comrades" and had "helped them as much as possible".

Ritter was awarded a certificate by the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg for her solidarity with the concentration camp prisoners. She was able to maintain friendly contact with a number of them through reciprocal visits.

After the Americans had released the inn they had confiscated in 1945 three years later, Ritter continued to run it for another ten years. Four and a half years after the death of her first husband, she married Josef Speck in 1958, who also died here in 1980.

She spent the rest of her life in Haus Götz on Sonnenberger Straße, a Protestant retirement home. She was buried in the North Cemetery. There is a collection of material on Ritter in the Wiesbaden city archives.