Media table Museum Bad Salzdetfurth
Dazzling figures
Sister Hildur – Carl Huter – Gerda Becker With – Gerd Reichel
A physiognomist, a nurse, an artist and a composer: some dazzling figures can be identified in Bad Salzdetfurth's recent history.
Image: Photography by Sister Hildur from: Wilhelm Hartmann, The Bad Salzdetfurth Children's Hospital (Bad Salzdetfurth: Self-published by the Children's Hospital, 1954) p. 17
Sister Hildur Amalie Freiin Marschalck von Bachtenbrock (1847−1922)
Sister Hildur ran the children's and youth sanatorium in Bad Salzdetfurth from 1890 until the end of her life on January 25, 1922. Her drive and expertise as a trained nurse at the Henriettenstift Hanover contributed significantly to the rapid growth of the sanatorium until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The Waldhaus was founded in 1907, where young people from poor families from the age of 14 found relaxation and healing. Companies and industrialists supported the work of the house because the main aim was to get young people back into work.
Sister Hildur provided brine baths, sports therapies, an in-house park and modern equipment for the institution. The main building of the sanatorium, which was demolished in the 1970s, was named Hildur-Heim in 1924 in recognition of its services.
Image: Study bust about the basic truths of life: The meaning of body, head and facial shapes according to Carl Huter's psycho-physiognomics. More information in “Fundamentals of Human Knowledge”, published from around 1900
The psychophysiognomicist Carl Huter (1861–1912)
Carl Huter is one of the better-known personalities in the city of Bad Salzdetfurth. Like other researchers before him, he was convinced that external characteristics of a person can influence their psycheto be able to leave. He founded several institutes and presented extensive studies for his hypotheses, with which he became the founder of psychophysiognomics. Until 2020, a large part of the Huter estate was in the Mining and Salt Museum. The Bad Salzdetfurther History Association e. V. recorded the estate completely and handed over the originals to the Hildesheim district archive.
Carl Heinrich Conrad Huter
(* 9th October 1861 in Heide;
† December 4th 1912 in Dresden)
(wikipedia)
Image: Carl Huter, 1908
Gallery: 55 of the 59 drawings by the artist Gerda Becker, created in Bad Salzdetfurth in 1935
The artist Gerda Becker (1910−2002)
Gerda Becker was the cousin of the Salzdetfurth mine director Hellmut Zirklhe.She was asked by her uncle, the chairman of the supervisory board of the Salzdetfurth-Westeregel-Aschersleben group, to write a booklet with “Little Stories from potash and rock salt mining" with the aim of showing the causes of accidents and thus preventing accidents. In 1935 she made numerous drawings of Bad Salzdetfurth above and below ground. Of these, 59 originals have been preserved today, which were used in the mining and Salt Museum is kept in the saltworks.
Gerda Becker was born on March 4, 1910 in Hamburg; her mother was a sought-after commercial artist. At her parents' request, she attended a reform school where cultural and artistic education was part of everyday life. She then studied at the Charlottenburg School of Applied Arts in Berlin and worked as an illustrator, portraitist and painter in the following years. In Berlin she got to know her future Jewish husband, Karl With, with whom she emigrated to New York in 1939 and from there to Pasadena in Los Angeles County. The newlyweds were gradually able to establish themselves in their new home. Gerda became a mother of two children and a successful artist whose works found their way into the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. She died on February 27, 2002 in Los Angeles at the age of over 90.
Image: Memorial plaque for Gerd Reichel on his former home on Gartenstrasse/corner of Mühlenbusch in Bad Salzdetfurth (photography 2006)
The composer Gerd Reichel (1915−1995)
There has been a memorial plaque for the composer and musician on Gerd Reichel's former home in Bad Salzdetfurth since 2006. It is reminiscent of Reichel's troubled life: he was born in Thuringia and spent his childhood and youth there. After graduating from school, he studied at the State University of Music in Weimar and was then drafted into military service in the Second World War. He did not return to his homeland from captivity, but instead moved to western Germany. In the 1950s he worked for the Iris music and theater publisher in Recklinghausen, Westphalia, and later also for other music publishers. He contributed to compositions for film, entertainment and choral music. In Bad Salzdetfurth, where he found a second home for the years until his death on July 16, 1995, he founded the spa band, led choirs and had his own band: the Gerd Reichel Singers. He left behind an extensive collection of wind and string instruments.
