Life before emigration

Dora Schindel was born in Munich on 16 November 1915. She was the third child of merchant Moritz Schindel and his wife Amalie, née Bier, and grew up in the atmosphere of a bourgeois Jewish household. In Munich, she was a pupil at the Städtische Mädchenlyzeum (City Lyceum for Girls) and obtained her university matriculation qualification at the Mädchenreformrealgymnasium (Reformed High School for Girls) in March 1935. She then attended the women-only commercial school run by the League of Jewish Women in Germany. As a Jew, she was refused admission to university. The “Law Against the Overcrowding of German Schools and Universities” had been enacted in April 1933. The ever-increasing number of restrictive regulations was compounded by the fact that the Nazis were in general against academic careers for women. From December 1935 to August 1937, Dora Schindel accordingly completed a course of training as a chemical-technical assistant at Dr. Hoppe’s chemical laboratory in Munich. The gifted sportswoman and dancer was also a pupil at the Wigman School until 1936. She and Mary Wigman were to maintain a written correspondence that spanned several decades.
In 1937, Dora Schindel left Germany to study art history and literature at the University of Zurich with financial support from her family. During this time, she had an encounter that was to change the course of her life. Dora Schindel had already made the acquaintance of scholar and politician Hermann M. Görgen during a trip to Salzburg in 1935. Görgen, who was Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster’s assistant, had fled to the Territory of the Saar Basin in 1934, where he became part of the conservative Catholic circle of resistance that formed around Johannes Hoffmann and the Neue Saarpost newspaper. Following the unsuccessful Saar plebiscite of 1935, Görgen fled onward to Austria, where he found a post as an assistant at the Forschungsinstitut für Deutsche Geistesgeschichte (Research Institute for the History of German Ideas). In March 1938, following the annexation of Austria, Görgen escaped across Czechoslovakia to Switzerland, where Dora Schindel assisted him with his political resistance work in Zurich.
In Zurich, Dora Schindel maintained contact with the Mann family, particularly with Elisabeth Mann, whom she already knew from Munich. Together with Herman M. Görgen, she became a member of the group surrounding publisher Emil Oprecht, whose address in Zurich became a port of call for a large number of emigrants. After the beginning of World War II, Dora Schindel and Hermann M. Görgen went to Geneva. Dora Schindel was officially registered as a student. However, by this time, she and Hermann M. Görgen were already collaborating closely with the Comité International pour le Placement des Intellectuels Réfugiés, which provided temporary financial support for exiled intellectuals, found them work and helped them emigrate further.

Emigration to Brazil

The position of German-speaking emigrants in Switzerland deteriorated rapidly. Based on a treaty with Germany, Switzerland introduced a visa obligation for German Jews that came into force on 4 October 1938. From January 1939, this visa obligation was extended to all emigrants. Refugees without visas were turned back at the border. A resolution passed by the Swiss Federal Council on 17 October 1939 made it possible to deport persons who entered the country illegally. The only exceptions were people recognised as political refugees. The resolution also regulated the emigrants’ legal status. A distinction was now made between “refugees” and “emigrants”. Emigrants, a group which included Dora Schindel, were only permitted to transit Switzerland and had to make active efforts to emigrate further. Any kind of political activity was forbidden; gainful employment was only possible with the express permission of the Eidgenössische Fremdenpolizei (the Confederate Aliens Police). In 1940, work began on erecting camps for refugees. The refugees were to be housed and fed as cheaply as possible, made to work and subjected to checks.
In view of the deteriorating conditions experienced by emigrants in Switzerland, a plan was hatched to help a group of endangered people led by Hermann M. Görgen and Dora Schindel leave Switzerland for an overseas destination. Following negotiations with possible host countries, the most promising option appeared to be emigration to Brazil, although the dictatorial regime of Getúlio Vargas enforced a restrictive immigration policy and Jewish immigration was undesirable. Brazil was therefore not the first choice as a country of refuge but offered the most realistic chance of getting out of Europe. With the support of philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster, the Comité International pour le Placement des Intellectuels Réfugiés, Caritas Switzerland, Landeskirchliche Flüchtlingshilfe (the church refugee aid association) and other organisations, Dora Schindel and Hermann M. Görgen made it possible for the 48 people who had joined the “Görgen group” to emigrate successfully to Brazil. However, diverse difficulties had to be overcome. Some of the people in the “Görgen group” still had to be released from Swiss internment camps. The Swiss alien police were cooperative; after all, Switzerland saw itself as a transit zone that urged refugees to emigrate further. The necessary Brazilian entry visas were obtained with the help of Milton César de Weguelin Vieira, the Brazilian Consul General in Geneva, who also represented the League of Nations. The Brazilian entry visas could only be granted if the visa holders were “Aryan” immigrants. According to the Nuremberg laws, the members of the group were “non-Aryans”, and so it became necessary to obtain Czechoslovakian passports without the “J” stamp that would give their holders away. With the help of various clerics including Saarlander Franz Weber, assistant chaplain in Zurich and himself a member of the Görgen group, they also succeeded in obtaining documents testifying that they had been baptised and had “Aryan roots”. Dora Schindel also received these documents. Besides welcoming wealthy immigrants, the restrictive Brazilian immigration regulations sought to grant permanent visas to farmers, artisans and technicians. The “Görgen group”, which along with technicians and engineers also included novelist Susanne Bach, author Ulrich Becher, biologist Alfred Goldschmidt, publicist Walter Kreiser and musician Georg Wassermann, travelled in the guise of a team of technicians who intended to establish industrial operations in Brazil. All the members of the group had to be passed off as suitable employees for this company. Besides obtaining the entry visas, another daunting hurdle was the procurement of transit visas for France, Spain and Portugal. Here Apostolic Nuncio Filippo Bernardini and the Vatican helped obtain these transit visas for the “Görgen group”.

Brazil

On 26 April 1941, the ship “Cabo de Hornos” left the port of Lisbon and set off for Rio de Janeiro.
The voyage lasted 14 days. After arriving in Rio de Janeiro, the factory "Indústrias Técnicas Ltd." (INTEC) was founded in Juiz de Fora with Dora Schindel in charge of administration. Her work included payroll accounting, translations, correspondence and other administrative tasks. “Naturally I first had to learn the ‘administrative’ work. I had no other choice. The worst part was when I had to ask the bank director for a deferment of payment,” Dora Schindel recalled.
The factory operated a mechanical workshop, a joinery and a foundry. After Brazil joined the war on the side of the Allies in 1942, the factory also started receiving government orders. Only a very few members of the Görgen group actually worked in the factory, despite having undertaken to do so before embarking on the journey to Brazil. Most of the factory workers were Brazilians, as required by Brazilian law. INTEC was not a financial success. The firm remained in business until 1954 and was then taken over by a Brazilian company. A small publishing company, Editora Arte Cristã, was soon established as a parallel enterprise and attempted to publish printed religious materials in cooperation with the painter and graphic designer Axl von Leskoschek.
Various factors made life challenging for German-speaking emigrants in Brazil. In the wake of the so-called nationalisation measures, use of the German language had been forbidden since 1942. Nevertheless, as Dora Schindel remembers, she and Hermann M. Görgen never stopped speaking German. Not that she found it difficult to learn Portuguese: “The language wasn’t actually a problem, as I had learnt French and Latin and soon began reading a large volume of literature that had been translated into Portuguese.” They also had to submit to house searches and the confiscation of their property due to the general suspicion that Germans were Nazi spies.
Despite a wide range of activities, life in Juiz de Fora did not permit active participation in current political events; nevertheless, they integrated into Brazilian society quite successfully. By banning the German language and forcing aliens to learn the national language, the campaign for nationalisation had created the conditions necessary for participation in the country's social life.

Return to Germany

Görgen followed post-war developments in Germany with great interest. For a long time, his view of the situation was highly pessimistic: “Unfortunately I am forced to take a very bleak view of the future. The democratic humbug that the Allies are now putting in place in Germany will have no result, and the mentality of the German people will remain the same,” he wrote in 1946. Hermann M. Görgen did not return to Germany until eight years later. On his return, he became the director of Saarländische Rundfunk, the public radio and television broadcaster serving the state of Saarland. Dora Schindel wound up what was left of the business in Juiz de Fora and left Brazil in 1955, initially for Switzerland. In 1957, she followed Görgen to Bonn, where she assisted him in his capacity as the member of the Bundestag representing CSU Saar. During an interview in 2012, Dora Schindel described her feelings after returning to Germany: “If I hadn’t come into contact with Brazilians from the very first day, I would probably have turned right round and gone back home. It was a harrowing experience. First – and you have to remember that this was 1955 – there was this closeness. No difference from one city to the next. The vast empty spaces between the Brazilian cities – they absolutely took my breath away. And then, whenever I travelled by bus, there were always these grumpy faces; back then, everybody had these grumpy expressions, nobody looked friendly. That was terrifying. And in my case, of course, whenever a sour-faced person sat down opposite me, I asked myself whether they too were a Nazi – this suggestion somehow came naturally.”
Dora Schindel's years in exile had made her a self-styled “German Brazilian”. In 1960, Hermann M. Görgen and Dora Schindel founded the Deutsch-Brasilianische Gesellschaft (German-Brazilian Association), an organisation that aimed to improve German-Brazilian relations. She carried out administrative tasks both in Germany and at the organisation's Latin American centre. She was a member of the board of trustees, and is still an honorary member of the executive committee and the “memory” of the Deutsch-Brasilianische Gesellschaft. After leaving the German Bundestag, Hermann M. Görgen became the special envoy for Latin American relations acting for the Federal Press Office. Dora Schindel accompanied him on his journeys to Brazil; together they promoted intercultural dialogue, and international understanding became her life's work. Dora Schindel, who had obtained Brazilian citizenship in 1955, became a German citizen at her own request in 1986. When giving her reasons for applying for German citizenship, she stated: “My ties with the German language and culture and the place of my birth impelled me to apply for German citizenship, as for all my love of my host country Brazil, I feel most strongly attached to my home.”
On being asked what Brazil and Germany meant to her, Dora Schindel replied: “I always said that I am half Bavarian and half Brazilian. And somehow that’s still true. I find I have both mindsets in me. I love them both. I would not like to have to do without either of them. I actually feel very, very much at home in these communities. And I hope that I can convey to each of them something of the humanity inherent in both.”

(Dr. Sylvia Asmus)