Acrimony45
Airman
Hello,
I am conducting historical research on the life/times of Gerhard Martin Sommer, and I am looking for information on his second wife as well as his daughter who was born to him after the war.
So far, I have been able to find that Sommer was married once starting in 1939 to a woman named Alma Hanna Lange, who filed for divorce from him in the 1950s. It was this divorce that led to the discovery of his identity in the 1950s, and led to him being arrested and having legal proceedings initiated against him for the war crimes he committed as a concentration camp guard. These proceedings were broken off due to Sommer's poor health and his apparent inability to stand trial.
Sommer married his second wife (a 21 year old nurse from Bayreuth named Barbara (or in some documents her name is written as Baerbel) Ul(l)rich) in June 1956 and fathered a child with her, a daughter, who was born in 1957. Extensive articles were written about their marriage in magazines such as Der Spiegel and Die Weltbuhne, which led to public outrage that a man who was deemed unfit to stand trial could be found fit to get married.
Because of this, Sommer, who until that point had avoided trial because of his apparent incapability to stand either trial or imprisonment, was rearrested and brought to stand trial in early 1958. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison by a Bayreuth court.
The relationship between Sommer and his wife was publicized in many tabloids and as a result of the public backlash she was dismissed from her job as a nurse in the Bayreuth hospital.
However, by 1961 they had gotten a divorce, and 10 years later when Sommer was to be released from prison and sent to a nursing home, his now ex-wife, who until then had avoided all contact with him following the divorce, got a restraining order against him which prohibited Sommer from having any sort of contact with their daughter.
After gathering this information, I was very interested in finding out more about Sommer's daughter and her life, as well as Barbara Ullrich's later life after the divorce.
Seeing as how much Barbara Ullrich had given up to marry Sommer (her job, her reputation, possibly even her family in the event that they disapproved of the match), the fact that she left him only 5 years later stood out very much to me.
Moreover, she took steps to make sure he never contacted their daughter at all after he was released from prison.
Recently I came across a post on twitter in which someone was accusing a medical doctor of being the grandson of Martin Sommer.
Another user responded saying that that was impossible because Martin Sommer only had one daughter who never took his last name,
never had any children, and who is now also deceased. I have attached a screenshot of the response below.
I have been trying to locate the source of this information for a while now, and have been unsuccessful. All of my attempts to contact the author of this tweet on various social media platforms were also unsuccessful.
For reference, the books/sources I have used to conduct this research are:
- Kaiser, Kanzler, Rummelsberger by Thomas Greif
- KZ Verbrechen vor Deutschen Gerichten by Ralph Giordano
- Die Hexe von Buchenwald: Der Fall Ilse Koch
- Buchenwald: Ein Konzentrationslager: Emil Carlebach
I had also wanted to access a recording of an interview conducted by Dr. John Steiner with Sommer in 1967; however, the USHMM researcher I spoke with told me that it was currently not digitized and it would be a while before they had a chance to view the recording, verify its contents, and digitize it.
I would greatly appreciate any information/sources anyone could give me that might assist me in furthering my research.
Thank you very much.
I am conducting historical research on the life/times of Gerhard Martin Sommer, and I am looking for information on his second wife as well as his daughter who was born to him after the war.
So far, I have been able to find that Sommer was married once starting in 1939 to a woman named Alma Hanna Lange, who filed for divorce from him in the 1950s. It was this divorce that led to the discovery of his identity in the 1950s, and led to him being arrested and having legal proceedings initiated against him for the war crimes he committed as a concentration camp guard. These proceedings were broken off due to Sommer's poor health and his apparent inability to stand trial.
Sommer married his second wife (a 21 year old nurse from Bayreuth named Barbara (or in some documents her name is written as Baerbel) Ul(l)rich) in June 1956 and fathered a child with her, a daughter, who was born in 1957. Extensive articles were written about their marriage in magazines such as Der Spiegel and Die Weltbuhne, which led to public outrage that a man who was deemed unfit to stand trial could be found fit to get married.
Because of this, Sommer, who until that point had avoided trial because of his apparent incapability to stand either trial or imprisonment, was rearrested and brought to stand trial in early 1958. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison by a Bayreuth court.
The relationship between Sommer and his wife was publicized in many tabloids and as a result of the public backlash she was dismissed from her job as a nurse in the Bayreuth hospital.
However, by 1961 they had gotten a divorce, and 10 years later when Sommer was to be released from prison and sent to a nursing home, his now ex-wife, who until then had avoided all contact with him following the divorce, got a restraining order against him which prohibited Sommer from having any sort of contact with their daughter.
After gathering this information, I was very interested in finding out more about Sommer's daughter and her life, as well as Barbara Ullrich's later life after the divorce.
Seeing as how much Barbara Ullrich had given up to marry Sommer (her job, her reputation, possibly even her family in the event that they disapproved of the match), the fact that she left him only 5 years later stood out very much to me.
Moreover, she took steps to make sure he never contacted their daughter at all after he was released from prison.
Recently I came across a post on twitter in which someone was accusing a medical doctor of being the grandson of Martin Sommer.
Another user responded saying that that was impossible because Martin Sommer only had one daughter who never took his last name,
never had any children, and who is now also deceased. I have attached a screenshot of the response below.
I have been trying to locate the source of this information for a while now, and have been unsuccessful. All of my attempts to contact the author of this tweet on various social media platforms were also unsuccessful.
For reference, the books/sources I have used to conduct this research are:
- Kaiser, Kanzler, Rummelsberger by Thomas Greif
- KZ Verbrechen vor Deutschen Gerichten by Ralph Giordano
- Die Hexe von Buchenwald: Der Fall Ilse Koch
- Buchenwald: Ein Konzentrationslager: Emil Carlebach
I had also wanted to access a recording of an interview conducted by Dr. John Steiner with Sommer in 1967; however, the USHMM researcher I spoke with told me that it was currently not digitized and it would be a while before they had a chance to view the recording, verify its contents, and digitize it.
I would greatly appreciate any information/sources anyone could give me that might assist me in furthering my research.
Thank you very much.
