The doctor Mathilde Stoltenhoff joined the Nazi Party in 1933, so as to continue running her private neurology clinic in Dresden. After the war, Jewish and non-Jewish witnesses testified that she had done so to help persecuted patients.
In 1939 the divorced mother of two daughters set up a surgery as a practical doctor in Berlin-Lichterfelde. She was acquainted with a number of opponents of the regime, including Alois Florath. At his request, Dr. Stoltenhoff took in the Jewish Susanne Meyer for several months in 1944. Meyer helped the doctor in the household and the surgery. The two women tirelessly cared for the many people injured during air raids. When the alarm sounded, Susanne Meyer could not go along to public air-raid shelters, but had to shelter alone in the basement of Stoltenhoff’s house. She therefore returned to her former helpers in Kagar in Brandenburg after a while.
In 1979 the doctor, now under her married name of Herbst, was honored with the Federal Cross of Merit on the suggestion of Susanne Veit (formerly Meyer).