From 1937, Johanna Kreyssig lived on a country estate in Hohenferchesar with her family. Her husband Lothar was a judge at the nearby district court in Brandenburg an der Havel, dealing with custodianship matters. When he became aware in 1940 of the systematic murders of people with mental illnesses and disabilities in mental hospitals and institutions, he protested and was put into early retirement. His farming activities secured the family’s financial existence.
Through contact to Elisabeth Zimmermann, an acquaintance from the Confessional Church, the Kreyssigs took in the “non-Aryan” Christian Edith Behr for several months in 1943, and from November 1944 the endangered Gertrud Prochownik. The latter posed as a domestic servant on the estate under a false name, until the end of the war around six months later.
In 1971 the Kreyssigs moved from East Germany to West Berlin. On leaving the German Democratic Republic, they lost the remains of their estate, which had been collectivized in 1961. In 2016 Johanna and Lothar Kreyssig were posthumously honored as Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem.