Frieda (Friedel) Schmidt was born in Metz, which at the time was in the Lothringen region of Germany. After the First World War, the family moved to Jena. Friedel Schmidt had a cosmopolitan upbringing and became an opera singer. She was a devout Catholic. In 1937 she married Paul Herbert Lemser. They lived in Neumühle near Greiz with their three children.
The Lemsers were friends of the artists Grete and Fritz Körner. Grete Körner was classified as Jewish by the Nuremberg “race laws,” and their marriage as a “mixed marriage.” Their son Friedrich was born in 1942 and baptized a Protestant. Friedel Lemser was his godmother; she took him in to protect him, at first occasionally and then permanently. Lemser’s husband was a soldier on the front. She later also sheltered a French forced laborer and his girlfriend in the house. She listened to the British radio station BBC in secret, which was a punishable crime.
In January 1945, Grete Körner was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Friedrich Körner remained in Lemser’s home until the end of the war. Grete Körner returned from Theresienstadt in July 1945 and collected her son from Friedel Lemser. They remained in contact after the war. Herbert Lemser did not return from the front.
Friedrich Körner (2nd from right) with Friedel Lemser’s children, around 1944. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
