Otto and Else Weidt

Otto Weidt was born in Rostock in 1883, and grew up in poverty. In 1888 his family moved to Berlin, where Otto Weidt completed his basic schooling and trained as a painter and gilder.

During the First World War, the convinced pacifist Weidt managed to evade armed service as a result of an ear complaint. He was deployed as a nurse in a field hospital in Küstrin, far away from the front. After his release from military service, he remarried and set up his own business as a paper-hanger and decorator in Berlin.

Otto Weidt’s efforts to establish his decorating business in Berlin failed. In 1936 he married his third wife, Else Nast, born 1902. Her father was a paver by occupation; her mother worked in factories. Her father became unemployed, bringing the family to the brink of destitution. The oldest of four children, Else Nast had to support her parents from a young age by working in a clothing store.

After going almost entirely blind, Otto Weidt became a brush maker and in 1939 opened Otto Weidt’s Workshop for the Blind in Berlin- Kreuzberg, along with his business partner Gustav Kremmert. The premises barely offered enough space, so the workshop moved to much larger premises at Rosenthaler Straße 39 in 1940.

Otto Weidt was a determined opponent of National Socialism. He employed mainly Jewish workers. He did everything he could to make their lives easier under the National Socialist regime, providing them with food and supporting them with advice. When he was no longer able to prevent their deportation through deception and bribery, he arranged hiding places for some of them. A number of people managed to survive thanks to his help. Otto Weidt’s wife Else also obtained food for people in hiding.

After the war, Else and Otto Weidt supported the founding of a Jewish children’s and old people’s home in Berlin-Niederschönhausen. Otto Weidt died in December 1947 at the age of 64. Else Weidt continued to run the workshop for the blind until it was closed down in 1952. She died on June 8, 1974, at the age of 71.

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