Käthe Meta Lux was one of the people in Cologne who were responsible for organising the Kindertransports to Belgium. Very few details are known about the work and the biographies of most of her co-workers. The same applies to Käthe Meta Lux, an economist with a doctorate who, several decades earlier, had pursued a rather unusual career for women at that time.
Käthe Meta Lux was born in Breslau on 16 May 1879, the daughter of the merchant Bernhard Lux and his wife Flora, née Schweitzer. After graduating from the Girls’ High School, she attended the Knittel’s Teachers’ Seminar in Breslau, where she passed the teachers’ examination for middle and higher girls’ schools in 1898.
Later she studied national economics, psychology and history at the universities of Breslau, Berlin and Zurich. Werner Sombart and Georg Simmel were among her teachers. She received her doctorate in 1910 from the Faculty of Philosophy at Zurich University on “Studies on the Effects of German Department Stores on Some Branches of Commerce”.
Käthe Lux then worked at the Prussian Statistical Office in Berlin. In 1934, she was dismissed from public service for being a Jew. She returned to her hometown, Breslau, in 1935 where she directed the law firm of her brother Dr. Walter Lux, a well-known lawyer. In 1939, he emigrated with his family to Palestine.
Käthe Lux, however, decided to stay in Germany. She moved to Cologne and worked in Rubensstrasse as a welfare worker for the Provinzialverband für jüdische Wohlfahrtspflege in der Rheinprovinz (Provincial Association for Jewish Welfare in the Rhine Province). In this capacity, she was also responsible for the Kindertransports to Belgium. For example, she coordinated the transports of Viennese children with the Comité d‘Assistance aux Enfants Juifs Réfugiés (Assistance Committee to Jewish Refugee Children, CAEJR), the Committee Voor het Joodsche Kind van Duitschland in Antwerp and the Jewish Community of Vienna.
The last known address of Dr. Käthe Meta Lux in Cologne was the Jewish Ghetto House at 18-22 Cäcilienstrasse (the former “Rheinlandloge”). On 27 July 1942, she was deported to Theresienstadt with other residents of the house. There she died on 4 January 1943. AP
