Lilli Friesicke's former apartment and practice (Brandenburg)

Lilli Friesicke was born Elisabeth Luise Lilli Culp on October 8, 1888, in what is now Wuppertal. In 1909, she graduated from high school in Remscheid and studied medicine in Bonn and Jena, which was very unusual for women at that time. In mid-1914, Lilli Friesicke passed her state examination, and in 1915 she received her doctorate on "The significance of fetal hydrocephalus as an obstacle to birth," and in the same year she became an assistant physician at the Medical Polyclinic in Jena.

Between 1917 and 1919, the young physician married Georg Friesicke, who was a specialist in heart disease. During this time, the couple also moved to Brandenburg. They moved into their first practice at Katharinenkirchplatz 1. In the mid-1920s, Lilli Friesicke gave birth to their joint children Heinz-Herbert and later Marlene. In 1928, however, her husband died. Four years later, in January 1932, she acquired the house at Katharinenkirchplatz 8; after her apartment, she also moved her practice there.

In the course of anti-Semitic discrimination and persecution, her health insurance license was withdrawn in 1933; from then on, Lilli Frieiscke was only allowed to treat Jewish patients against private payment. On the night of the pogroms on November 9-10, 1938, she was arrested by the National Socialists. On November 10, Lilli Friesicke committed "suicide by hydrogen cyanide" according to an official document from 1938, but her death is considered controversial and not fully clarified.

After their mother's death, her minor children were given the National Socialist Martin Scheyba as guardian, who sold the house and property at Katharinenkirchplatz 8 in January 1943 to the Brandenburg NSDAP leader Ferdinand Heppner for 2000 marks. Heinz-Herbert Friesicke died in October 1945 of typhoid fever, Marlene Friesicke, however, fled to the Netherlands to an uncle, married there and had three children, who also live in the Netherlands.

After the war, the house fell into public ownership, today there are apartments.