Felice Schragenheim and Lilly Wust, photographed by the Havel river on August 21, 1944, laughing, embracing, using a timer to photograph themselves in the sun. Hours later they went home and found the Gestapo waiting. These are the last photos ever taken of them together.
Felice Schragenheim (nicknamed “Jaguar”) and Elisabeth “Lilly” Wust (nicknamed “Aimée”) shared a passionate, high-risk lesbian relationship in Nazi Berlin during World War II. Their story is documented through surviving letters, poems, photos, diaries, and Lilly’s later recollections; it formed the basis of Erica Fischer’s 1994 book Aimée & Jaguar and the 1999 German film of the same name.
In November 1942, the two women were introduced at a café in Berlin. On the surface, they belonged to completely different, violently opposed worlds. Elisabeth Wust was a 29-year-old German woman, married to a Wehrmacht soldier who was away at the front. She was the mother of four sons and a recipient of the Nazi “Mother’s Cross,” living a relatively privileged life as an exemplar of Nazi womanhood. Felice Schragenheim was a 20-year-old Jewish woman living in hiding. After her grandmother was deported, Felice assumed a fake identity (“Felice Schrader”) and actively worked with the Jewish underground resistance. She even managed to get a job working at a Nazi-run newspaper to maintain her cover.
Felice, fascinated by the danger and drawn to Lilly, took the initiative to woo her. The two began a passionate secret relationship, communicating through a flurry of love letters and poems. In their writings, they adopted the pet names that would later make their story famous: Felice became “Jaguar” and Lilly was “Aimée” (French for “beloved”).
As their relationship deepened, the stakes grew impossibly high. When Felice finally revealed her true identity as a Jewish resistance worker, Lilly did not turn her in. Instead, she vowed to protect her. Lilly filed for divorce from her husband, and in May 1943, Felice moved into Lilly’s home, ostensibly acting as a caretaker for Lilly’s children.
In June 1943, the couple drafted their own marriage contract, and a few months later, they exchanged rings, an extraordinary act of commitment and queer defiance in the heart of the Third Reich.
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| Lilly’s “books of tears”: Berlin, August 21, 1944 – February 28, 1945. This is the first of a total of four diaries by Lilly Wust, which she began on the day Felice was transported away, August 21, 1944. It is written in the green ink that Felice used for her letters and poems. |
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| Marriage contract between Elisabeth Wust and Felice Schragenheim, Berlin June 26, 1943. |
By the summer of 1944, Berlin was increasingly dangerous. Many of Felice’s underground contacts disbanded or fled, but Felice chose to stay with Lilly.
On August 21, 1944, the couple spent the day swimming and taking self-timer photographs at the Havel River. When they returned to Lilly’s apartment, the Gestapo was waiting. Because of her status, Lilly was interrogated but ultimately spared severe punishment, but Felice was arrested.
Lilly desperately tried to save her. She visited Felice at the Jewish Hospital (which was being used as a collection camp) as often as she could, seeing her for the last time on September 7, 1944. Felice was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, and later to Auschwitz.
Felice did not survive the war. It is believed she died in early 1945, either in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp or during a brutal death march to Gross-Rosen. Her exact date of death remains unknown.
Devastated by the loss of the love of her life, Lilly Wust’s wartime defiance did not end with Felice’s arrest. From February 1945 until the war’s end, Lilly hid three other Jewish women in her home, providing them with food and shelter. For these actions, she was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit by Germany in 1981, and in 1999, she was honored by Yad Vashem as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations.”
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| Portrait of Felice Schragenheim in summer clothes in a meadow, Berlin 1935-1943. |
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| Felice in the countryside on a blanket, Berlin 1935 - 1943. |
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| Felice in a boat, Berlin or surroundings, summer 1941. |
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| Felice with a wicker chair on the balcony, Berlin 1940. |
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| Felice in 1941 on the Selbachs’ balcony at Bornstrasse 4 in Berlin-Stieglitz. |
In a 2001 interview Lilly stated: “It was the tenderest love you could imagine... I was fairly experienced with men, but with Felice I reached a far deeper under-standing of sex than ever before. ... There was an immediate attraction, and we flirted outrageously. ... I began to feel alive as I never had before. ... She was my other half, literally my reflection, my mirror image, and for the first time I found love aesthetically beautiful, and so tender. ... Twice since she left, I’ve felt her breath, and a warm presence next to me. I dream that we will meet again – I live in hope.”
Lilly lived in Berlin for the rest of her life, keeping her memories of Felice close until her death at the age of 92 on March 31, 2006.
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