Brigitte Klump

Brigitte Klump (23 January 1935 – 10 July 2023) was a German author and campaigner. She was born into a relatively poor farming family, originally of Huguenot provenance. She grew up, between 1949 and 1957, in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) where she trained as a journalist, before undertaking an internship at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin. Here she was mentored by Brecht's widow, the actress-director Helene Weigel. Klump escaped to West Berlin in 1957.

Subsequently, invoking United Nations resolution 1503, she was able to help approximately 4,000 East German citizens escape to West Germany, thereby reuniting families divided by the political division of Germany. She later stated that this was, in part, a conscious atonement for the failings of a distant ancestor who had been a noted lawyer in Arles. During a period of religious persecution, he had enabled thousands of Waldensians to escape abroad by successfully delaying a trial, but 4,000 had nevertheless been killed.

Brigitte Klump claimed descent from King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette of France via their daughter, the twenty minute queen, Marie Thérèse Charlotte de Bourbon. Provided by Wikipedia