Margarethe Egle

Margarethe Egle is a Stolperstein set into the pavement in Ulm, commemorating a woman persecuted and murdered under Nazi rule. Its small brass surface belongs to a wider memorial that brings individual lives into everyday streets. Margarethe was born in 1901 in Schönebürg, south of Laupheim, as the first child of a farming family. In 1925, she married railway worker Jakob Egle and moved to Ulm, where their daughter Klara was born.

After Klara’s birth, severe mental illness led to Margarethe’s admission to the psychiatric institution in Schussenried. She remained there for fourteen years before Nazi authorities transported her to Grafeneck and murdered her through the Aktion T4 programme. The stones carry names, birth dates and fates, placing remembrance beside the last freely chosen homes of people persecuted by the Nazis. More than 70,000 Stolpersteine across Europe form the world’s largest decentralised memorial, inviting passers-by to pause over lives once rooted in their communities.

Here, a few inches of brass connect Ulm with Schönebürg, Schussenried and Grafeneck. The pavement holds a personal history that reaches from a farming family to a Nazi murder site.