Magda Goebbels was born in Berlin on 11 November 1901. Her mother, Auguste Behrend, although some controversy surrounds the issue, was unmarried, her father, Oskar Ritschel was an engineer. The child, christened Johanna Maria Magdalena, was raised and educated from the age of five in a convent at Thild in Belgium, in 1908 she moved to the convent at Vilvoorde just north of Brussels. When the First World War began in 1914, Magda returned to Germany. At the age of eighteen she met and married Günther Quandt, a wealthy businessman twenty years her senior. The marriage produced one child, Harald, however the relationship was not a happy one and the couple divorced amicably in 1929.
In 1930 Magda Quandt attended a Nazi election campaign meeting at the Sportpalast in Berlin. Joseph Goebbels was one of those speaking at the event. Magda, completely overwhelmed by