Margarete Wolff

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Margarete Behm (seated) and Margarete Wolff in Labers Castle (around 1926). Detail from a photograph in Muttel Behm .
House in Zehlendorf (after 1910)

Margarete Wolff (born April 30, 1876 in Berlin ; died March 7, 1943 in the Theresienstadt ghetto ) was a German trade unionist.

Life

Margarete Wolff grew up as the sixth of ten children of the physician Ernst Wolff in Berlin, the family was of Jewish origin. As the daughter of the house, she had to replace the sick mother who died early.

Wolff found a personal role model in the teacher Margarete Behm , who was committed to the organization of homeworkers in the union of homeworkers in Germany . In 1905 she became an honorary treasurer in the local association of homeworkers in Zehlendorf. After the death of her father, she took up a permanent position as a secretary in the administration of the Berlin organization. After the death of the Berlin managing director Therese de la Croix, she took over her function in 1909 and became the right-hand man of the association's chairwoman, Behm. Both moved into the "Haus Lehndorf" built in 1910 in Berlin-Zehlendorf . They spent relaxing vacations together at Labers Castle near Merano . Since the house in Zehlendorf was a bit lonely, they moved to a city apartment in Berlin-Charlottenburg in 1919 .

In 1919, Wolff's name was a candidate for election to the Weimar National Assembly on a ballot paper of the right-wing conservative and in parts anti-Semitic German National People's Party (DNVP) next to the names Emil Ebersbach , Anna von Gierke , Karl Lahr and Gottfried Traub . Behm, on the other hand, was elected and was a member of the Reichstag for the DNVP until 1928, and Wolff took care of the trade association and privately for the common household.

After Behm's death in 1929, Wolff himself became the main chairman of the trade union and took over the editing of the magazine Die Heimarbeiterin . She edited the autobiographical notes of Behm and published them as a book under the title Muttel Behm . In 1930 she was accepted into the main board of the general association of Christian trade unions and was now a member of the (central) committee of the (Christian-national) German trade union federation (DGB) . After the transfer of power to the Nazis in 1933, the socialist unions were banned, meanwhile, the Christian unions Ottes Bernhard line incapacitated himself and finally in the German Labor Front into line were. Wolff participated as a member of the main board.

Wolff was dismissed from her trade union office and for a short time she was left with the position of managing director of a workshop set up by the home workers' association in the 1920s. She then had to move several times within Berlin, but doesn't seem to have planned to emigrate.

On September 10, 1942 Wolff was awarded the 61st age transport to the Theresienstadt ghetto deported , where she died at the prison conditions beginning 1,943th

A stumbling block was laid in 2013 at Lindenthaler Allee 32 in Zehlendorf .

Fonts

Muttel Behm (1930)
  • The activities of the trade union of homeworkers in Germany during the war: report . Berlin: Vaterländische Verlag- und Kunst-Anstalt, 1916.
  • From German homeworkers. Pictures from life . Berlin: Print by the Vaterländische Verlags- und Kunstanstalt, [approx. 1925] (digitized).
  • Muttel Behm: From a rich life . Potsdam: Foundation Publishing House, 1930.
  • Entry home work , in: Ludwig Heyde (Hrsg.): Internationales Concise Dictionary of Trade Unions , Volume 1, Berlin 1931, p. 711 f.
  • several articles in the association journal Heimarbeit .

literature

  • Brigitte Kärchner: Wolff, Margarete (1876–1943): Trade union policy between conservatism and feminism . In: Siegfried Mielke (ed.): Trade unionists in the Nazi state: persecution, resistance, emigration . Klartext, Essen 2008, ISBN 978-3-89861-914-1 , pp. 324–334.
  • Andrea Süchting-Hänger: "The nation's conscience". National engagement and political action by conservative women's organizations 1900–1937 . Droste, Düsseldorf 2002.
  • Frieda Haupt: Wolff, Margarete , in: Ludwig Heyde (Ed.): International Concise Dictionary of Trade Unions , Volume 2, Berlin 1932, p. 2085.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ House Lehndorf named after Margarete Behm's place of origin Lehndorf (Mühlberg / Elbe)
  2. ^ Ballot papers of the DNVP 1919 , in the holdings of the Stabi Berlin, catalog information at WorldCat.
  3. ↑ Margarete Wolff , at Stolpersteine ​​Berlin
personal data
SURNAME Wolff, Margarete
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German trade unionist
DATE OF BIRTH April 30, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 1943
Place of death Theresienstadt ghetto