Anna Beyer

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Anna Beyer (born February 2, 1909 in Frankfurt am Main ; † May 15, 1991 ibid) was a member of the Frankfurt resistance group of the International Socialist Combat League (ISK) and co-founder of the Frankfurt SPD after the Second World War .

Life and Political Work

Before 1937

Eiserner Steg on a postcard between 1903 and 1905

Before 1933 Anna Beyer was unionized with the Central Employees' Association. After the General German Trade Union Federation called for a joint demonstration with fascists on May 1, 1933, she saw the independence of the trade unions waning and joined the resistance against National Socialism in Frankfurt .

In particular, Beyer actively supported the work of the ISK . One of the largest bases of the ISK was Frankfurt am Main. At the Hauptwache in Frankfurt she sold the ISK newspaper Der Funke . In 1933 she took part in ISK resistance campaigns with her so-called suitcase campaigns: To spread anti-National Socialist calls, Beyer used a specially made suitcase with which she walked across the Eiserner Steg in Frankfurt in the evening : the bottom of the suitcase was prepared so that when the Suitcase through sponges attached below, which were soaked with a special ink, the slogan "Nieder mit Hitler" was printed on the street asphalt - similar to a stencil graffiti . The next day the slogan was made visible through the sunlight and the slogan could be read repeatedly on the Iron Bridge at short intervals. The ISK groups in Frankfurt, which Beyer joined, also distributed the so-called Reinhart letter.

To finance the resistance work, Beyer quit Siemens & Halske and in 1936 opened a vegetarian restaurant in downtown Frankfurt, more precisely in Steinweg, and acted as its managing director. Vegetarian nutrition was part of the ISK's creed. During her unemployment, she had previously worked in the Cologne vegetarian restaurant; the start-up financing for the Frankfurt restaurant was provided by Willi Heidorn from the ISK in Cologne through a loan from his parents. Working members of the Frankfurt groups donated to the restaurant what they could do without in need. A lunch menu for Jews was offered in the restaurant. The vegetarian restaurant was also one of the central points of contact for the group itself, e.g. B. as a depot for so-called dangerous material such as address lists. Table legs were hollowed out to hide the material there. Couriers visited the restaurant as normal guests. One of the main couriers was Fritz Eberhard . The restaurant was not the meeting point for the Frankfurt ISK groups, which were organized in a five-group system, for security reasons.

Beyer was not arrested because the Gestapo did not know anything about the politically motivated background of the restaurant. However, in 1936 a courier from Hamburg, who had found shelter in Beyer's shared apartment, was arrested on his further flight as a conscientious objector - not as a political one - and told the Gestapo about his stay in Frankfurt during an interrogation. During this time, Beyer also noticed that an unknown guest frequently visited the restaurant, whom she attributed to the Gestapo because of his way of looking at other guests. Because of her suspicions, she gave the restaurant to a friend who was not active in the resistance and went into hiding. In 1936 the ISK groups in the Rhine-Main area were smashed.

Exile 1937–1945

In Cologne it was decided that Anna Beyer had to go into exile because she knew too much. Without informing her family and friends, so as not to endanger them by complicity, she emigrated to Great Britain via Belgium, France and Switzerland in early 1937. In Paris she was taken in by Willi Eichler's shared apartment of the ISK group . This apartment formed the focus of her political work during her time in exile in Paris, during which she joined the Paris group of the ISK. The journalistic work of the resistance group consisted in a small publishing house, in which they published books by emigrated writers and maintained the monthly magazine Sozialistische Warte . In addition, individual articles for illegal work were printed on thin paper and smuggled into Germany. The journalistic work was financed by the vegetarian restaurants in Germany. The money came to Paris stuck in calendars. Beyer's main job was to transcribe articles, get them to print and proofread.

In 1938, after the end of the second term of the French Popular Front government under Léon Blum and after the Munich Conference , political emigrants were deported and / or expelled by the French police. Against this background, Anna Beyer emigrated to Switzerland and a short time later, since the Swiss authorities did not renew her residence permit, to Great Britain. In 1939 she went back briefly to France to bring a group of children to safety in England.

In England she received a work permit in private households and devoted herself more to her political work, since her working hours now made room for this. At first she worked in various positions as a housemaid and later in the kitchen of a vegetarian restaurant in London. In England, Beyer found the youth work of the then newly founded national group of German trade unionists in Great Britain in 1942 . The work report of this group for the first half of 1942 was mainly written by her. At the center of her work in the early 1940s was the education of young German trade union members about German fascism . For example, in June 1943 she invited young union members to a lecture on the union movement in the United States. She reported the following about her work:

"Although we could of course not know exactly what would actually have to be done after the liberation from fascism, it was nevertheless clear to us that we were doing very intensive educational work within the youth who were not yet so committed to Nazism must in order to win them over to us and mobilize them for active union work. " (Anna Beyer)

Return in 1945

In September 1944, Anna Beyer and Hilde Meisel were dropped from a small plane with parachutes as part of a special unit over France. The original plan was to drop both women off near Lyon. However, since fighting was still taking place there, they were lowered into a meadow near Lake Geneva . This meadow had been used by the British secret service as a take-off and landing site since the beginning of the war. With the help of a French farmer, the two women were transported in a wagon to a disused tunnel, where they were greeted by an English officer. With the help of the officer, they both got to Thonon-les-Bains (France), where they stayed for four weeks until they were picked up by Rene Bertholet . They traveled illegally to Zurich, Switzerland, where both received new papers. Beyer later traveled on again with Meisel to the Ticino Alps near Intragna. The Bertholet couple maintained a holiday home there called "Al Forno", which was used as a residence for emigrants. Shortly before the end of the war, Anna Beyer was invited to a meeting with Hilde Meisel, Hanna Bertholet and Anne Kapius from the US mission in Bern. The aim of the meeting was to recruit women for acts of sabotage in Germany. However, all invited women refused.

After the war ended, Anna Beyer returned to Frankfurt am Main in 1945 and became a member of the SPD district committee for Hesse-South. From 1946 she became a union member of the ÖTV and was elected as the top candidate of the SPD in the first Frankfurt city council, in which she was a member from 1946 to 1948. She later worked in the Wiesbaden State Chancellery, became a member of the government and represented Hesse in the Federal Council. In addition, Anna Beyer founded the working group of Frankfurt women's associations and was its chairman.

Honors / nominations

In Frankfurt a. M. in the Nordend-West district, a street was named "Anna-Beyer-Straße". In Darmstadt-Kranichstein a street was named after Anna-Beyer ("Anna-Beyer-Weg").

literature

  • Barbara Bromberger, Katja Mausbach: Women and Frankfurt. Traces of forgotten history . Publishing house for academic writings, Frankfurt / M. 1987, ISBN 3-88864-006-7 .
  • DGB-Bildungswerk Hessen and study group for the research and communication of the history of the German resistance 1933-1945 (Hrsg.): Hessian trade unionists in the resistance. 1st edition. Anabas Verlag, Giessen 1983, ISBN 3-87038-099-3 .
  • Ursula Lücking (Ed.): Anna Beyer. Politics is my life. Waldemar Kramer Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 1991, ISBN 3-7829-0408-7 .
  • Ludger Fittkau / Marie-Christine Werner: The conspirators. The civil resistance behind July 20, 1944 , wbg Theiss, Darmstadt 2019, ISBN 978-3-8062-3893-8 .
  • Stefan Müller, Siegfried Mielke: Beyer, Anna (1909–1991). Participation in the national group of German trade unionists in Great Britain . In: Siegfried Mielke (ed.): Trade unionists in the Nazi state: persecution, resistance, emigration . Essen: Klartext, 2008, ISBN 978-3-89861-914-1 , pp. 88-101

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ DGB-Bildungswerk Hessen and study group for the research and communication of the history of the German resistance 1933-1945 (ed.): Hessian trade unionists in the resistance. 1st edition. Anabas Verlag, Giessen 1983, p. 335.
  2. ↑ Anna Beyer In: DGB-Bildungswerk Hessen and study group for the research and communication of the history of the German resistance 1933-1945 (Ed.): Hessian trade unionists in the resistance. 1st edition. Anabas Verlag, Giessen, p. 202.
  3. ^ Barbara Bromberger, Katja Mausbach: Women and Frankfurt. Traces of forgotten history. Publishing house for academic writings, Frankfurt / M. 1987, p. 90.
  4. ↑ Internet portal of the Topography Working Group of the Nazi Era in Frankfurt am Main : Excerpts from the New Political Letters of the ISK, the so-called Reinhart Letters , letter from May / July 1935 on the results of the company elections of the DAF in 1935
  5. ↑ Internet portal of the Topography Working Group during the Nazi era in Frankfurt am Main : Resistance of the ISK
  6. ↑ Anna Beyer In: DGB-Bildungswerk Hessen and study group for the research and communication of the history of the German resistance 1933-1945 (Ed.): Hessian trade unionists in the resistance. 1st edition. Anabas Verlag, Giessen 1983, p. 249.
  7. ^ Barbara Bromberger, Katja Mausbach: Women and Frankfurt. Traces of forgotten history. Publishing house for academic writings, Frankfurt / M. 1987, p. 91.
personal data
SURNAME Beyer, Anna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH February 2, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH May 15, 1991
Place of death Frankfurt am Main