Anni Wadle

Anni Wadle (born July 18, 1909 in Itzehoe as Anna Maria Dorothea Kreuzer ; died April 9, 2002 in Neumünster ) was a German communist and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

During the German Empire and the Weimar Republic

Anna Kreuzer grew up with three brothers in poor circumstances with their parents, who lived in Kiel from 1914 . There she attended elementary school . Her father was a stonemason and a supporter of the Social Democrats . Anna Kreuzer's schooling ended after elementary school, because her parents were unable to enable her to attend a commercial college . After leaving school, she worked as a housemaid and nanny. In her first job as a domestic help, she was dismissed for participating in an anti-war demonstration.

In evening courses she trained for a job in the office work area. In 1924 she took part in the atheist youth consecration . In 1928 she went on a six-week trip through the Soviet Union organized by the Communist Youth Association (KJVD). For the KJVD, she led pioneer groups in Kiel and Gaarden . It was there that she met her future husband, Hein Wadle. From April 1929 she worked as a typist in the KPD office in Kiel .

In 1930 she began an editorial traineeship at the Hamburger Volkszeitung . In the course of her job, she was fined for “press abuse”. Since the newspaper did not pay the fines, Kreuzer went to prison instead. At the end of 1932 she was involved in the production of the Arbeiterwelt , the illegal newspaper of the Kiel KPD. In October 1932 Anni Kreuzer was sentenced again to prison for "insulting the press", but was released in December 1932 as part of the Schleicher amnesty .

time of the nationalsocialism

With the “ seizure of power ” in January 1933, the Hamburger Volkszeitung was banned and could only be produced illegally. Hein Wadle was arrested in Kiel on April 13, 1933. On September 15, 1933, Anni Kreuzer, who at that time already had 13 criminal records, was taken into “ protective custody ” by the Gestapo . During the interrogation she was so badly mistreated that she was left with hearing loss , back damage and pain for life . Yet she did not reveal any information. On November 1, 1934, she was sentenced to three years in prison by the Hamburg Higher Regional Court for “preparing for high treason” . She served her sentence first in the Lübeck-Lauerhof women's prison , then in the women's section of the Moabit prison in Berlin.

In April 1936, Kreuzer had served her sentence. Nevertheless, she was deported to the women's section of the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp , and later to the Moringen concentration camp . After more than three and a half years in prison, she returned to Kiel in April 1937, severely weakened, where she found work in a soap factory.

In 1938 Kreuzer married Hein Wadle. Her husband was arrested again in 1942 and was only released after the war. In May 1943 Anni Wadle found a job in a shoe store.

Post-war period and Federal Republic

She lost her entire family during the war. Her mother died in a heavy bomb attack on Anni Wadle's 35th birthday. Two months after the war ended, she learned that her husband had survived. They met again in Kiel and moved to Neumünster. In 1949 they had a son. Her husband died in 1985 and Wadle began to write down her memoirs; they were published in 1988.

After the Second World War , she and her husband joined the “Committee of Former Political Prisoners”. The aim of this group was to help each other and to get support from the authorities for those persecuted by the Nazi regime. This resulted in the Association of Those Persecuted by the Nazi Regime (VVN), in which the couple continued to get involved. Both remained members of the party until the Federal Republican ban on the KPD in 1956. In 1969 Anni Wadle joined the DKP that was founded the previous year .

Anni Wadle remained an “active anti-fascist” and was also involved in the peace and anti-nuclear movement . In 1985 her husband died. Anni Wadle died on April 9, 2002 at the age of 92 in Neumünster.

reception

In a book published by the city of Kiel in 2007 with the title “24 portraits of outstanding women from Kiel's city history”, Anni Wadle has a separate chapter.

In 2016, in the Gaarden district of Kiel, a newly built footpath and cycle path near the Hörnbad was named after Anni Wadle. The name "Anni-Wadle-Weg" was decided in the Kiel council meeting with the votes of the SPD, Greens, SSW and left against the votes of the CDU. There had already been disputes about the honor in the local advisory council of Gaarden because the CDU members there, Wadle's membership in the KPD and DKP, after the end of the war, came close to Stalinism .

In 2017, a member of the Left parliamentary group applied to the Neumünster council to rename the Agnes-Miegel-Straße there into Anni-Wadle-Weg, because Agnes Miegel was close to National Socialism. As of 2020, the renaming has not taken place.

Publications

• Mom, why do you never laugh? Remembering times of persecution and war. Huba Production, Drensteinfurt 1988, ISBN 3-924459-00-2 (memoirs).

Web links

• Anni Wadle on the website of the city of Kiel

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c d} Hermann Weber, Andreas Herbst: German Communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 ( online ).
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Nicole Schultheiß: There is no such thing as impossible… . 24 portraits of outstanding women from Kiel's city history. Kiel 2007. (Chapter Anni Wadle online.)
3. ↑ Nicole Schultheiß says in There is no such thing as impossible ... the year 1921 for employment with the KPD is obviously not correct. In the Handbook of German Communists it says 1929.
4. ^ Anni-Wadle-Weg in the Kiel Street Lexicon, operated by the City of Kiel
5. ↑ Udo Carstens: City honors resistance fighter . In: SHZ , regional section Kiel, October 18, 2016.
6. ↑ Martin Geist: Resistance Fighter or Enemy of Democracy ( Online )
7. ↑ Thorsten Geil: Should the Agnes-Miegel-Straße be renamed? . In: Holsteinischer Courier (SHZ), February 16, 2017.