Carola Karg

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Carola Berta Karg (born October 16, 1910 or June 16, 1910 in Wolfratshausen , † August 12, 1985 in Berlin or Munich ) was a German communist and resistance fighter . Among other things, she campaigned for youth communists and youth Catholics to work together against National Socialism and distributed leaflets that were directed against the Nazi regime. After 1945 she campaigned to come to terms with the Nazi era and to pass on what happened and the lessons that could be learned from it.

Life

Karg was born in Wolfratshausen as the ninth of eleven children of the coachman Matthias Karg and his wife Anna. Shortly after her birth, the family moved to Munich, where Karg also attended elementary school from 1916–1924 . Immediately after attending school, she learned the trade as a salesperson.

Political activity before 1933

As early as 1924 she became a member of the Central Employees ' Union , and a short time later the Socialist Workers' Youth . In 1926 she joined the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD) and two years later the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) . Her father disapproved of her activities and tried to keep her away from the youth group by imprisoning her. In 1930 she went to Halle-Meersburg to be able to work more independently. There she worked as a typist in the district management of the KPD Halle. A year later she was delegated to Moscow to attend the Lenin School there and deal with the contents of Marxism . After her stay in Moscow in the summer of 1932, Karg initially took over the tasks of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth Association of Germany in Berlin, before she was co-opted into this Central Committee of the KJVD in autumn 1932.

resistance

After the KJVD was banned by the National Socialists in 1933, she went underground and continued to work illegally. There Karg pursued with the other KPD members who worked underground, the goal of building the KPD as thoroughly organized as if it were not forbidden. In addition, she did educational work for young people about the background to the Nazi regime's takeover. At the beginning of 1933 she was elected district manager of the Thuringia district, which she headed until July under the code name Klara Mathies. During this time she worked with her fiancé Hans Scholz, who was arrested a short time later and killed on October 14, 1933 during a Gestapo interrogation. From mid-July to September 1933 she held managerial positions in the KJVD district of Baden-Palatinate, and from autumn 1933 in the Niederrhein district. Karg's life and work in illegality turned out to be extremely deprived and was characterized, among other things, by fear, frequent changes of quarters, nights in the open air and inadequate food supplies. During her three-month activity in the Niederrhein district, she worked closely with the Catholic chaplain Joseph Cornelius Rossaint and his Sturmschar resistance group from Düsseldorf-Eller. Rossaint helped her survive in illegality by repeatedly providing her with room and board. On January 30, 1934, a meeting took place between her, Rossaint and other Catholic and Communist resistance fighters. At this, a call was made to German youth, which showed the need to defend themselves against the Nazi regime. This should be signed by both the leading people of the KJVD and the Sturmschar and distributed as a leaflet in Germany.

captivity

A few hours after the meeting, Karg was arrested by the Gestapo at Düsseldorf Central Station . At that time, she carried innumerable leaflets with her against the regime. Karg was then interrogated for six weeks before she was arrested in mid-March. During these interrogations, she was severely tortured and ill-treated, but still did not reveal her colleagues. However, she openly expressed her opinion in court that the Nazi regime would bring disaster for the youth by leading to a Second World War and should therefore be fought against. On June 25, 1935, she was sentenced to 15 years in prison for “preparation for high treason” , of which she had to spend 5.5 years in strict solitary confinement under poor conditions. On July 18, 1935, she was taken to the Jauer women's prison near Silesia; from February 15, 1938, she was a prisoner in the Waldheim prison . Both Karg and her parents tried unsuccessfully from 1939 to 1942 to shorten their imprisonment by petitions for clemency. During her imprisonment, Karg was able to keep in touch with her family, who kept sending her handicraft materials. Karg used these to make various little things, such as a pillow on which the plant species Alpine edelweiss can be seen. After her own trial, Karg was interrogated 153 times and summoned as a witness in several trials. One of the trials at which she had to testify was the Berlin Catholic Trial, in which Kaplan Rossaint was the main defendant.

Witness in the Berlin Catholic trial

Two years after her arrest, in January 1936, the Gestapo learned of Karg's close collaboration with the Catholic youth group and Rossaint. As a result, Karg was summoned from prison in April 1937 as a witness for the Berlin Catholic trial, as the Gestapo hoped that this would increase the burden on the main defendant. Karg, however, acted contrary to the expectations of the Gestapo and exonerated Rossaint despite the enormous pressure exerted by the President of the Court and the Public Prosecutor. For example, she testified that a banned magazine was distributed according to her instructions, not Rossaints. She also refuted the judge's claim that Rossaint sympathized with communism by claiming that his actions were always purely religious. This cooperation between the communists and the Catholics was viewed as particularly courageous abroad by the critical public, which was also due to the fact that here people with contrary worldviews acted together for peace.

Life after 1945

On May 6, 1945 Karg was freed from Waldheim prison by the Red Army . After her liberation, she initially worked as a KPD functionary in Chemnitz and Dresden before returning to Bavaria in early 1946. There she worked as a secretary for women's work for the KPD state leadership. In 1947 she became a member of the newly founded Association of those persecuted by the Nazi regime (VVN) , of which Rossaint was one of the founders. In the same year she stopped full-time party work due to internal disputes, in 1952 she was expelled from the KPD party for alleged treason during her imprisonment from 1935 to 1945. The background to this was Karg's requests for clemency in 1940/41, in which she asked for early release from prison. From these - according to the party - it could be read that it has given up its anti-fascist attitude. In addition, statements from an interrogation in 1936 and her behavior in the Waldheim prison from 1943 onwards were used against her. As early as 1947, shortly after she stopped working for the party, Rossaint offered her to help build the League of Christian Socialists he had founded. Until 1949 she took over management duties here. From 1950 she worked as a state secretary for the VVN. Two years later, however, the KPD was able to enforce that it is no longer allowed to carry out this work due to internal party conflicts. In 1958 Karg succeeded in refuting the allegations and in 1969 - despite the disappointment about the exclusion - she joined the German Communist Party . In addition, she continued her work for the VVN and took on tasks in the state board in Bavaria. In addition to her work in the Munich city administration, which she carried out from 1953 until her retirement in 1970, she also worked all her life to come to terms with and pass on the history of the resistance against National Socialism. Karg is co-founder of the Working Group of Bavarian Persecuted Organizations (ABV), which was established in 1963 and is committed to research into history. In addition, together with the President of the VNN and members of the ABV, she was involved in the conception of the first exhibition in the Federal Republic, which was dedicated to the topic of "Antifascist Resistance 1933-1945". She was also one of the initiators and designers of the exhibition “Resistance and Persecution in Bavaria 1933-1945”, which opened on November 9, 1975 in the Munich City Museum. Until her death in 1985, she accompanied the exhibition “Resistance and Persecution in Bavaria 1933-1945” through 52 cities and, as a contemporary witness, offered numerous guided tours for school classes and youth groups. Karg died on August 12, 1985 at the age of 75. The plan to write her own biography has not yet been completed, which is why only the parts that were completed by then could be published.

aftermath

In 2016, the German Resistance Study Group 1933–1945 created the exhibition "Nothing was in vain" to demonstrate the courage of individual women and others. a. also Carola Kargs, to be honored in the resistance.

Publications

  • Carola Karg: My fight against the brown dictatorship. In: Richard Löwenthal, Patrik von zur Mühlen (ed.): Resistance and denial in Germany 1933 to 1945. Verlag JHW Dietz Nachf., Berlin / Bonn 1984, ISBN 3-8012-3008-2 , pp. 102-109.
  • Carola Karg: Everyday Life of an Illegal. In: Information. Repression and seduction in everyday Nazi life , No. 14, 1980, pp. 6-8.
  • Carola Karg: Everyday Life of an Illegal. From an experience report. In: Klaus Drobisch, Gerhard Fischer (Hrsg.): Resistance from faith. Christians grappling with Hitler's fascism . Union Verlag, Berlin 1985, ISBN 978-3-7705-2282-8 , pp. 53-58.

literature

  • German Resistance Study Group 1933–1945 (Ed.): Nothing was in vain. Women in the Resistance to National Socialism (exhibition catalog) . Frankfurt am Main 2016, ISBN 978-3-00-051833-1 .
  • Barbara Beuys: Don't forget us. People in resistance. 1933-1945. Rowohlt, Reinbeck near Hamburg 1987, ISBN 978-3498005115 .
  • Hermann Weber, Andreas Herbst: German Communists: Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 (Volume 2). 2nd Edition. K. Dietz, Berlin 2008 (2004), ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
  • Gerda Zorn: Red grandmothers. Yesterday and today. Röderberg im Pahl-Rugenstein-Verl., Cologne 1986, ISBN 978-3876828473 .
  • Karl Heinz Jahnke: Contemporary witnesses. Women who shouldn't be forgotten. Ingo Koch Verlag, Rostock 2009, ISBN 978-3-938686-409 .
  • Karl Heinz Jahnke: Antifascists: inconvenient witnesses of the 20th century. (Volume 2). Pahl-Rugenstein, Bonn 1996 (1994), ISBN 978-3891442036 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d e Hermann Weber, Andreas Herbst: German Communists: Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945 (Volume 2). 2nd edition, K. Dietz 2008 (2004), p. 430.
  2. ^ A b c Study Group of German Resistance 1933–1945 (Ed.): Nothing was in vain. Women in the resistance against National Socialism. Exhibition catalog. Frankfurt am Main 2016, p. 25.
  3. ^ Portal Rhenish History: Projects. The communist Berta Carola Karg tried to get communists and Catholics to work together in Cologne. 2017, accessed June 26, 2020.
  4. ^ A b c Karl Heinz Jahnke: Contemporary witnesses. Women who shouldn't be forgotten. Ingo Koch Verlag, Rostock 2009, p. 26.
  5. ↑ Study Group German Resistance 1933–1945 (Ed.): Nothing was in vain. Women in the resistance against National Socialism. Exhibition catalog. Frankfurt am Main 2016, p. 24.
  6. ^ A b c d e Barbara Beuys: Do not forget us. People in resistance. 1933-1945. Rowohlt, Reinbeck bei Hamburg 1987, p. 171.
  7. ^ A b c Karl Heinz Jahnke: Contemporary witnesses. Women who shouldn't be forgotten. Ingo Koch Verlag, Rostock 2009, p. 32f.
  8. ↑ Gerda Zorn: Red Grandmothers. Yesterday and today. Röderberg im Pahl-Rugenstein-Verlag, Cologne 1986, p. 98.
  9. ↑ Karl Heinz Jahnke, Alexander Rossaint: Main defendant in the Berlin Catholic Trial in 1937: Dr. Joseph Cornelius Rossaint. VAS publishing house for academic writings, Frankfurt am Main 2002, p. 29.
  10. ↑ Gerda Zorn: Red Grandmothers. Yesterday and today. Röderberg im Pahl-Rugenstein-Verlag, Cologne 1986, p. 101.
  11. ↑ Study Group German Resistance 1933–1945 (Ed.): Nothing was in vain. Women in the resistance against National Socialism. Exhibition catalog. Frankfurt am Main 2016, p. 60.
  12. ↑ Karl Heinz Jahnke, Alexander Rossaint: Main defendant in the Berlin Catholic Trial in 1937: Dr. Joseph Cornelius Rossaint. VAS-Verlag für Akademische Schriften, Frankfurt am Main 2002, p. 92.
  13. ↑ Karl Heinz Jahnke, Alexander Rossaint: Main defendant in the Berlin Catholic Trial in 1937: Dr. Joseph Cornelius Rossaint. VAS publishing house for academic writings, Frankfurt am Main 2002, p. 30f ..
  14. ↑ Karl Heinz Jahnke, Alexander Rossaint: Main defendant in the Berlin Catholic Trial in 1937: Dr. Joseph Cornelius Rossaint. VAS Verlag for Academic Writings, Frankfurt am Main 2002, p. 62.
  15. ^ Karl Heinz Jahnke: Contemporary witnesses. Women who shouldn't be forgotten. Ingo Koch Verlag, Rostock 2009, p. 33f ..
  16. ^ Karl Heinz Jahnke: Contemporary witnesses. Women who shouldn't be forgotten. Ingo Koch Verlag, Rostock 2009, p. 44.
  17. ^ Karl Heinz Jahnke: Contemporary witnesses. Women who shouldn't be forgotten. Ingo Koch Verlag, Rostock 2009, p. 34f.
  18. ^ Karl Heinz Jahnke: Contemporary witnesses. Women who shouldn't be forgotten. Ingo Koch Verlag, Rostock 2009, p. 36f.
  19. ^ Karl Heinz Jahnke: Contemporary witnesses. Women who shouldn't be forgotten. Ingo Koch Verlag, Rostock 2009, p. 32.
  20. ^ Karl Heinz Jahnke: Contemporary witnesses. Women who shouldn't be forgotten. Ingo Koch Verlag, Rostock 2009, p. 24.
  21. ↑ Study Group of German Resistance 1933–1945: Nothing was in vain. Women in the resistance against National Socialism. 2016, accessed May 7, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Karg, Carola
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Karg, Carola Berta
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH June 16, 1910 or October 16, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Wolfratshausen
DATE OF DEATH August 12, 1985
Place of death Munich or Berlin