Clara Sahlberg

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Clara Sahlberg

Clara Sahlberg (born July 3, 1890 in Rixdorf near Berlin , now Berlin, † April 13, 1977 in Fleisbach near Herborn ) was a German trade unionist .

Life and work

Clara Sahlberg was the second of a total of nine children. Her father, Richard Sahlberg, probably died in 1905. After that, she and her mother were responsible for the rest of the family's livelihood. At that time, this usually meant working from home in poor and unhealthy living conditions with very low wages.

After graduating from elementary school, Clara Sahlberg learned the tailoring trade and then attended evening courses at the commercial school. In 1909 she joined the home workers' union for clothes and linen manufacture . There she worked as an office worker. In 1912 she became a secretary in the main board responsible for social policy. With her participation, home work was included in the health and disability insurance in 1922, and in 1923 specialist committees were given the right to set binding minimum wages. In 1929 she joined the Christian Social People's Service (CSVD). In 1928 she moved to the Central Association of Christian Transport and Factory Workers , where she was responsible for women's and youth work as an executive board member.

After the Christian trade unions were banned, Clara Sahlberg was dismissed by the Nazi rulers in 1933 and was unemployed for a long time. Although she was also monitored by the Gestapo, she helped to maintain union ties. During the war she found a job at the employment office in Berlin, where she later became head of an important department without being a member of the NSDAP. As an opponent of the regime, she helped a large number of the oppressed and persecuted to save lives with so-called clearance certificates. After the failed assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944 , she also helped the Christian trade union leader and resistance fighter Jakob Kaiser, who was feverishly wanted by the Gestapo : with a falsified workbook issued to König instead of Kaiser and with food that she procured for Jakob Kaiser, who was in hiding. She endangered herself to the utmost.

After the end of the war, Clara Sahlberg worked in Berlin and in the Soviet zone of occupation to help build the Christian Democratic Union of Germany , the Eastern CDU. Like Jakob Kaiser, she was a staunch advocate of trade union unity and took part in the work of the Free German Trade Union Confederation on a voluntary basis . In 1948, however, she distanced herself because the FDGB was under communist control and she was one of those who built up the independent trade union opposition in the western sectors of Berlin . From 1948 to 1955, Clara Sahlberg worked full-time for the ÖTV trade union - ver.di from 2001 - initially in Trier , then in the Rhineland-Palatinate district . In addition, she was committed to the Evangelical Church in Germany for many years .

Commemoration

  • The educational establishment of the ver.di union in Berlin was named after Clara Sahlberg.

Awards

literature

  • Anke Fromme: Sahlberg, Clara . In: Siegfried Mielke (ed.): Trade unionists in the Nazi state: persecution, resistance, emigration . Essen: Klartext, 2008, ISBN 978-3-89861-914-1 , pp. 270-276
  • Brigitte Kassel: Persistent, tenacious, but never loud - Clara Sahlberg 1890-1977 , Stuttgart 1997.
  • Gisela Notz : Entirely in the service of others - Clara Sahlberg (1890–1977), in: Yearbook for Research on the History of the Labor Movement (JBzG, 2004), Vol. 3, pp. 91–104

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rhineland-Palatinate women. Women in Politics, Society, Economy and Culture in the Early Years of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate, 2001, pp. 345–349
  2. ↑ Herbert Schmidt, in: series of the ver.di archive "About the person", Volume 2: Clara Sahlberg
  3. ^ "The exceptional woman Clara Sahlberg" in Susanne Kreutzer: From "service of love" to the modern female profession: the reform of nursing after 1945, Frankfurt / Main 2005, pp. 100-102, ISBN 3-593-37741-1
personal data
SURNAME Sahlberg, Clara
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German trade unionist
DATE OF BIRTH July 3, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Rixdorf near Berlin, now Berlin
DATE OF DEATH April 13, 1977
Place of death Fleisbach near Herborn