Gerda Rodel

Gerda Rodel , b. Neuwirth (born October 31, 1914 in Bisenz , Moravia; † February 3, 1998 in Arbon TG) was a Swiss journalist and socialist of Austrian origin who came to Switzerland as a communist and Jewish refugee. She was married to the social democratic politician Ernst Rodel .

Life

Rodel grew up in Bisenz as the older of two daughters of Paul and Elfriede Neuwirth-Pollak. The father ran a pickling plant for sauerkraut and cucumber there. Around 1921 the family moved to Vienna, where the mother was from, and lived in the in-laws' apartment in Leopoldstadt . Rodel did an apprenticeship as a bank clerk in a Jewish bank. Activities followed with the Socialist Workers' Youth , later in the Communist Youth Association . Neuwirth experienced the February uprising in 1934 and its bloody suppression by the Austro-Fascist dictatorship as a leaflet distributor. After that, she worked illegally in the Communist Party. She was friends with the communist Franz Hreisemnou, who died while fighting in Spain . After Austria was annexed to the National Socialist German Reich, she emigrated to Paris in March 1938.

The 24-year-old communist found jobs in France as a helper and editorial secretary for the exiled “Weltbühne” under Hermann Budzislawski , for the “Nouvelles d'Autriche” or as a “femme de menage” and medical masseuse. After the fall of Paris, she fled to the south of France and found shelter with a small communist group near Grisolles near Montauban . In the autumn of 1940 she was sent to Switzerland by the Communist Party or by the Communist Party functionary Alfred Klahr . She should scout out an escape route. She managed to cross the border after being rejected via the Col de Balme from Savoy to the canton of Valais and lived illegally in Zurich for a year until she was arrested. She then spent a year in Swiss prisons and in the Sumiswald and Langenbruck refugee camps . As a household worker , she worked first in Murten and later in Arbon , where she met Ernst Rodel , a socialist politician and editor of the Thurgauer Arbeiterzeitung.

In 1945 Gerda Neuwirth returned to Vienna to build a socialist Austria. Her whole family, father, mother, sister Johanna and brother-in-law Julius Meisel as well as some aunts and uncles, cousins ​​and cousins, were first sent to the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia by the National Socialists and deported from Olomouc in July 1942 and destroyed. Gerda Neuwirth initially worked with the communist Volksstimme . In 1948 she married Ernst Rodel from Arbon and returned to Switzerland.

Rodel-Neuwirth then lived as a journalist in Arbon TG. She became known as a columnist (“This is how we live every day”) for the “Thurgauer Arbeiterzeitung” and probably the first regular court reporter in Eastern Switzerland . In addition, she was an active member of the Social Democratic Party and never looked for an office. As she got older, she addressed the treatment of old people. After the "Thurgauer Arbeiterzeitung" was closed, she wrote for other regional newspapers and occasionally for the left-wing weekly WOZ .

literature

• Mathias Knauer , Jürg Frischknecht : «The broken track. Anti-fascist emigration in Switzerland from 1933 to 1945 ». Zurich 1983.
• Stefan Keller : Grüninger's case . Stories of escape and help. Zurich 1993.
• Verein Frauenstadtrundgang Zürich (Ed.): Chratz & Quer. Seven women's city tours in Zurich. Zurich 1995.
• Stefan Keller : Why did she send us to school? Gerda Rodel-Neuwirth has died in Arbon, in: WOZ Die Wochenzeitung, Zurich, February 12, 1998.
• Association of Thurgau women yesterday - today - tomorrow (Ed.): “Down to earth and without borders. 200 years of Thurgau women's stories », Frauenfeld 1998.
• Stefan Keller : The time of the factories. Of workers and a red city. Zurich 2001.
• Markus Schär: «O Thurgau. A canton guide for advanced ». Weinfelden 2002.
• Nekrolog for Gerda Rodel-Neuwirth. In: Thurgauer Jahrbuch , Vol. 74, 1999, pp. 192–193. ( e-periodica.ch )