Gertrud Meyer (politician)

Gertrud Meyer (born July 14, 1914 in Lübeck ; † November 19, 2002 in Oslo ) was a German resistance fighter and worked alongside Willy Brandt in Norway as his partner against the Nazi regime .

childhood and education

Gertrud Meyer was born on July 14, 1914 in Lübeck, the tenth child of a working-class family. Her father Friedrich Meyer (1861–1951) was a blacksmith and wagon blacksmith and worked as a locksmith; her mother Marie (1865–1945) was a seamstress. Gertrud Meyer attended the secular community school in Lübeck from 1925 to 1930 and acquired the secondary school leaving certificate . She then completed a commercial apprenticeship and graduated from the associated business school in 1933. Immediately afterwards, she worked as a stenographer for the Lübeck wholesaler Oldbod & Jürgens.

Political activity

From 1931 she was initially a member of the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ), which she left after a few months. She joined the recently founded Socialist Youth Association of Germany (DSJV / SJVD) and later the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAP / SAPD) , which was banned soon after , for which she worked underground and took on several functions. Like Brandt, she belonged to the left wing of the Lübeck local SAP group with 75 members. At the beginning of May 1933, 14 SAP functionaries and supporters were arrested in Lübeck, including Gertrud Meyer. She was released from prison four weeks later; however, she lost her job.

At the beginning of July 1933 she traveled to Oslo; Brandt had been there since April 1933. She received a limited residence permit, which was repeatedly extended. At times she was a member of the communist workers' organization " Mot Dag " ("Towards the Day"). Overall, she was strongly committed to the SAP, which acted subversively against the Nazi dictatorship. Her duties also included helping refugees. She acted as managing director and later as political director of the Oslo-based SAP group. Like Brandt, she learned Norwegian very quickly. Both were also active for left-wing Norwegian labor movements.

Private life

In December 1936, Gertrud Meyer entered into a "passport marriage" with the Norwegian student Gunnar Gaasland . As a result, she became the Norwegian Gertrud Gaasland and was able to work more extensively and openly for SAP. So she could also be named as editor for SAP organs. After a period of unemployment she got jobs with two also exiles, the psychoanalysts Otto Fenichel (1934) and Wilhelm Reich (from 1935 for six years).

In Oslo the friendship with Brandt developed into a stable relationship that lasted until 1939; both lived together. She supported Brandt financially; he was repeatedly threatened with deportation and could not find permanent employment.

In May 1939, Gertrud Gaasland, who had meanwhile been Wilhelm Reich's laboratory assistant, embarked with all of Reich's laboratory equipment for New York , where her Reich followed at the end of August. In the spring of 1941, however, there were political disputes between the two; the employment relationship was also terminated. She then found a job in New York on the Social Committee for Norwegian Seafarers in America. She continued to work there for refugee aid and other political goals. She returned to Norway in early 1946. In February 1947 she was able to visit her hometown Lübeck for the first time after 14 years of exile . Her marriage to Gunnar Gaasland was already divorced. In 1947 she married the Norwegian captain Harry Danielsen and lived with him mostly in New York. In 1955 she moved with him again to Oslo; she worked as a secretary in a patent office. Her husband died in 1992. In July 1992 she visited Lübeck again. When she heard about Brandt's serious illness there, she wrote him another letter, which he had an employee answer because he could no longer answer personally.

On November 19, 2002, Gertrud Meyer died as Gertrud Danielsen in Oslo.

Others

Gertrud Meyer was never ready to express herself in interviews and her own writings about her time in Lübeck, Norway and the USA, not even about her relationship with Willy Brandt. It was first presented in detail in 2013 in Gertrud Lenz's book, which is based on a dissertation. When Brandt received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in 1971, he did not invite Gertrud Meyer to the celebrations. Your letters to him demonstrate the bitterness and disappointment about it. In his memoirs and elsewhere, Brandt only wrote very cautiously and cursory with her over the years.

literature

• Gertrud Lenz: Gertrud Meyer 1914–2002. A political life in the shadow of Willy Brandt. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2013. ISBN 978-3-50677569-6 ( full text online )
• Willy Brandt: My way to Berlin. Munich: Kindler 1960.
• Willy Brandt: Left and free. My way 1930–1950. Hamburg: Hoffmann and Campe 1982.
• Einhart Lorenz: Willy Brandt in Norway. The years of exile 1933 to 1940. Kiel: Neuer Malik-Verlag 1989.
• Einhart Lorenz: Gertrud Meyer (1914–2002). In: New newsletter from the Society for Exile Research, No. 21, June 2003.
• Ruth Seydewitz: Everyone has dreams. My time, my life. Berlin, Der Morgen Verlag, 1976.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gertrud Lenz 1914–2002. A political life in the shadow of Willy Brandt. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2013, ISBN 978-3-506-77569-6 , p. 7 ff.
2. ^ Ilse Ollendorff Reich: Wilhelm Reich. Munich: Kindler 1969, p. 87 (Ilse Ollendorff was introduced to Wilhelm Reich, whom she married in December 1939, through Gertrud Meyer, whom she knew from earlier)
3. ^ Gertrud Lenz: Gertrud Meyer 1914–2002. A political life in the shadow of Willy Brandt. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2013. P. 328 f.