Gertrud Piter

Gertrud Piter (born February 12, 1899 in Brielow , Westhavelland district ; † September 22, 1933 in the Brandenburg concentration camp ) was a trade unionist and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Childhood and early engagement

At the age of eleven, Gertrud Piter and her family moved from the suburb of Brielow to the city of Brandenburg (Havel) . She received a Catholic education. Because of her political interests, she became a member of a trade union in the early 1920s . In 1922 she joined the KPD . In 1924 she left the Catholic Church and became a free thinker . From 1925 she was active in the Red Women’s and Girls’s Union and took part in numerous meetings and political education meetings. The political engagement brought her recognition among the Brandenburg workers. After a successful election in 1924, she was the only woman in the KPD to enter the city parliament. At the same time, she continued to fight for her union, but repeatedly encountered obstacles because of her self-confident demeanor.

time of the nationalsocialism

After the " seizure of power " by the Nazi regime, Piter immediately lost her job. Thereupon she became a member of the illegal sub-district leadership of the KPD and thus became part of the practical resistance against the National Socialists , which she supported mainly with leaflets, leaflets and illegal newspapers. There were also illegal gatherings and demonstrations, but these were broken up by the police.

When the head of the group, Otto Seeger , had to go into hiding in March 1933 and was finally arrested, Piter took over the management and continued to work alone. In September 1933 the organization was discovered by a spy and 45 members, including Piter, were arrested.

After all attempts at torture and humiliation failed to bring her to betray other members of the group, she was detained ten days later in the Brandenburg concentration camp, the old penitentiary on Nicolaiplatz. There she was beaten and raped during another interrogation, but remained firm. One day after her admission to the concentration camp, on September 22, 1933, she was hanged in her room in order to cover up the traces of the camp's violence.

Honors

Memorial plaque for Gertrud Piter.
Brandenburg on the Havel

The former Magdeburger Platz and the area to the east of the Brandenburg Higher Regional Court and a day care center for the city of Brandenburg have been named after Gertrud Piter. A plaque commemorates her in the honor grove of the Brandenburg-Görden prison memorial. Her grave is located in the old town cemetery of the city of Brandenburg, where Paul Redlich also found his final resting place. Both graves are included in the list of monuments of the state of Brandenburg.

literature

• Bernhard Bogedain, Klaus Heß: Revolutionary memorials in Brandenburg. Revolutionary memorials of the liberation from fascism, the labor movement and the anti-fascist resistance struggle in the city and in the district of Brandenburg. Brandenburg District Management of the SED, Commission for Research into the History of the Local Labor Movement, Brandenburg 1985 (on Gertrud Piter: pp. 15–16, 58, 60 with ill.)
• Paul Schulze: Piter, Gertrud - resistance fighter . In: Marcus Alert, Wolfgang Kusior (Ed.): 45 well-known Brandenburger. Verlag B. Neddermeyer, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-933254-34-5 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ City of Brandenburg on the Havel. (PDF) List of monuments of the state of Brandenburg, as of December 31, 2006