Gertrud Rast

Gertrud Rast , b. Gertrud Graeser (born May 25, 1897 in Hamburg ; † September 24, 1993 ) was a German journalist and politician ( Spartakusbund , KPD , DKP ). During the Second World War she was temporarily imprisoned in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp . After the war she became the first state chairwoman of the KPD Schleswig-Holstein and then editor-in-chief of the North German Echo .

Life

The daughter of a carpenter attended business school in Hamburg, became a commercial clerk and worked as an accountant. In 1912 she became a member of the workers' youth and in 1915 of the union. She served her first imprisonment in 1917 for anti-war propaganda. In the same year she joined the Spartacus group. During the November Revolution she was the secretary of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council in Hamburg. In 1919 she was one of the founding members of the KPD in the Hanseatic city and was also active in the Free Socialist Youth (FSJ). At the 7th Reich Youth Congress in March 1923 she was elected to the Reich headquarters of the KJD in Chemnitz and was then the editor in charge of the magazine Junge Garde .

During the temporary KPD ban in 1923/24, Gertrud Graeser emigrated to the Soviet Union , where she first worked for the Communist Youth International , then the International of Seafarers and Dockers . After her return, she worked full-time for the KPD district leadership Wasserkante in Hamburg and in 1930 had to defend herself against allegations of reconciliation within the party . After the National Socialists came to power , the now married woman emigrated abroad in 1933. In September 1939 she was interned first in the Camp de Rieucros and from 1942 in the Brens camp in southern France. In 1943 she was extradited to Germany, where she was first imprisoned in Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp and then in a forced labor camp. Her husband, Richard Rast, died a few days before the end of the war as a prisoner in Neuengamme concentration camp .

From 1945 Gertrud Rast was one of the leading functionaries of the KPD in Schleswig-Holstein within the Wasserkante party district . When the Wasserkante district was dissolved in favor of separate state organizations, a delegate meeting in Rendsburg in the summer of 1948 elected them as the first KPD state chairman. In this function she was also a member of the SED party executive . After political current struggles in the editorial team of the party newspaper Norddeutsches Echo , she took over its chief editor. She remained in a leading role for the party until the KPD was banned in 1956. In 1969 she joined the German Communist Party (DKP).

literature

• Gertrud Rast: You are not alone - struggles and fates in difficult times, Röderberg-Verlag, Frankfurt 1972
• Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst (ed.): German communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 ( online ).
• Hans-Kai Möller: Gertrud Rast, clerk. In: Olaf Matthes / Ortwin Pelc : People in the Revolution. Hamburg portraits 1918/19. Husum Verlag, Husum 2018, ISBN 978-3-89876-947-1 , pp. 149–152.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Klaus Weigle: Hein Meyn or A laborious and belated attempt as a result of major political changes to draft a funeral speech appropriate to the deceased and the time. Yearbook Democratic History , Volume 11, Advisory Board for History in the Society for Politics and History Schleswig-Holsteins e. V., pp. 213–280, here p. 250, online version (PDF), accessed on March 3, 2017.
2. ↑ Jürgen Brammer / Kurt Schröder: North German Echo. Memories of a communist newspaper . Yearbook Democratic History , Volume 4, Advisory Board for History in the Society for Politics and History Schleswig-Holstein e. V., pp. 384–402, here p. 393, online version (PDF), accessed on March 3, 2017.