Grete Walter

Margarete ("Grete") Walter (born February 22, 1913 in Berlin-Neukölln ; † October 21, 1935 in Berlin-Kreuzberg ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Stumbling block in front of the house, Fuldastraße 12, in Berlin-Neukölln

Margarete Walter was born in Berlin as one of three daughters of a coachman , her mother worked as a maid . Her parents later bought a small milking station. After graduating from business school , she worked as a saleswoman and clerk . In 1928 she joined the KJVD and in 1930 the KPD . She had to keep her family from joining the KJVD because her father had completely different political ideas as the owner. Walter attended courses in Marxist workers' education and took over the leadership of a KJVD youth group in Berlin-Neukölln . Here she was particularly involved in the communist children's movement. After graduating from business school, she took on a job as a commercial clerk at Kathreiner . She took part in the meetings of the communist company group and took over the editing of the KPD works newspaper Die Kathreiner Mühle . When her political activities became known to the management, she was fired and blacklisted by the employers ' association, leaving her unemployed for a long time.

From 1930 she studied on the instructions of the Central Committee of the KJVD at the International Lenin School of the Comintern in Moscow . After her return she became a member of the KJVD sub-district management Berlin-Neukölln and worked for its secretariat. Walter took over the supervision of the communist children's movement in the district as head of the Red Young Pioneers . In early 1933 she was elected to the Central Committee of the KJVD.

In 1932, Margarete Walter played a key role in the fact that young Social Democrats and Communists stood together against the SA thugs . They were able to prevent the fascists from having a greater influence on the mass of young people in Neukölln. Margarete's anti-fascist attitude and her determined demeanor were known not only to friends but also to her opponents. After the Reichstag fire on the night of February 28, 1933, she was one of the first women in Berlin to be arrested. Despite the humiliating interrogation, which included beatings and torture, she did not testify.

After her release from custody, she worked in the cable plant Oberspree of AEG in Berlin. An illegal youth group was formed that produced the newspaper Das Rote Kabel , which repeatedly demonstrated the hypocrisy and lies of Nazi propaganda. Walter secretly distributed this communist company newspaper in cupboards and on the workbenches, criticized anti-social measures and stood up for work colleagues who had been dismissed because of their Jewish origins. She also became active in the factory sports club.

In the spring of 1934 she was arrested again, but the Gestapo was unable to prove her resistance activities. Through the solidarity of her colleagues, Walter was able to deny the allegations and continue her "illegal" work.

In the spring of 1935 she was obliged to do farm work and sent to Wahlendow near Wolgast ( district of Anklam ). She was elected to be the “maid of trust” of the country assistants who were compulsory and advocated adherence to working hours, reasonable accommodation and sufficient food. In conversations with the other girls, she made her rejection of Nazi rule clear.

She was arrested for the third time on October 9, 1935. After severe abuse in the Berlin Gestapo headquarters, she rushed from the third floor of Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse  8 into a light shaft.

Honors

Entrance of the company holiday home "Grete Walter"

• In Milz and Cottbus there is a Grete-Walter-Straße and in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg there is a Margarete-Walter-Straße . Another Grete-Walther-Strasse (unfortunately written with an h) exists in the Magdeburger Börde in Schleibnitz; a district of Wanzleben.
• In Berlin-Weissensee , Geising , Georgenthal , Greifswald , Schwarzheide , Schwepnitz and Wustrow were Polytechnic Secondary School named after her. In the school yard of the POS Grete Walter in the Eldena district of Greifswald there was also a memorial stone with the inscription "The anti-fascist resistance fighters", which was inaugurated in her honor on February 4, 1978. With the demolition of the old school building from the second half of the 19th century after German reunification, the Grete Walter memorial stone was also removed. Children's homes in Wismar and Polvitz , the youth hostel in Stralsund and a central pioneer camp in Sebnitz also bore her name.
• In VEB Kabelwerk Oberspree there was an FDJ basic organization Grete Walter .
• The television electronics factory in Berlin-Oberschöneweide maintained a Grete Walter company holiday home in Neuhaus .
• A feeder trawler of the "Artur-Becker" series also got its name.
• On November 14, 2009, on the initiative of the VVN-VdA , the Cologne artist Gunter Demnig laid a stumbling block in memory of her in front of her last place of residence at Fuldastraße 12 in Berlin-Neukölln .
• In the Burg Jugendwerkhof there was a group with her name.

literature

• Luise Kraushaar et al .: German resistance fighters 1933–1945. Biographies and letters. Volume 2. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, pp. 409-411.
• Werner Lamprecht: Margarete Walter's work in Pomerania. In: Greifswald-Stralsunder Jahrbuch 10 (1972/1973), Weimar 1973, pp. 165-173.
• Lutz Mohr : POS “Grete Walter” Eldena and memorial stone in the school yard . In: ders .: Greifswald-Eldena and the Hilda monastery. A foray and guide through the Greifswald districts in the past and present. ( Neue Greifswalder Museumhefte , No. 1). Museum der Stadt Greifswald 1977, 2nd revised edition 1979, p. 42f.
• Karl Heinz Jahnke : Grete Walter. In: ders .: Murdered and wiped out. Twelve German anti-fascists. Ahriman-Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1995 ( Unwanted Books on Fascism , Volume 8), ISBN 3-89484-553-8 , pp. 9-13. ( Digitized on Google Books ).
• Peter Steinbach , Johannes Tuchel (ed.): Lexicon of Resistance 1933–1945 . 2nd Edition. CH Beck, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-43861-X , p. 213.
• Walther Killy , Rudolf Vierhaus (ed.): German Biographical Encyclopedia . Volume 10: Thibaut - Zycha . Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-23170-9 , p. 320.
• Hans-Joachim Fieber et al. (Ed.): Resistance in Berlin against the Nazi regime 1933 to 1945. A biographical lexicon. Volume 8 [T-Z]. Trafo-Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89626-358-7 , p. 135.
• Walter, Margarete . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 , p. 989.

Web links

Commons : Grete Walter  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Photo on the VVN-BdA Köpenick website

Individual evidence

1. ^ Margarete-Walter-Strasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert )