Helene Kirsch

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Helene Kirsch , married Helene Fredrich, (born July 18, 1906 in Johannisthal ; † August 15, 1999 ) was a German politician (KPD).

Live and act

Youth and Family (1906 to 1920)

Kirsch was born as one of seven children of agricultural and industrial worker Hermann Kirsch and his wife Emilie. The father, who originally belonged to the Social Democratic Party of Germany , switched to the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1919 , which had a lasting impact on the lives and development of the children. In addition to Kirsch, three of her siblings became KPD functionaries in the 1920s: the brothers Franz Kirsch (* March 8, 1901; † February 3, 1944 in the Brandenburg-Görden prison), Fritz Kirsch (* March 5, 1903; April 30, 1940 ) and Otto Kirsch and sister Emilie Kirsch.

Kirsch attended the community school in Johannisthal. She then worked as a metal worker in Berlin.

Weimar Republic (1920 to 1933)

Kirsch joined the KPD in 1925 after having been a member of the Communist Youth Association (KJVD) since 1920 . In the same year, 1925, she became a member of the union. According to the Reichstag Handbuch, she was living in Berlin at the latest when she was elected to parliament in 1932 .

Kirsch belonged to the KPD district leadership in Berlin-Brandenburg and was a delegate of the 1st and 2nd Congress of Working Women. At this time she was also active in Red Aid and International Workers Aid .

In the Reichstag election of November 1932 , Kirsch was elected to the Reichstag as a candidate of the KPD for the constituency of Berlin , to which she subsequently belonged until March 1933.

time of the nationalsocialism

After the National Socialist " seizure of power ", Kirsch was exposed to persecution by the regime. In 1933 she was a member of the district management of the KPD district of Brandenburg-Lausitz-Grenzmark, led by Willy Sägebrecht , which emerged from the provincial department of the KPD district management Berlin-Brandenburg. Kirsch was arrested in Cottbus in autumn 1933 for illegal political activity . On November 29, 1933, the attorney general filed a lawsuit against Kirsch with the Superior Court in Berlin. On April 10, 1934, he was sentenced to two and three-quarter years in prison . To serve her sentence, Kirsch was taken to the Jauer women's penal institution . After she and other prisoners rose against the prison authorities there, Kirsch and 45 other prisoners were charged with mutiny (or inciting mutiny), but acquitted for lack of evidence.

After her release from prison, Helene Kirsch married the printer Bruno Fredrich. During the war, Fredrich was drafted into the Wehrmacht . Since 1943 he has been missing.

Helene Fredrich was under police supervision until 1938 and was arrested again in 1939 and briefly taken into " protective custody ". During the war she had to work as a conscript in various Berlin companies. Through her friends Ella Trebe and Marta Wagner , Kirsch was in contact during the war with the communist underground organization, namely with the Saefkow group , on whose behalf she collected food and money for resisters living illegally in Berlin.

Later years (1945 to 1999)

After the war, Kirsch, now called Fredrich, rejoined the communist movement. In 1945 she was commissioned to reorganize women's work in Berlin-Wedding . In April 1946, Kirsch took part as a delegate at the unification party congress of the KPD and Eastern SPD to the SED . Kirsch then became a member of the SED regional association in Brandenburg. In the same year, together with Emmi Plinz , she took over the women's work department in the secretariat of the SED Provincial Board in Brandenburg. She held this position until she retired for health reasons in March 1947. Margarete Langner was her successor .

From 1946 to 1950 Helene Fredrich was a member of the Brandenburg state parliament . She then worked until 1972 as a political employee in the Central Committee of the SED. Kirsch then lived in Berlin until her death in 1999. In November 1989, Fredrich was one of four members of the Reichstag from the Weimar period who still saw the fall of the Berlin Wall (apart from Fredrich, Wilhelm Heerde , Josef Felder and Karl Meier ), and in 1990 the first all-German parliamentary elections since the end of the Weimar Republic in 1933 were held were, she was one of three members of parliament from the Weimar period who witnessed this (apart from Fredrich, heerde and fields).

Little has been learned about the private individual so far. Günther Wehner describes her with reference to the statements of surviving eyewitnesses as a “sociable and sociable personality” as well as “energetic and assertive”. He also certifies that she has an affection for children, as she had no children herself.

Awards

Fonts

  • “For three and a half years I kept in touch across the border”, in: Even then we fought together , Berlin 1961, pp. 99-104.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. Date and place of birth according to the Reichstag handbook for the legislative period from November 1932. Date of death according to Friederike Sattler: Economic order in transition. Politics, organization and function of the KPD , 2002, p. 928.
  2. https://www.stolpersteine-berlin.de/de/biografie/894
  3. ^ Walter Hammer / Walter Hösterey: Hohes Haus in Henkers Hand , 1956, p. 41.
  4. Landtag of Brandenburg: Handbuch , 1947, p. 69.

Web links