Henriette Ackermann

Henriette Ackermann (born August 8 , according to other sources September 8, 1887 in Cologne-Ehrenfeld , † August 31, 1977 in Brühl ) was a German social democratic and socialist politician in Cologne. In addition to her personal fate - committed and hostile city councilors in Cologne during the Weimar Republic , imprisoned twice in the Ravensbrück concentration camp during the Nazi era - one biographer describes her life as symptomatic of the "fateful fragmentation" of the left forces during the Weimar period.

Life

Henriette Ackermann was born in Ehrenfeld (Cologne district from 1888) as one of two daughters of Adelheid Ackermann, née Schumacher, and the hairdresser Josef Ackermann. Her uncle was Georg Schumacher , a member of the SPD Reichstag in Solingen . After elementary school she attended commercial school and from 1903 worked as an accountant (clerk) in a haberdashery before graduating . From 1908 she worked for thirteen years in the social democratic consumer cooperative Hope in Cologne-Kalk .

Party activities and World War I

Around 1905 - at the age of 18 - she joined the Free Employees' Union and the SPD even before women's suffrage was introduced . She also joined the free workers' youth founded by Wilhelm Sollmann , where she played an active role in the years before the First World War. During the war, she appeared as an early and resolute opponent of the so-called truce policy of her party. This was expressed, among other things, by the fact that the SPD parliamentary group in the Reichstag voted for a first war loan shortly after the start of the war, although shortly beforehand they had agitated against “the criminal activities of the warmongers”.

As a result, she developed into one of the “leaders” of the inner-party opposition, which was mainly composed of young women and girls. When, after the death of Adolf Hofrichter in 1916 , she supported Karl Liebknecht's candidacy for the Cologne Reichstag mandate, she was expelled from the SPD. She took part as a delegate for Cologne at the founding party convention of the USPD in Gotha and in 1917 founded the party's local branch in Cologne, to whose four-man board she was from then on. During the war she was arrested for anti-militarist propaganda and not, like her fellow directors, dismissed after a few days, but imprisoned in Berlin for almost a year.

After her return to Cologne and during the November Revolution , she was re-elected to the executive committee of her party. For the Spartakusbund she took part as a delegate for Cologne-Ehrenfeld at the founding party congress of the KPD in Berlin at the end of 1918 and, together with two other functionaries, headed the VKPD district of Middle Rhine around 1920/21 after the left wing of the USPD had joined the KPD.

City councilors in Cologne

For the USPD she was elected to the Cologne city council on October 5, 1919 and was also the chairwoman of the Cologne city council group of the VKPD. In 1922 she left the KPD and first joined the Communist Working Group and then the (remaining) USPD again. She remained a member of the USPD even after the unification of the USPD with the SPD in 1922 and was thus the only Cologne city councilor of the USPD for some time. She also refused to return to the KPD and was critical of the MPs of this party. As a result, she was politically isolated, but denounced "rigorously and uncompromisingly" the poor living conditions in the Cologne working class and was re-elected as an independent candidate in 1924. As a single woman and due to her independent, self-confident, spontaneous and emotional appearance, she became on the one hand one of the most dazzling personalities of the Cologne city council during the Weimar Republic, on the other hand the "most hated personality in Cologne local politics". During the ten years in the Cologne city council - in the time of Konrad Adenauer as Lord Mayor - she was constantly confronted with hostility, scorn, slander and sexist attacks from both the bourgeois and the social democratic camp. Insults called the "Virgin Henriette" Councilwoman ranged from "wicked women," " shrew " to "eternal chatterbox" and references to their Unliebenswürdigkeit that would place possibly at a marriage ( "if they will one day be manned") . It was a popular motif in political cartoons for the local press.

As a politician, she was not purely a woman’s politician, but was seen as a consistent advocate of the poorer sections of the population: she called for an increase in the wages of urban workers, the support rates for the unemployed, welfare beneficiaries and war invalids as well as the fight against the housing shortage. After 1929, the year in which she resigned from the city council, she continued to be politically active.

time of the nationalsocialism

Henriette Ackermann was employed by the Freethinker Association in Cologne until 1932 , before she was taken into " protective custody " by the National Socialists from March to May 1933 . Multiple arrests followed. Since 1936 (or 1938) she has been on a list of over 450 "enemies of the state" of the Gestapo ("A card index"), who should be arrested in the event of war and brought to concentration camps. Ackermann was one of the first to be arrested at the beginning of the war and taken to the Ravensbrück concentration camp . Two stays there are documented, once in 1939/40 and later again in 1944/45.

After the liberation of the concentration camp by the Red Army, she first worked for the magistrate in Berlin before she returned to Cologne with her sister and worked in the Cologne city administration until she retired. She is a member of the Association of Those Persecuted by the Nazi Regime , but otherwise no longer politically active. She later lived with her sister in a house inherited from her grandparents in Ehrenfeld.

Henriette Ackermann died in 1977 at the age of 90 - according to one illustration "isolated and bitter" - in a retirement home in Brühl near Cologne.

Henriette-Ackermann-Strasse in Cologne-Ossendorf

Aftermath

At the request of the SPD parliamentary group in the Cologne city council, a planned street was named after Henriette Ackermann in March 1993 in Cologne-Ossendorf (resolution no .: 792).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Gabriele Uelsberg : Ackermann, Henriette . In: Ulrich S. Soénius, Jürgen Wilhelm (Hrsg.): Kölner Personen-Lexikon . Greven-Verlag, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-7743-0400-0 , p. 13 .
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Birgit Kummer: "Henriette, we dread you!" Henriette Ackermann, an indomitable city councilor . In: Helga Bargel, Kölner Frauengeschichtsverein (Hrsg.): "10 o'clock punctually Gürzenich": a hundred years of moving women in Cologne; on the history of organizations and associations . Agenda, Münster 1995, ISBN 3-929440-53-9 , p. 155-157 .
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n} Manfred Faust: An independent socialist . In: Gerhard Brunn (Hrsg.): Social Democracy in Cologne: a contribution to the city and party history . Emons Verlag, Cologne 1986, ISBN 3-924491-08-9 , p. 217-222 .
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m} Swetlana Rosental: Ackermann, Henriette . In: Hermann Weber, Andreas Herbst (Ed.): Biographical manual for the history of the Communist International . Second, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-05-008491-6 ( online via bundesstiftung-aufverarbeitung.de ).
5. ↑ Kölner Personenlexikon names - probably erroneously - Cologne as the place of death. Evidence with Brühl as the place of death go back to 1985. When it comes to the date of birth, the dictionary of persons seems to be correct and the handbook of communism wrong, older printed publications agree that August is the month of birth.
6. ↑ Irene Franken: Women in Cologne: the historical city guide . Bachem-Verlag, Cologne 2008, ISBN 978-3-7616-2029-8 , p. 110 .
7. ^ Thomas Roth: The Secret State Police Cologne. In: Internet portal Rheinische Geschichte. LVR Institute for Regional Studies and Regional History, accessed on January 18, 2020 . 
8. ^ Eva-Maria Marx: radio report on Henriette Ackermann. (No longer available online.) In: eva-maria-marx.de. Studio Eck, May 21, 2015, archived from the original on August 19, 2017 ; accessed on January 26, 2020 (0:40).