Hilde Kramer-Fitzgerald

Hilde Kramer-Fitzgerald (born April 11, 1900 in Leipzig , † February 17, 1974 in Otley ) was a well-known German representative of the labor movement and British social work scientist .

Life

The orphaned Hilde grew up with her sister Frida (1882) and her husband Max. From 1915 she attended a school in Ilmenau and then trade courses in Munich. From 1910 she was the foster child of Gabriele Kaetzler (born October 1, 1872 in Berlin , † 1954 in Zurich ) in Riederau . Gabriele Kaetzler was a daughter of the Prussian Admiral Max von der Goltz .

“On the night of the revolution on November 7th, I was on the street almost all the time. Only in the afternoon there was a huge people's assembly on Theresienwiese , at which the two socialist parties united ... But the matter petered out. A union demonstration rolled through the streets like a pomad, nothing of a revolutionary uprising. We followed to the Friedensengel , then we desperately gave up and wanted to go home "

- Hilde Kramer in a letter to Luise Kaetzler after she had followed Erhard Auer's moving assembly .

Association of revolutionary internationalists in Bavaria

On November 30, 1918, Erich Mühsam , Josef Merl, Friedrich Albert Fister and Hilde Kramer founded the "Association of Revolutionary Internationalists of Bavaria" (VRI) in the Braunauer Hof. On December 6, 1918, the VRI demonstrated against the state elections in Bavaria announced on December 5, 1918 for January 12, 1919 and occupied the editorial offices of the Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten , Münchner Zeitung , Munich-Augsburger Abendzeitung and the Bayerischer Kurier . The bourgeois newspapers should print a VRI statement on the front page. Josef Osterhuber , the editor-in-chief of the Bayerischer Kurier, complained to Kurt Eisner, who called Oskar Dürr and police chief Josef Staimer , who had the editorial offices cleared by the police. In the first week of December 1918, Mühsam sent Kramer and Fister as representatives of the VRI to Lotte Kornfeld and Johann Knief in Bremen, they agreed on financial support and cooperation in public relations .

Communist Party of Germany

Hilde Kramer then traveled with Josef Merl to the state congress of the IKD (International Communists of Germany) in Berlin and visited the Bureau of the Spartakusbund with Lotte Kornfeld, where she had a talk with Karl Liebknecht and Leo Jogiches about money issues. At the conference, where the question of participation in the elections to the National Assembly was discussed, she met Paul Frölich . Without waiting for the upcoming founding congress of the KPD, she drove back to Munich. (S. Hilde Kramer. Rebel in Munich, Moscow and Berlin. Autobiographical fragment 1900–1924, Berlin 2011, pp. 51–53)

On January 10, 1918, she belonged to a group with Eugen Leviné , Josef Sontheimer, Max Levien , Josef Merl and Erich Mühsam , which had been held by the Eisner cabinet in the prison in Munich . Rudolf Egelhofer convinced Kurt Eisner to set the group free.

Communist Soviet Republic

On Palm Sunday, April 13, 1919, the works and soldiers' councils in the Hofbräuhaus am Platzl proclaimed the Communist Council Republic. In this second phase of the Council Republic of Baiern, the legislative and executive powers were transferred to an action committee of 15 people under the leadership of Eugen Leviné . From this an executive council was constituted consisting of Emil Männer , Wilhelm Duske (1883–1944), Max Levien , Willi Budich under the leadership of Eugen Leviné.

• From January 8, 1919, Hilde Kramer was the secretary of Rudolf Egelhofer , who was the city commandant of Munich during the two weeks of the Communist Soviet Republic.

Gabriele Kaetzler and her daughters Wise and Fite were arrested on May 2, 1919 in Hilde Kramer's apartment in Munich. Hilde Kramer ran to Riederau on May 1st , where she was arrested a week later. The estate of Gabriele Kaetzler's widow was searched by the White Guards. Documents that are now in the Bavarian Main State Archives were confiscated for baskets . Copies of the correspondence with Lotte Kornfeld were sent to Bremen to be used in the trial against her. The four women refused to testify. An informer was put in their cell to make inquiries. Wise and Fite were transferred to the Aichach correctional facility , where they were released on June 29, 1919, on condition that they leave Bavaria. Hilde Kramer and Gabriele Kaetzler were charged with aiding and abetting high treason . Kaetzler was acquitted and released from protective custody on July 4, 1919. Hilde Kramer's trial was referred to the People's Court by the court martial. The main witness, the Lockspitzel, did not appear in court, whereupon Kramer was acquitted.

In their report on the trial against Gabriele Kaetzler, Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten counts Hilde Kramer as "Secretary of the City Commandant" "among the most famous personalities of the revolutionary era". Oskar Maria Graf described her in Wir sind Gefangene as “the gigantic girl with the head of Titus”.

III. Communist International

From July 19 to August 7, 1920, she and a colleague wrote shorthand at the Second World Congress of the Communist International in 1920 in Moscow .

Migration to the UK

In 1954 she published Studies in the Social Services: History of the Second World War, UK Civil Series with Sheila Ferguson .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Andrea Kampf, Women's Policy and Political Action by Women during the Bavarian Revolution 1918/19, p. 100 ; Christiane Sternsdorf-Hauck, bread stamps and red flags: Women in the Bavarian Revolution and Soviet Republic 1918/19; with an exchange of letters between women from Ammersee, from Munich, Berlin and Bremen, ISP, 2008 - 159 pp . 70 [1]
2. ↑ The history of the women's movement in Munich, Zara S. Pfeiffer, Klaus Erich Dietl and Fabian Zweck, [2]
3. ↑ Friedrich Albert Fister (born August 1, 1889 in Gera), businessman and journalist, VRI, KPD, was expelled from Bavaria in May 1919. As a journalist and writer, he primarily dealt with constitutional issues, domestic and local politics. Until 1933 he was the editor of domestic and foreign newspapers, was banned from working in 1934 and was the state archive manager in Schleswig-Holstein from 1938 to 1946. Since then he has been working as a freelancer. Friedrich A. Fister is a member of the advisory board of the German Voting Society.
4. ↑ Munich Digitization Center , VRI poster, [3] Simon Schaupp, Der Kurz Frühling der Räterepublik p. 56, p. 90
5. ↑ Gerhard Engel, Johann Knief: an unfinished life, Karl Dietz Verlag, 2011, 457 p., P. 390
6. ↑ Josef Sontheimer (* March 16, 1867; † May 4, 1919 shot dead in Munich) businessman, free thinker, anarchist.
7. ^ Josef Merl (born March 20, 1897 in Neuburg an der Donau ), lift boy and waiter. One of the four founding members of the "Association of Revolutionary Internationalists". Later he was a board member and treasurer of the Munich KPD and a member of the Revolutionary Workers' Council.
8. ↑ Archive for the History of Resistance and Labor, Issue 18, Germinal, 2008, p. 412 [4] [5]
9. ↑ Wise actually: Luise Kaetzler (* 1899 in Berlin ; † 1977 in Böblingen ). The second daughter of six children, three girls and three boys from Gabriele and Gustav Kaetzler (* 1852 - † October 28, 1918 in Diessen )
10. ↑ Christiane Sternsdorf-Hauck, Bread Brands and Red Flags: Women in the Bavarian Revolution and 1989, p. 97
11. ↑ Junge Welt , July 5, 2013, [6] ; Augsburger Allgemeine , Memories of the "Red Hilde", [7] ; ; Archives for the History of Resistance and Labor, Issue 18, Germinal, 2008, p. 412
12. ^ J. Keating, A Child for Keeps: The History of Adoption in England, 1918-45, Ferguson, Sheila and Fitzgerald, Hilda, Studies in the Social Services: History of the Second World War, UK Civil Series. London: Longmans & HMSO, 1954. p. 257 ; Hilde Kramer (1900-1974), a revolutionary who was only a teenager at the time but quickly took on leadership positions. It will share her perspective on the revolution, how the events shaped her life and chart her path across Europe- from Munich to Moscow, Berlin to Otley. [8] ; Hilde Fitzgerald Politician, Social Scientist Born: April 11, 1900, Leipzig - Died: February 17, 1974, Otley - ( Memento of the original from March 11, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.