Hilde Meisel

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Hilde Meisel (born July 31, 1914 in Vienna , † April 17, 1945 in Tisis near Feldkirch ) was a socialist and publicist.

Growing up in Berlin , she published articles against the Nazi dictatorship in Germany. In magazines, books and radio broadcasts in English exile, under the pseudonym Hilda Monte, she called for resistance to National Socialism . Although in great danger as a Social Democrat and Jew , she repeatedly undertook secret actions in Germany, Austria, France and Portugal.

Other aliases she used when emigrating were Hilde Olday, Selma Trier, Helen Harriman, Eva Schneider, H. Monte, Hilde Monte and Hilda Monte.

Early political formation

She was born as the younger of two daughters in a non-religious bourgeois Jewish family in Vienna, where the family lived until 1915. Then her parents, Ernst and Rosa Meisel, moved back to Berlin . Her father Ernst Meisel worked in the import and export of household items.

According to the Berlin address book, her parents were registered in Berlin from 1915 to 1936. A thyroid disease shaped her life until puberty, so she and her mother often had to go to Switzerland for a cure. In 1924 her older sister Margot turned to a German-Jewish youth group with social revolutionary ideas, the “Black Heap” (SH), which belonged to the liberal German-Jewish “Wanderbund” comrades until 1927 and dissolved in 1928.

Hilde Meisel graduated from the Lyceum Berlin from 1924 to 1929. When her uncle, the well-known conductor and composer Edmund Meisel , was working in London in 1929 , she came to England for the first time. In the same year she undertook her first activities in the International Socialist Fighting League (ISK). When the ISK published its own socialist daily newspaper - Der Funke - from 1932 to 1933 , Hilde Meisel contributed with a series of articles on economic and social problems in France, England, Spain and India. In 1932 she began studying art in London, which she broke off in 1934.

After the Nazis came to power

She took courses in economics at the London School of Economics and has published numerous economic papers. Her active resistance against National Socialism also dates from this time .

Through the International Socialist Fighting League (ISK) she made contact with political friends in various countries. Under the pseudonym Hilda Monte, she brought literature and information to her like-minded people in Germany and also helped many people flee Germany.

The articles she wrote for the Sozialistische Warte , the exile publication of the International Socialist Combat League (ISK), mostly dealt with international economic issues.

When the situation of defense attorney Hans Litten in the Dachau concentration camp deteriorated dramatically, at the request of her sister Margot, she took part in the efforts to secure his release. She corresponded with other supporters about this and succeeded in having her appeal in the Manchester Guardian on January 26, 1938, “In Dachau Camp. The Tragic Case of Hans Litten ”was published. These actions were unsuccessful. Hans Litten committed suicide just a few days later on the night of February 4th to 5th, 1938.

In 1938, Hilde Meisel entered into a mock marriage with the homosexual German-British cartoonist John Olday (1905–1977) to avoid expulsion from Great Britain . She became a British citizen and was able to carry out her activities in England much more easily. She developed a lively journalistic activity with articles in The Socialist Vanguard , Sozialistische Warte , Left News and Tribune .

How can one defeat Hitler [Hilda Monte] 1939–1945

How to conquer Hitler

Together with Fritz Eberhard , she publishes the text "How to conquer Hitler - A Plan of Economic and Moral Warfare of the Nazi Home Front". It is believed that most of it was written by him.

So that her English readers could pronounce her name properly, she changed her first name in English publications to "Hilda Monte". In her German-language manuscripts, however, she continued to use the pseudonym "Hilde Monte", and the abbreviation "H. Monte ”and for publications in which the authorities refused to publish something under one of these names, the name“ Hilde Olday ”was compulsory.

In his publication "Work against the Third Reich", Fritz Eberhard mentions more details:

The outbreak of war was a turning point in my work as an emigrant. At that time I also separated from the organization, from the ISK. After that I was not politically, but unionized; so was a political loner in England. My ticket, so to speak, to a more bearable and more fertile emigre existence was a book that I had written very quickly after the start of the war due to previous preparations, together with Hilda Monte, who had only left Germany a day before the outbreak of the war, but had also been to England.
Her last experience in Germany was about the psychological situation of the population. This book 'How to conquer Hitler' gave advice for the economic and psychological war against Hitler (How to conquer Hitler = How can one defeat Hitler). This book had brilliant reviews, the book is a rarity, because most of the edition was in a warehouse at the port when it was destroyed by Nazi bombs. Even if the book was not widely used as a result, some important people knew it and some doors opened for me.

The separation from the ISK (autumn 1939)

In 1939 she resigned from the International Socialist Fighting League (ISK) together with Fritz Eberhard and Hans Lehnert (1899–1942). Even during the war she repeatedly tried to come to Germany.

The transmitter of the European revolution

At the beginning of 1940 she was appointed to the Gillies Committee as a consultant together with Fritz Eberhard . In it concrete plans for the establishment of a so-called black channel were developed. The European Revolution station first went on air on October 7, 1940.

Even after the Gillies Committee was dissolved in 1941, together with the trade union secretary Walter Auerbach , the lawyer Otto Kahn-Freund and Fritz Eberhard, she formed a discussion group that dealt with the fight against National Socialism in Germany.

On behalf of the “ Ministry of Economic Warfare ” (MEW), Hilde Meisel became an employee of the “Central European Joint Committee” (propaganda and news evaluation).

Help Germany to revolt!

In 1942 the book Help Germany to revolt! It is the last book that she wrote together with Fritz Eberhard.

Fritz Eberhard on this:

On behalf of the Fabian Society I wrote a small brochure, again together with Hilda Monte: 'Help German to revolt'. It was written in the form of a letter to the members of the Labor Party and was based on the idea that not all Germans were Nazis.

It is the only book of hers that is still distributed today - by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation .

German Educational Reconstruction

In 1942, together with Fritz Borinski , Werner Milch , Minna Specht , Werner Burmeister , Fritz Eberhard and Otto Kahn-Freund , she prepared the establishment of the German Educational Reconstruction Committee (GER). It was a project that was initiated by the Union of German Socialist Organizations in Great Britain (Union) and dealt with the planning and preparation of a reorganization of the educational system in post-war Germany.

In 1943 she made various contributions to this project.

The union was a working group of the following representations of German socialist refugees: Social Democratic Party of Germany Sopade , Socialist Workers Party SAPD , Gruppe Neu Beginnen (NB) and ISK . It was founded in the spring of 1941 at the request of the Labor Party .

According to its own statement, the Union set itself the task of working to overthrow the Hitler system and to work on the side of the Allies for the defeat of Hitler. In addition, the prerequisites and the tasks of a coming unified socialist party in Germany were discussed and ideas about a common goal were exchanged so as not to repeat the mistakes of the Weimar Republic in a democratic post-war Germany.

BBC

Hilde Meisel also worked on the BBC's German workers 'programs , worked as part of the British armed forces' education program and approached the ISK group in London again towards the end of the war.

A radio manuscript that has survived and was written in mid-December 1942 deals with the murder of European Jews: “ What is happening in Poland today: the cold-blooded extermination of the Jewish people is happening in your name, in the name of the German people [. ..] Show these people your solidarity, even if it takes courage - especially if it takes courage. "

The Unity of Europe

Originally she worked on the book “The Next Germany” together with Walter Auerbach , Fritz Eberhard, Otto Kahn-Freund and Kurt Mandelbaum . A Basis of Discussion on Peace in Europe “, but separated from this project due to differences of opinion.

Her ideas and comprehensive concepts for the economic integration of Europe were then published in her book "The Unity of Europe". In it u. a. deals with the economic conditions of a post-war European order. Several diploma theses later dealt with the book.

Both books were published in 1943. In the socialist messages - News for German Socialists in England, No. 57, end of December 1943 - it says u. a. to:

In a book 'The Unity of Europe' by Hilda Monte, published at about the same time by the Left Book Club , the position of Germany in a new Europe is also discussed in a short chapter; basically in the same sense as in 'The Next Germany'. The very readable book Montes is rich in factual material and instructive discussions of the political and economic future problems of Europe and particularly emphasizes the previous contrast between the highly industrialized west and the agrarian south-east of Europe, the export difficulties on the one hand, and rural poverty on the other , Resulted in crises, tension and insecurity and became one of the causes of war.

On a secret mission to Switzerland

In the summer of 1944, Hilde Meisel was recruited as part of the “Faust Project” by the “Labor Section” of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). The American secret service was looking for around 200 agents who were supposed to get military and political information in Germany.

To this end, the OSS held several training courses for the project participants outside London, in a small private house. Teachers of these courses were members of the US Army, including emigrants. The participants were intensively prepared for practical everyday German life in National Socialist Germany. Among other things, it was conveyed which registration forms were currently in circulation, which food cards were used, how to get an apartment and which certificates one had to have in order to get a job. At the end of these courses, the participants were trained in parachuting . For reasons of secrecy, they were forbidden to speak to their acquaintances about their imminent departure.

Together with Anna Beyer , Hilde Meisel was flown to France in a small plane in September 1944 . Originally both were to be dropped off near Lyon . But since there was still fighting there at the time, the two women were dropped off near Lake Geneva not far from Thonon-les-Bains on a meadow that had been used by the British secret service as a take-off and landing site since the beginning of the war.

They were transported by a French farmer in an old open wagon to a disused tunnel, where they were greeted by an English officer. With his help, both got to Thonon-les-Bains, where they stayed for four weeks until they were picked up by the Swiss resistance fighter René Bertholet . He brought them to Zurich , Switzerland , where they were given new papers. Together with Hanna Bertholet , Hilde Meisel took part - according to some representations - at a meeting of the circle around Willem Adolf Visser 't Hooft in Geneva .

Shortly afterwards she traveled on with Anna Beyer to the Ticino Alps near Intragna . The Bertholet couple maintained a holiday home there called “Al Forno”, which was used as a residence for emigrants. From the autumn of 1944, forced laborers tried to flee from Germany to Switzerland by swimming. In order to interrupt this border traffic, the Germans hermetically sealed off the German-Swiss border.

Shortly before the end of the war, Anna Beyer, Hanna Bertholet, Änne Kappius and Hilde Meisel received an invitation from the US representation in Bern . At this meeting, the women should be recruited for acts of sabotage in Germany. This request was rejected by the people addressed.

A little later, Hilde Meisel and Karl Gerold , who later became the publisher of the Frankfurter Rundschau , made contact with Austrian resistance groups from Ticino.

On April 17, 1945, on her way back from Austria to Switzerland, near Feldkirch , on the “green border” with Liechtenstein , she was stopped by a border guard and shot while trying to escape. She died immediately from her injury. She was buried in the evangelical cemetery in Feldkirch. After her true identity had been clarified - the papers she had carried with her were in the name of Eva Bachmann - the gravestone for Hilde Monte-Olday was erected on the initiative of Austrian socialists .

In 1946, Hilde Meisel was wrongly held responsible as the mastermind for the 1939 bomb attack committed by Georg Elser on Adolf Hitler .

Honors

Stumbling stone in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf

List of streets and facilities named after Hilde Meisel:

exhibition

  • Tracked. Engaged. Married. Marriage of convenience into exile. May to October 2018, Jewish Museum Vienna, Judenplatz location, curators Sabine Bergler, Irene Messinger (therein: Hilda Monte); brochure
    • Catalog: same title, ed. like curators, publisher like exhibitors ISBN 3901398856

Works

Books and brochures
Article in the socialist perspective

Names in [] are the pseudonyms used in the article

  • [Selma Trier] Reaching for the Saar. Volume 9, 1934, No. 8 (December), pp. 192-201
  • [H. Monte] crisis and exploitation. Volume 11, 1936, No. 1 (January), pp. 13-16
  • [H. Monte] New Labor Program. Volume 12, 1937, No. 10 (May 15, 1937), pp. 220-222
  • [H. Monte] Evolutionary Communism. Volume 13, 1938, No. 12 (March 25, 1938), pp. 267-270
  • [Hilde Monte] The economic independence of CSR. Volume 13, 1938, No. 26 (July 1, 1938), pp. 603-609
  • [Hilde Monte] Hungary before the election. Volume 13, 1938, No. 28 (July 15, 1938), pp. 658-662
  • [Hilde Monte] The opening up of Poland. Volume 13, 1938, No. 36 (September 9, 1938), pp. 845-848

literature

  • Knut Bergbauer: Put a monument to the nameless. In: Friday. Die Ost-West-Wochenzeitung, No. 31, July 23, 2004 (see web links for full text)
  • Fritz Eberhard: Work against the Third Reich. 2nd edition. Information Center Berlin, Stauffenbergstrasse Memorial and Educational Center, Berlin 1980
  • Willi Eichler: Hilda Monte. In: Spirit and Action. Volume 2, No. 4, April 1947
  • Ilse Fischer:  Monte, Hilda. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , p. 43 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Max Fürst: Gefilte fish and how it went on. Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag , Munich 2004 ISBN 3-423-13190-X
  • Gisela Konopka: With courage and love. Weinheim 1996
  • Annedore Leber : The conscience stands up. 64 life pictures from the German resistance 1933–1945. Edited in collaboration with Willy Brandt u. Karl Dietrich Bracher. Berlin 1955
  • Sabine Lemke-Müller: Ethics of Resistance. The struggle of the International Socialist League (ISK) against National Socialism. Bonn 1996
  • Heiner Lindner: "To achieve something, you have to take on something that you think is impossible." The International Socialist Struggle Federation (ISK) and its publications . Historical Research Center, Bonn 2006
  • Ursula Lücking (Ed.): Anna Beyer. Politics is my life. Waldemar Kramer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1991
  • Dieter Nelles: Resistance and International Solidarity. The International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) in the resistance against National Socialism with special consideration of seafarers. Klartext Verlag , Essen 2001 ISBN 3-88474-956-0 ( dissertation 2000)
  • Board of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (ed.): Committed to freedom. Memorial book of the German social democracy in the 20th century . Schüren, Marburg 2000 ISBN 3-89472-173-1
  • Frédéric Stephan: The concepts of Europe in the German and French resistance to National Socialism 1933/1940 to 1945. Dissertation. Stuttgart 2002 DNB 968480578

Web links

Commons : Hilde Meisel  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Board of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Ed.): Committed to freedom. Memorial book of the German social democracy in the 20th century . Marburg 2000, p. 227.
  2. ↑ Paul Bonart: But We Said No . Mark Backman, 2007, ISBN 978-0-615-15957-7 , pp. 157 ( google.de [accessed on January 31, 2019]).
  3. ↑ http://www.malingesellschaft.at/texte/nationalsozialismus/angelika-rosina-kuntner-2009-ein-tod-bei-feldkirch.-leben-und-werk-der-widerstandskaempferin-hilde-monte-olday-1914- 1945 Here also the picture of the criminal police report on the circumstances of the death of "Eva Schneider", recte Hilde Meisel.
  4. ^ Peter Koblank: Union Time, Hilda Monte and the Illegale "A" , online edition Mythos Elser 2006.
personal data
SURNAME Meisel, Hilde
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Monte, Hilda (pseudonym); Monte, Hilde (pseudonym); Trier, Selma (pseudonym); Harriman, Helen (pseudonym); Schneider, Eva (pseudonym); Olday, Hilde (after marriage)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German socialist and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH July 31, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH April 17, 1945
Place of death Feldkirch