Irma Thalmann

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Irma Gabel-Thälmann (left) and Eva Budilová , secretary of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Women's Union, in the Berlin Palace of the Republic (1987).

Irma Thälmann , actually Irmgard , married Vester-Thälmann and her second marriage was Gabel-Thälmann (born November 6, 1919 in Hamburg-Eppendorf ; † December 10, 2000 in Berlin ) was a German functionary of the Democratic Women's Association of Germany (DFD) in the GDR . She was the daughter of the long-time KPD chairman Ernst Thälmann and survived her imprisonment in the Ravensbrück concentration camp at the time of National Socialism .

Life

Irma Thälmann was born as the daughter of the later KPD chairman Ernst Thälmann and his wife Rosa Thälmann , née Koch. She attended elementary school from 1926 to 1934 and then until 1936 the vocational school, which she had to drop out of because of her prominent imprisoned father. Irma Thälmann, who belonged to the young pioneers during her childhood and joined the KJVD in 1932 , was not given a job because of her well-known name and remained unemployed. Together with her mother, she regularly visited her father in prison and acted illegally as a courier, delivering messages to him or smuggling receipts from him. She also managed to secretly photograph her father while he was in detention.

From June 1936 she lived in Singen am Hohentwiel at Haselstrasse 1 with her childhood friend Heinrich Vester , whom she married in June 1940. From December 1941, Irma Vester lived at Rielasinger Strasse 180, where she was arrested on April 15, 1944 and imprisoned without trial in Singen, Hamburg and Berlin under the code name Martha Suhren . Together with her mother, who was arrested on May 5, 1944, she was imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp or its subcamp in Neubrandenburg until liberation from National Socialism . Although she was detained with a " Return Unwanted " note, she was about to see the end of the war.

After the end of the Second World War , she co-founded the anti-fascist women's committee in 1945 and then stayed with her mother in several sanatoriums in the Soviet Union until 1946 . She belonged to the KPD and became a member of the SED in 1946 after the compulsory merger of the SPD and KPD into the SED. In the Democratic Women's Federation of Germany (DFD) she became chairwoman of the DFD district board in Berlin-Treptow . In addition to her involvement in the Ravensbrück camp work group and the writing of books, she and her mother took on representative tasks for the SED. She herself worked in particular for the pioneer organization "Ernst Thälmann" and honored pioneers. She was the author of the children's book "Memories of My Father", which appeared in 1951.

Her main occupation was Irma Thälmann in the GDR for two years as a management instructor in the Ministry of Heavy Machinery . She then earned her living with a pension as a victim of the Nazi regime with fighter status. In 1986, she appeared as a joint plaintiff in the main proceedings before the Krefeld regional court against Wolfgang Otto , who was suspected of the murder of her father . Irma Thälmann was present when Mikhail Gorbachev unveiled an Ernst Thälmann memorial on Moscow's Leningradsky Prospect on October 3, 1986 - on the occasion of her father's 100th birthday.

After German reunification , she left the party of democratic socialism in 1990 out of disappointment at the re-evaluation of her father's role and joined the KPD , which was re-established in 1990 , for which she ran unsuccessfully in the 1994 federal election in the Berlin-Lichtenberg constituency (266 votes).

On January 9, 2001, Irma Gabel-Thälmann, who died on December 10, 2000, was buried in the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery . Your urn is in the Pergolenweg grave complex of the socialist memorial there .

Awards and honors

Fonts

  • Memories of my father . Children's book publisher, Berlin 1951.

literature

Web links

Commons : Irma Gabel-Thälmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b René Börrnert: How Ernst Thalmann faithfully and boldly! The Thälmann image of the SED in everyday education in the GDR. Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn, 2004, ISBN 3-7815-1321-1 , p. 55f.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Elke Reuter:  Gabel-Thälmann, Irmgard . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  3. ↑ a b René Börrnert: How Ernst Thalmann faithfully and boldly! The Thälmann image of the SED in everyday education in the GDR. Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn, 2004, ISBN 3-7815-1321-1 , p. 57f.
  4. ↑ a b The story lives next door , Südkurier , February 9, 2018
  5. ↑ a b Irma Gabel-Thälmann: Born 1919 . In: Der Tagesspiegel , Berlin, issue of December 21, 2000
  6. ↑ Mikhail Gorbachev . In: Der Spiegel . No. 41 , 1986, pp. 296 ( online - October 6, 1986 ).
  7. ^ Kulturzentrum der Aktion Lebens Qualität eV: Irma Gabel-Thälmann on http://www.al-kulturzentrum.de
  8. ↑ Neues Deutschland , October 4, 1984, p. 5
  9. ↑ Berliner Zeitung , October 3, 1989, p. 4
  10. ↑ Stumbling blocks laid for the Thälmann family - Justice Minister Maas rejects Gedeon's criticism
personal data
SURNAME Thalmann, Irma
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gabel-Thalmann, Irma; Thalmann, Irmgard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SED functionary and daughter of Ernst Thälmann
DATE OF BIRTH November 6, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH December 10, 2000
Place of death Berlin