Jenny Matern

Jenny Matern (born April 11, 1904 in Hanover as Jenny Helene Auguste Julia Pickerodt , † September 22, 1960 in Berlin ) was a German politician .

Life

Matern was born the daughter of a turner and attended business school. After completing this in 1919, she first worked as a stenographer for the SPD leadership in Lower Saxony and then until 1924 as a secretary at the local health insurance fund in Bamberg .

In 1919 she joined the Socialist Workers' Youth and the SPD . In 1921 she joined the Communist Youth Association and in 1923 the Communist Party of Germany . From 1925 she belonged to the Red Aid (RHD) and began to work for the Lower Saxony KPD district leadership. In 1931 she joined the editorial staff of the tribune and began to work for the district management in Berlin-Brandenburg.

After the " seizure of power " by the NSDAP , she was arrested in September 1933, imprisoned in Barnimstrasse women's prison in Berlin, and then imprisoned in Moringen concentration camp . After her release in May 1934 she emigrated to Prague by decision of the KPD in June 1934 , where she worked for the foreign leadership of the KPD in the office of the committee led by the Czech intellectual František Xaver Šalda to support political and other emigrants and later for the International Red Aid was active. She went to France in 1935 and worked as a secretary in the Paris office of the illegal management of the RHD. There she met her future husband Hermann Matern and emigrated with him to the Netherlands in 1936 . From 1937 she took part in the anti-fascist struggle in Norway and from 1940 in Sweden before she stayed in the Soviet Union from 1941 until the end of the war in 1945 and worked for the Moscow radio . In 1941/42 she attended the International Lenin School of the Communist International in Moscow and in 1944 the German Party School near Moscow.

In May 1945 she returned to Germany and in 1945/46 worked as State Secretary for Social Welfare in the state administration of Saxony. From 1946 to 1947 she was Vice President of the German Administration for Labor and Social Welfare and later worked in leading positions in social and health services, first in the Soviet occupation zone and later in the GDR . From 1948 to 1949 she was a member of the German People's Council . From 1950 to 1959 she was State Secretary in the Ministry of Health and Deputy Minister of Health. From 1950 Jenny Matern was a member of the federal executive committee and the presidium of the Democratic Women's Association of Germany . On May 29, 1959 she was elected chairman of the Central Committee of People's Solidarity .

tomb

Jenny Matern died at the age of 56. Her urn was buried in the memorial of the socialists in the Friedrichsfelde central cemetery in Berlin-Lichtenberg .

Awards and honors

• Medal "For heroic work in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" (USSR)
• Patriotic Order of Merit in Silver (GDR May 6, 1955)
• Medal for fighters against fascism 1933 to 1945 (1958)
• From 1962 to 1992, today's Johanna-Tesch- Strasse in Berlin-Niederschöneweide bore her name.

literature

• G. Bach: Matern, Jenny Helene Auguste Julia . In: Institute for Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the SED (Hrsg.): History of the German labor movement , Biographisches Lexikon . Dietz Verlag , Berlin (GDR) 1970.
• Short biography for:  Matern, Jenny . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

• Heike Wolter: Matern, Jenny Helene Auguste Julia . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Jenny Matern 1st chairwoman of the people's solidarity . In: Neues Deutschland , May 30, 1959, p. 2.
2. ^ Jenny-Matern-Strasse . In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein