Kate Duncker

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Käte Duncker in Friedrichroda (monument until 2009 in the local spa park)

Kate Duncker ; actually Paula Kathinka Duncker (born Döll; * May 23, 1871 in Lörrach ; † May 2, 1953 in Bernau near Berlin ) was a German social democratic , later communist politician, teacher in workers' education and activist of the women's movement . She was a member of the headquarters of the KPD in 1918/19 and a member of the Thuringian state parliament from 1921 to 1923 .

Training and teaching

Käte Döll was born as the daughter of a businessman in Lörrach, Baden. After her father's death in 1877, the mother moved with her to Friedrichroda in Thuringia. There she attended the secondary school for girls from 1880 , then the trade school in Gotha . 1888–90 she received her pedagogical training at the Eisenach teacher training college . In 1893 she became a teacher at the von Steyber'schen Higher Girls' School on Nordstrasse in Leipzig . From 1894 she held evening courses at the Leipzig Workers' Education Association and in the Society for Ethical Culture, in 1896 she was fired. She went to Hamburg at the Elisa Magdalena Green's private higher girls' school, and also taught at the “Humboldt” educational association. In 1896 she took part in the congress of the tailors' union and met Clara Zetkin . Because of her support of the striking dockworkers in the great strike of 1896/97 , she was dismissed again.

Workers' education, SPD, women's movement

In 1898 she married the then economics and history student Hermann Duncker in Leipzig , who later became a social democratic and communist “traveling teacher” and a trade union official. She continued her education as a guest student at the university and joined the SPD. In addition to organizing discussion evenings in the Leipziger Volkshaus , she gave lectures in the workers' education association (literature, education, history, social policy, economics). She became chairman of the "Association for Women and Girls of the Working Class", a member of the art care department of the educational association and organized summer parties for working-class families. In 1899 she gave birth to her daughter Hedwig.

In a police report from 1901 it was said: “The intellectually most outstanding agitator of the local social democracy. The women's movement is the former teacher, now Ms. Duncker, who appears as a speaker in almost all women's assemblies and fights against the bourgeois women's associations. ”Duncker published a paper on the participation of women in employment . In 1902 her health collapsed and in 1903 she moved to Dresden . Here she gave lectures on child protection, upbringing and women's rights. At the beginning of February 1903 their son Karl was born (born February 2, 1903), who was to become one of the most well-known representatives of Gestalt psychology .

In 1906 she published a paper on child labor and its fight . In the same year she gave a lecture on care for pregnant women and women who have recently given birth at the 4th Social Democratic Women's Conference in Mannheim . In 1907 she became the second editor (deputy editor-in-chief) of the socialist women's magazine Die Equality , headed by Clara Zetkin , responsible for the children's supplement (under the pseudonym "Neuland"). She had a close friendship with Zetkin. In 1907 the whole family moved to Stuttgart . In 1908 she gave a lecture on education at the women's conference in Nuremberg . In 1910 she took part in the second International Women's Conference in Copenhagen with a presentation on maternity and child welfare . She was also involved in the decision on International Women's Day .

After the birth of her third child ( Wolfgang , born on February 5, 1909), she left the editorial team of Equality . In the meantime she was active in the central education committee of the SPD from 1908 to 1912. In 1911 she gave a lecture at the social democratic party congress in Jena , where she met Rosa Luxemburg . The following year she moved to Berlin .

Activity in the Spartacus group and KPD

During the First World War, Duncker belonged to the left and pacifist wing of the SPD and was thus in opposition to the party executive. In 1915, along with Rosa Luxemburg and Franz Mehring, she co-founded the magazine Die Internationale , and in the same year she was a delegate to the International Conference of Socialist Women against the War in Bern . In 1916 the Internationale Gruppe was renamed " Spartakusgruppe ", with the participation of Käte Duncker. She participated in the illegal publication of the Spartacus letters and temporarily took over the management of the Central Education Committee and the supervision of youth groups in Steglitz and Neukölln . House searches, interrogations and, on May 30, 1916, the ban on speaking followed. After the summoning or arrest of many of her fellow campaigners, she was responsible for the actual management of the organizational work of the Spartacus group. In September 1916 she represented the group at the Reich Conference of the SPD, fell ill and spent three months in the sanatorium. After the party split in April 1917, the Spartacus group joined the USPD . In addition to her work as an intermediate master in the Reich Office for Fruit and Vegetables, she was a delegate of the Spartacus group at the 3rd Zimmerwald Conference in Stockholm in September 1917 .

In the course of the November Revolution in Germany, the Spartakus group was transformed on November 11, 1918 into an independent, Reich-wide organization, the Spartakusbund . Duncker worked in its headquarters (board of directors). During this time she wrote a draft about the school of the future . On December 30, 1918, when the KPD was founded, she was elected to its headquarters, to which she belonged until the 2nd party congress in October 1919. This again resulted in arrests and interrogations. After the killing of KPD leaders Karl Liebknecht , Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches , she fled Germany to Denmark in March 1919 and then on to Sweden.

At the end of 1919 she returned to Berlin, where she worked at the workers' training school and also made a living from translations. In 1920 the company moved to Thuringia . Here she became a member of the state parliament in 1921 and demanded measures to combat the misery of children. In 1924 she traveled to Moscow , in 1925 she was back in Berlin and wrote The Woman in the Soviet Union (1927). In the following years she continued to work as a publicist and educator. From 1931 she was part of the editorial team of the magazine Der Weg der Frau .

Persecution and emigration

In 1933 the persecution intensified with a house search, the library being burned and the man arrested. In 1935 she moved back to Friedrichroda, where she ran a guesthouse that also served as a meeting place for anti-fascists. In November 1938 she emigrated to the USA , where her son Karl taught at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. She was hit hard by the suicide of the severely depressed Karl in 1940. Her youngest child, Wolfgang, was arrested in 1937 in the Soviet Union as a supporter of Bukharin and disappeared in the camp. He died there in 1942, but his parents were not certain of his death until 1948. After Karl's death, Käte Duncker moved from Swarthmore to North Garden (Virginia). Her husband also managed to emigrate to the USA in 1941. The couple received support from the Quakers but had to move repeatedly. Most recently they lived in a small apartment on Long Island . Käte Duncker worked for some time as a domestic help, later she taught German at a high school .

In May 1947 the couple returned to Germany. However, she was no longer active in the Soviet occupation zone and, unlike her husband, did not apply for admission to the SED . They lived in Rostock and later in Bernau, where her husband ran the trade union college "Fritz Heckert" . In 1951, Käte Duncker stood up for Jacob Walcher , who had been expelled from the SED. She died on May 2, 1953 after a long and serious illness in Bernau.

Honors and memorials

School sign KBS I "Käthe Duncker" 1987

According to her wishes, her urn was buried in the Friedrichrodaer Friedhof, where her mother was also buried. In the western part of the cemetery, just a few steps from the memorial for the victims of fascism, is their grave monument. Another monument shows Käte Duncker as a teacher in Friedrichroda, it was in the city's spa park until 2009 and was removed when the spa promenade was redesigned.

The old commercial school was named Dunckers from 1981 to 1992 as the commercial (municipal) vocational school I (KBS I) in Leipzig-Kleinzschocher .

The LEFT parliamentary group . in the Thuringian state parliament named their parliamentary group meeting room (room 201 in the functional building of the state parliament) as "Käte-Duncker-Saal" on October 15, 2013.

literature

  • Heinz Germany (eds.): Käte and Hermann Duncker. A diary in letters (1894–1953). Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2016.
  • Ruth Kirsch: Kate Duncker. From her life. Dietz Verlag, Berlin (East) 1982.
  • Duncker, Kate . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .

Web links

Commons : Käte Duncker  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Duncker, Kate. In: Handbook of the German Communists. Karl Dietz Verlag, 2008.
  2. ↑ a b c d Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (ed.): Biographical manual of German-speaking emigration after 1933. Volume I: Politics, economy, public life. KG Saur, Munich and others 1980. Entry Duncker, Kät (h) e , p. 141.
  3. ↑ Mario Keßler : Western emigrants: German communists between USA exile and GDR. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2019, p. 57.
  4. ↑ Mario Keßler: Western emigrants: German communists between USA exile and GDR. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2019, pp. 88–91.
  5. ↑ Mario Keßler: Western emigrants: German communists between USA exile and GDR. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2019, pp. 57–58.
  6. ↑ Mario Keßler: Western emigrants: German communists between USA exile and GDR. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2019, p. 91.
  7. ↑ Ruth Kirsch: Kate Duncker. From her life. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1982, p. 181.
  8. ↑ Press release of the parliamentary group ( Memento of January 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Duncker, Kate
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Döll, Käte (maiden name); Duncker, Paula Kathinka (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician
DATE OF BIRTH May 23, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Loerrach , Baden
DATE OF DEATH May 2, 1953
PLACE OF DEATH Bernau near Berlin