Kate Voelkner
Kathe Lydia Voelkner (* 12. April 1906 in Gdansk ; † 25 or 28. July 1943 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was a German resistance fighter in the French Resistance .
Life
Käte Voelkner (occasionally also spelled Käthe) and her brother Benno Voelkner come from a West Prussian working-class family. She learned the profession of stenographer and later also worked as an artist. She performed in several European countries with her partner Johann Podsiadlo . On her return from a tour of the Soviet Union , she was briefly arrested in 1936. She drew the conclusions from this and emigrated to France with her partner and their two children, Hans Voelkner and Henry Voelkner .
After the Wehrmacht marched into Paris, Käte Voelkner and Johann Podsiadlo joined the French resistance movement and were hired by German agencies: Käte Voelkner became secretary in the Sauckel office , the “ labor deployment group ” of the German command in Paris; Johann Posiadlo became an interpreter at the Todt Organization . "Confidential" information from these departments was passed on to Leopold Trepper and Anatoli Markowitsch Gurewitsch via conspiratorial channels . Together with Wassilij Maximowitsch , Anna Maximowitsch , Isidor Springer and Henry Robinson, the two formed a resistance group.
On January 31, 1943, Käte Voelkner was arrested in Paris by a special command of the Gestapo . After lengthy interrogation and torture, she was sentenced to death on March 15, 1943 by a special tribunal of the Reich Court Martial under the direction of Manfred Roeder . When she was sentenced, she is said to have said: "I am happy to have done a few little things for communism!"
She was transported to Berlin for further interrogations at the Gestapo headquarters , where she was temporarily imprisoned in Barnimstrasse women's prison.
Their children came to a SS - children's home . Johann Podsiadlo was also murdered in Plötzensee prison at the end of July 1943.
literature
- Gilles Perrault : On the trail of the Red Chapel. Europaverlag, Vienna, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-203-51232-7 .
- Hans Coppi junior : The “Red Orchestra” in the field of tension between resistance and intelligence work. The Trepper Report of June 1943 . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 3/1996, pp. 431–458 (pdf; 7 MB)
- Hans Schafranek , Johannes Tuchel (Ed.): War in the ether. Resistance and espionage in World War II. Picus, 2004, ISBN 3-854-52470-6 .
- Leopold Trepper : The truth. Autobiography. dtv, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-423-01387-7 .
- Women from Germany in the French Resistance. Labor movement series: research, documents, biographies. Ed. Ulla Plener . Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-929390-80-9 , pp. 144ff.
- Johannes Tuchel : The forgotten resistance - on real history and perception of the struggle against the Nazi dictatorship. Collection of articles. Göttingen 2005. ( Google books )
Web links
- Gottfried Hamacher, André Lohmar, Herbert Mayer, Günter Wehner, Harald Wittstock: Against Hitler. Germans in the Resistance, in the armed forces of the anti-Hitler coalition and the “Free Germany” movement: short biographies (= manuscripts / Rosa Luxemburg Foundation 53). Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 2nd edition 2005, ISBN 3-320-02941-X , p. 206 (PDF; 873 kB)
Individual evidence
- ^ Family research in West Prussia - population database. Retrieved May 20, 2019 .
- ↑ -..- ptx calls moscow .--. The history of the “Red Chapel”. 2. Continuation: The agent network in France . In: Der Spiegel . No. 23 , 1968 ( online ).
- ↑ Cristina Fischer: Between fear and heroism. In: our zeit - newspaper of the DKP . March 10, 2006, accessed March 24, 2018 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Voelkner, Kate |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Voelkner, Käthe; Käte Lydia Voelkner (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German artist and resistance fighter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 12, 1906 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Danzig |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 25, 1943 or July 28, 1943 |
| Place of death | Berlin |