Kathe Draeger

Käthe Draeger, 1932

Käthe Draeger (born June 9, 1900 in Berlin ; † April 2, 1974 there ) was a communist politician, educator and psychoanalyst.

Life

After her schooling and subsequent studies in the Lyceum in Berlin-Tempelhof and at the teacher training college, she was an elementary school teacher. Because of her leftist views, the school authorities suspected her, so initially did not get a job and therefore became a private tutor for a landowner in Mecklenburg from 1922 to 1925.

In KPD and KPDO

When she returned to Berlin, she moved closer to the KPD and joined the teachers' union. In 1926 she became a teacher at the secular Rütli school in the workers' district of Berlin-Neukölln. (Secular schools - at that time exceptions in the school system - were non-denominational, did not give religious instruction.) Käthe Draeger was against the new ultra-left politics of the KPD, against RGO politics and social fascism thesis . She was committed to the united front of communists and social democrats against National Socialism. In 1929 she became a member of the Communist Party Opposition (KPDO) .

resistance

In 1931 Käthe Draeger began her training at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, did her training analysis and in 1936 became a member of the German Psychoanalytic Society (DPG). After the DPG was dissolved in 1938, Käthe Draeger continued her work at the German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy ("Göring Institute"). Your work in the Berlin leadership of the KPD-O was subject to the strictest secrecy. In the illegality, she actively worked on the distribution of KPD-O publications. Through her courier trips she kept in touch with the groups in the Reich and with the foreign committee. Käthe Draeger organized the help for the families of the prisoners and for a Jewish comrade who, thanks to the help, survived illegally in Berlin. After the illegal Reich leadership was arrested in 1937, she took over the central work of the party with three other comrades. Classified as politically unreliable by the Nazis, she was transferred to Poland as a teacher in 1942. Because there was a lack of qualified lecturers in the Reich, they were brought back to the "Göring Institute".

construction

In 1945 Käthe Draeger worked on the reorganization of the school system and the rebuilding of psychoanalysis . She wanted to get involved in the creation of a socialist post-war Germany, so she joined the SED in 1946 . She was offered the post of health minister in the GDR, which she refused. Until 1947 she worked as a lecturer at the East Berlin Fröbelseminar in teacher training. In the eastern part of Germany, the first repression measures against former members of the KPD-O began at this time, they were also referred to as "Brandleristen" . Käthe Draeger was denounced for passing on a brochure by the critical communist August Thalheimer , expelled from the SED and dismissed as a lecturer in East Berlin in 1947. Students were also removed from the seminar for reading this booklet. She then worked as an educational advisor at the Berlin-Charlottenburg Youth Welfare Office and participated in the founding of the German Psychoanalytical Association (DPV) in 1950, where she was elected to the board in 1956, and she was co-editor of an important journal for psychoanalysis. Käthe Draeger continued to support the critical communist group workers policy . She died on April 2, 1974. At her request, her urn was buried in a nameless cemetery.

literature

• Regine Lockot: Remembering and working through. On the history of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy under National Socialism. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1985.
• Wilfriede Otto , Thomas Klein, Peter Grieder: Visions. Repression and opposition in the SED (1949-1989).
• Theodor Bergmann : Against the current. The history of the KPD (opposition). Hamburg 2004. In this book the short biography of Käthe Draeger: p. 431.