Käthe Niederkirchner

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Käthe Niederkirchner , called Katja (born October 7, 1909 in Berlin ; † September 28, 1944 in Ravensbrück ), was a communist resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Käthe Niederkirchner was one of five children of the communist union official and pipe layer Michael Niederkirchner . Her mother came from a family of Slovak farm workers and had only been living in Germany for four years at the time Käthe was born. The grandfather, who came from a family of Germans living in Hungary , was a quarry worker. Politically, she followed in her father's footsteps early on and was a member of a communist children's group. In 1925 she joined the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD) and in 1929 she joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). After completing an apprenticeship as a tailor, Niederkirchner was mostly unemployed. As a result, she participated all the more intensely in the political struggle of her party. Among other things, she distributed leaflets and gave speeches at political events. On March 27, 1933, she was arrested for the first time and then expelled from Germany because she had Hungarian citizenship because of her father's Danube Swabian origin. She followed her family to the Soviet Union . She was finally able to study in Moscow and became a spokesperson for Radio Moscow's German broadcasts . Her older brother Paul Niederkirchner (1907-19 October 1938) was arrested in 1938 in the course of the Great Terror by the Soviet secret service NKVD in Moscow and shot there.

After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, Niederkirchner volunteered for the Red Army to take part in the fight against National Socialism . In July 1941 she married the German Spanish fighter Heinz Wieland . Niederkirchner was intensively prepared for underground work in Germany. On October 7, 1943, she and Theodor Winter jumped from a Soviet plane over Germany-occupied Poland. Together they were supposed to make contact with illegal groups in Berlin, but were discovered on the way there, arrested by the Gestapo and interrogated under torture . Without a trial, Niederkirchner was imprisoned in various prisons and, at the end of May 1944, taken to the Ravensbrück concentration camp , where she was taken into solitary confinement. During this time she kept secret diary entries that have been preserved.

On the night of September 27-28, 1944, Käthe Niederkirchner was shot by members of the SS .

Her niece Käte Niederkirchner practiced as a pediatrician in Berlin and was a member of the People's Chamber of the GDR for 23 years ; As its vice-president, she helped prepare the unification agreement in 1990 .

Honors

Memorial plaque on Pappelallee 22, in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg

More than 300 collectives and companies, kindergartens and sports clubs as well as streets in numerous communities were named after Käthe Niederkirchner . The names of many institutions and streets survived German reunification .

Literature (selection)

  • Hans Schafranek : In the rear of the enemy. Soviet parachute agents in the German Reich 1942–1944. In: Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance. (Ed.), Yearbook 1996, Vienna 1996, pp. 10–40.
  • Eberhard Panitz : Käte - a biographical story about Käte Niederkirchner based on notes and reports from her sister Mia. Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin 1955.
  • Eberhard Panitz: Käthe Niederkirchner. GNN-Verlag Sachsen, Schkeuditz, ISBN 3-929994-27-5 (reprint with numerous additions).
  • Karl Heinz Jahnke : Käte Niederkirchner. In: Karl H. Jahnke: Murdered and extinguished. Twelve German anti-fascists. With a foreword by Karl Kielhorn. Ahriman-Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1995 (Unwanted Books on Fascism, Vol. 8), ISBN 3-89484-553-8 , pp. 101-105 ( limited preview in the Google book search; publisher information ).
  • Guste Zörne, Helga Meyer: Katja from Poplar avenue. The children's book publisher, Berlin 1976.

Web links

Commons : Käthe Niederkirchner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ icols.org . International Corporation of Lost Structures: Young Heroes of the KJVD - Kate Niederkirchner
  2. ^ Information from the Federal Foundation for Coming to terms with the SED dictatorship
  3. ↑ Niederkirchnerstrasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert ) (Berlin)
  4. ^ Käthe-Niederkirchner-Strasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near  Kaupert ) (Berlin)
  5. ↑ Manfred Kanetzki: MiGs over Peenemünde . The history of the NVA air force units on Usedom. Media Script, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-9814822-1-8 , pp. 173 .
personal data
SURNAME Niederkirchner, Käthe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Katja
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighter in the Third Reich
DATE OF BIRTH October 7, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH September 28, 1944
Place of death Ravensbrück