Madleen Pechel

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Walburga Madleen Helena (Lena) Pechel , b. Mayser, divorced Feßmann (born August 30, 1905 in Ulm ; † November 7, 1991 ) was a German secretary and resistance fighter against National Socialism.

Life and activity

In 1933 Madleen Mayser, who had been called Feßmann since they married, became the private secretary of the writer Edgar Jung , who at that time began to work actively against the Nazi dictatorship that was established in that year: Jung organized a widespread one until 1934 oppositional network that aimed to prepare a coup against the ruling system.

After Edgar Jung's arrest on the evening of June 25, 1934 in his apartment in Berlin-Halensee, Fessmann notified her, who discovered this when she went to the apartment on June 26 and noticed the hastily scribbled word "Gestapo" on the medicine cabinet in the bathroom of the apartment , his sympathizers in the office of the Deputy Chancellor. On the same day, she also wrote a letter to his friend Edmund Forschbach in Cologne, which he received on June 27, in which she informed him of what had happened so that he could evade any arrest that was intended for him.

Fessmann himself was subjected to a detailed interrogation by the Gestapo on June 28, 1934 , in which Jung's friends only revealed the names Rudolf Pechel and Forschbach.

After Jung's murder on the night of June 30th to July 1st, 1934, Fessmann switched to the service of his friend Rudolf Pechel, for whose Deutsche Rundschau she henceforth worked as a secretary. In 1938 she married Pechel for the second time and from then on carried the name Madleen Pechel. In the following years Pechel supported her husband in his anti-Nazi work.

Pechel's husband was imprisoned in a concentration camp in 1943 because of the essays he had written that contained hidden attacks on the Nazi regime, where he remained until the spring of 1945.

In autumn 1943 Pechel came into contact with Franz Jacob, a functionary of the communist underground organization in Berlin. Both agreed on the need for joint active resistance from all strata of the population to end the war. Pechel arranged for Jacob discussions with other opposition representatives of the bourgeoisie, companies, landowners, pastors and officers.

In August 1944, Pechel was arrested by the Gestapo after it was discovered that she had made her Berlin apartment available to officials of the illegal underground KPD for secret meetings. Pechel was charged before the People's Court (8 J 187/44 = 1 H 272/44), whereby the representative of the Reich Attorney's Office applied for the death penalty against her. The indictment took place on September 13, 1944. In the judgment of October 12, 1944, she was found guilty of supporting a communist functionary in illegal activity and sentenced to a prison sentence of six years and the same loss of honor. She was then taken to Waldheim prison, from which she was liberated by the Red Army in the spring of 1945.

In 1946 her husband Pechel dedicated his book to Deutsche Spiegel .

Fonts

  • "Destiny of a Berlin private library", on: Das literäre Deutschland 2.1951, no. 6, p. 5

As editor

  • Rudolf Pechel. German present. Essays and lectures 1945-1952. Compiled and edited by Madleen Pechel and Klaus Hoche , Darmstadt 1953.

literature

  • Resistance in Berlin against the Nazi regime 1933 to 1945: Ein biographisches Lexikon , Vol. 6, 2002, p. 31.
  • Winfried Meyer: Conspirators in the concentration camp: Hans von Dohnanyi and the prisoners of July 20, 1944 in Sachsenhausen concentration camp , 1999, p. 325.
  • Rainer Orth : The official seat of the opposition? Politics and state restructuring plans in the office of the Deputy Chancellor in the years 1933-1934 , Böhlau, Cologne a. a. 2016, p. 663.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Schumann: Germany in the Second World War , Vol. 5, 1974, p. 286.
  2. ^ Walter Wagner: The People's Courts in the National Socialist State, 1974, p. 182. Copy of the judgment in the archive d. IfZ, Sign. Fa 117/290
  3. ↑ Rudolf Pechel: Deutsche Spiegel , 1945, p. 5 ("My brave good comrade-in-arms Madleen Pechel to own"). In his book German Resistance , 1947, p. 14, there is a thank you to Madleen Pechel "my tireless helper, also with this book" and his "brave comrade in life and in combat."
personal data
SURNAME Pechel, Madleen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pechel, Walburga Madleen Helena (full name); Pechel, Lena; Mayser, Madleen (maiden name); Feßmann, Madleen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German secretary and resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH August 30, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Ulm
DATE OF DEATH November 7, 1991