Margarete Wengels

Margarete Wengels (born February 29, 1856 in Krefeld , † April 17, 1931 ; born Margarete Wolter ) was a German socialist .

Life

Margarete was the daughter of a socialist stocking worker from Krefeld . In the 1870s she married Robert Wengels . At the end of 1878 the family moved to Berlin with their first child, as Robert could n't find a job due to the Socialist Law . There both of them worked for the illegal SPD. Robert was monitored by the Berlin police from 1888 at the latest, which led to a house search in 1889.

Despite the repeal of the Socialist Act in 1890, the Berlin Women's Agitation Commission was still illegal. In 1893 at the latest, Wengels headed this group. In autumn 1893 she was a delegate for Wolgast at the federal party congress of the SPD. There the work of the socialist women, especially the Berlin group, was particularly praised. At the end of the year, a Reich headquarters for socialist women was founded in Berlin, where Margarete Wengels worked as a confidante. At the same time, she founded an agitation fund for SPD women.

In the following year, Wengels was charged by a Greifswald public prosecutor for alleged agitation against the coup law . She could therefore not run again as chairwoman of the Berlin Women's Agitation Commission . In December 1895 the trial before a Berlin court and the Reichsgericht ended with a sentence of 14 days in prison. She did not have to start this early in 1896 because she was breastfeeding one of her children . She was later released from her sentence.

In 1896 Margarete Wengels was able to be active again in the SPD, but not in the women's agitation commission , which had since been dissolved , but as a confidante for women. In February 1898 she organized a "protest meeting of the Berlin women" against armament of the navy and colonial policy. Clara Zetkin spoke in front of the 3,000 visitors and Friedrich Naumann spoke in the opposite direction . In 1900, the political persecution of the SPD women's organizations, which had continued until then, was finally given up and the Berlin headquarters were expanded.

Gravestone of Wengels

In 1901 Margarete Wengels gave birth to the youngest of her nine children. In 1905 Margarete Wengels and Clara Zetkin urged the SPD men to show solidarity with the Russian Revolution . As they remained inactive, Wengels finally organized a solidarity event on February 9 with Clara Zetkin as the speaker. This event drew the men from the reserve and got them to hold events of their own. Franz Mehring said: "Two women saved the party's honor".

In the revisionism and later truce debate, Margarete Wengels positioned herself with Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg in the left wing of the party - unlike her husband. These differences eventually led to the couple living apart after the First World War . In 1915 she took part in the International Conference of Socialist Women Against the War in Bern from March 26th to 28th. Unlike many comrades, Wengels was not imprisoned during the war. Nor was she involved in founding the Spartacus group in 1916 . In 1917 she took part in the founding party convention of the USPD in Gotha . From 1919 to 1925 she was a city councilor in Berlin. When part of the USPD joined the KPD in the years after the war , it remained in the USPD and was again a member of the SPD from 1922. In 1924 she worked as a secretary at the SPD Party Congress in Berlin and in 1925 again as a delegate at the party congress in Heidelberg.

Margarete Wengels died on April 17, 1931. She and her husband were buried in the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery in the Socialist Memorial .

literature

• Luise Dornemann : Every day of her life: female figures from the 2nd century . Karl Dietz Verlag Berlin , 1988, ISBN 3-320-01068-9 , pp. 49-75

Web links

• Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery. Graves of the Social Democrats