Marie Pleißner

Luise Marie Pleißner (born May 17, 1891 in Chemnitz ; † December 21, 1983 in Karl-Marx-Stadt ) was a women's rights activist and teacher .

Childhood and youth

Marie Pleißner, actually Luise Marie, was born as the daughter of the elementary school teacher Julius Pleißner and his wife, the assistant teacher Augusta Pleißner. She attended elementary school until 1903 and graduated from high school for girls at Easter 1907. Marie Pleißner then attended the Royal Saxon Teachers' Seminar in Callnberg near Lichtenstein until 1911 , and in August 1911 she passed the school leaving examination. Subsequently, she found a job as a private tutor in a Dresden officer's family.

Presumably due to her liberal upbringing and her early interest in humanistic and theological issues, she could not join the pro-military upbringing of the children of the house and left the household after less than a year. She became an assistant teacher in Limbach around Easter 1912. In the same year she joined the Chemnitz branch of the German Teachers' Association (DLV) . On May 8, 1914, she passed the electoral ability test and was able to apply for a permanent position, which she started at the Chemnitz Castle School on January 1, 1915. She taught German and religion, from 1924 also gymnastics. In the same year she joined the Chemnitz branch of the General German Teachers' Association (ADLV), which was founded in 1890 by 85 women and advocated better education for girls and the admission of women to academic training. Marie Pleißner became part of the bourgeois women's movement.

First World War

Her brother Rudolf Pleißner, who had studied painting in Munich, was an officer in the First World War and was seriously wounded. After his return he joined the SPD, while her sister Ilse served as a nurse. Your reports could have moved Marie Pleißner to solidify her pacifist worldview. In the years 1917/1918, as part of her work at the ADLV, she repeatedly made demands for peace and appeared as a vehement pacifist.

After the end of the war, Marie Pleißner became chairwoman of the ADLV. In 1918 she became a member of the newly founded German Democratic Party (DDP) and was a member of the board as chairwoman of the women's association of her party. Her brother designed an election poster for this party in 1929, which did not detract from his membership in the SPD. Marie Pleißner became a member of the German Peace Society , the German League for Human Rights and the International Union of Reconciliation in 1919 . In the late twenties Marie Pleißner founded the Chemnitz branch of the German Citizens' Association, an association that was a successor to the General German Women's Association and stood for peace and women's rights. In 1932 she and others founded the Union of Mothers and Educators for Peace in Chemnitz, which had 200 members until it was dissolved a year later.

In March 1933 she ran for the DDP (since 1930 German State Party DStP) in vain for the Reichstag. In the course of the seizure of power by the National Socialists, the party was dissolved. In the same year her brother, who had joined a pacifist and anti-Nazi group of artists in Chemnitz since 1924, fled and hid in the Bohemian forests for over ten years.

In 1933 Marie Pleißner was summoned several times to attend a hearing at the school office. She said she had made derogatory comments about Hitler in class. She was accused of having a “very hostile attitude towards National Socialism” and a “pacifist attitude to the left”. Nevertheless, she was initially able to remain in the school service, as a survey of 20 schoolgirls could not prove any negative statements.

In February 1934, Marie Pleißner's name appeared on a list of teaching positions to be deleted. As the only trained gymnastics teacher, they did not want to fire her, but instead put her in early retirement, against which she appealed. After another complaint, Marie Pleißner was given permanent retirement at the end of 1934 at the age of 43. She became a housekeeper, took care of the elderly, and secretly gave private tuition to Jewish children.

Resistance and imprisonment in a concentration camp

Marie Pleißner made her apartment in Chemnitz available as a meeting place for opponents of National Socialism and helped Jewish people prepare for emigration by offering English courses. After the pogrom night in 1938 , she traveled to Berlin and tried unsuccessfully to organize public protests with the Quakers . In the spring of 1939 she traveled to England to inquire about accommodation for Jewish emigrants and visited the Jewish community in London as well as the home office of the Jewish community and finally the Friends House of the Quakers, which she joined at the end of the trip.

In the summer of the same year she was denounced by a German student tutor for anti-war statements and arrested by the Gestapo on September 7, 1939 . She was imprisoned in several prisons and was sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp on October 5th with prisoner number 2228 as a political prisoner . Her father, Julius Pleißner, tried several times in vain to get her released. On April 20, 1940, Marie Pleißner was released on Hitler's 50th birthday as part of the amnesty of political prisoners. She had to go to the Gestapo every week. The massive intimidation by the National Socialists did not stop them from staying in touch with the Quakers in London and from providing support in their power for the emigration of Jews.

After the war

In August 1945 Marie Pleißner asked the City Council of Chemnitz for her reinstatement, for health reasons for use in the administration. Marie Pleißner, who remained unmarried for the rest of her life, has only been addressed as “woman” since 1945. From September 1945 she became a senior teacher at the state grammar school Hohe Straße in Chemnitz (later Friedrich-Engels-Oberschule), from January 2, 1946 she was at the new teacher school in Chemnitz.

Marie Pleißner became a member of the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany (LDPD), on whose board she rose. She was part of the anti-fascist-democratic bloc within the party, parliamentary group leader of the city council and district chairwoman. In 1946 she became a member of the Saxon State Parliament and was a member of the “ Victims of Fascism ” committee. She was a member of the German Peace Council, the Peace Council of the GDR and the Christian Peace Conference. In March 1947 she took part in the first women's peace congress and became a co-founder of the Democratic Women's Association of Germany .

Marie Pleißner's grave at the Nikolaifriedhof in Chemnitz-Altendorf

In April 1947, Marie Pleißner demanded the restoration of the Jewish cemetery and the erection of a memorial in Chemnitz. She vehemently opposed the introduction of military science lessons in the GDR, and gave lectures at the peace conference in Austria, the Federal Republic of Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Great Britain. Because of her critical stance, she finally received no or late delivery of exit permits.

In October 1950 Marie Pleißner's status was revoked, against which she took action with a letter of support from the Jewish community and 13 other reports. On February 8, 1951, her status was returned. From 1951 she was a member of the state executive committee of the LDPD Saxony. In 1953 she advocated the collection of recyclable materials for reuse in public campaigns.

In 1976 she was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in gold. In 1981 she was awarded the Star of Friendship of Nations in silver.

Commemoration

In 2006 and 2008 a square and a park were named after her in Chemnitz.

literature

• StadtA Chemnitz, PA, No. 266, Bl. 30, minutes of the order from April 7, 1933.
• Liselotte Thomas-Heinrich: Fulfilled ideals in a fulfilled life. In: Sigrid Jacobeit / Liselotte Thomas-Heinrich (ed.): Kreuzweg Ravensbrück. Life pictures of anti-fascist resistance fighters, Leipzig 1987
• Helmut Müller-Enbergs :  Pleissner, Marie . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Neue Zeit , May 1, 1976, p. 2
2. ↑ Berliner Zeitung , 2./3. May 1981, p. 4