Marie Priess

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Marie Priess , née Drews (born September 13, 1885 in Bühnsdorf near Bad Segeberg , † January 9, 1983 in Reinbek ) was a German communist resistance fighter against National Socialism and victims of National Socialism .

Life

Marie Drews came from a Hamburg working class family . She belonged to the SPD and was a staunch opponent of the First World War led by the German Empire . During the Kiel sailors' uprising in 1918, the then nineteen-year-old was the only woman on the workers' and soldiers' council in Kiel . In the years of the Weimar Republic she joined the KPD and became involved against the emerging National Socialism .

Memorial stone in the women's garden

After the transfer of power to the NSDAP , she continued her resistance against the Nazi regime illegally . With the beginning of the Second World War , she belonged to the Bästlein-Jacob-Abshagen resistance group , which supported foreign forced laborers and gave shelter to the persecuted. Together with her son Heinz Priess and the teacher Ernst Mittelbach they helped in the summer of 1942 over East Prussia with a parachute bailed German Communists Erna Eifler and Wilhelm Felldorf , because of the already started arrests against the Berlin groups of the Red Orchestra had there tried in vain to be contacted and had come to Hamburg with their reserve addresses. They offered them a place to hide for a while. When the Gestapo became aware of this, Marie and her son were arrested in October 1942. The Allied air raids on Hamburg at the end of July / beginning of August 1943 damaged the judicial prison so badly that several hundred prisoners were given custody leave with the condition that they report back after two months. Maria and Heinz Priess decided to go underground and live illegally in Hamburg. Both were arrested again on June 19, 1944 and sentenced to death by the People's Court in October 1944 . Heinz Priess was deported to Brandenburg prison and executed there on March 12, 1945.

Marie Priess was no longer transported to an execution site at the end of the war due to increasing disorganization of the traffic routes and survived. In an interview with Gerda Zorn , Priess said: "Why I survived - I don't know. I was relocated so often until I was freed from our 'enemies' who were our friends - our liberators. What a day! " Marie Priess died in 1983.

There is a memorial stone for Marie Priess in the women's garden at the Ohlsdorf cemetery in Hamburg.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Garden of Women e. V., Hamburg , accessed on July 17, 2013.
  2. ↑ Gerda Zorn: "Maria. Sentenced to death." In: Red grandmothers yesterday and today. Cologne, Röderberg im Pahl-Rugenstein-Verlag, 1989, p. 69.
  3. ↑ Gerda Zorn: "Maria. Sentenced to death." In: Red grandmothers yesterday and today. Cologne, Röderberg im Pahl-Rugenstein-Verlag, 1989, p. 79.
personal data
SURNAME Priess, Marie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Drews, Marie (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German communist resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH September 13, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Bühnsdorf near Bad Segeberg
DATE OF DEATH January 9, 1983
Place of death Reinbek