Martha Arendsee
Hulda Martha Arendsee ( , born March 29, 1885 in Berlin-Wedding ; † May 22, 1953 in Berlin ) was a German politician and women's rights activist .
Life
Martha Arendsee was born as the daughter of a printer . After attending school and completing a commercial apprenticeship, she, who had suffered from a physical handicap from the age of 18, worked for more than ten years as an employee of the Berlin consumer cooperative .
Arendsee got involved in politics at an early stage, joined the SPD in 1906 and was responsible for women's work in Berlin from 1907 to 1916. In 1915 she accompanied Clara Zetkin to the International Women's Conference in Bern. In 1917 she switched to the USPD , where she advocated unification with the KPD at the end of 1920. She contributed her socio-political expertise as a member of the Prussian constitutional assembly from 1919 to 1921, in the Prussian state parliament from 1921 to 1924 and in the Reichstag from 1924 to 1930 .
In addition, Arendsee held the office of women's secretary for the Berlin KPD in 1922/1923 and edited the magazine Die Kommunistin . Later she was in the trade union commission, in the editorial office of the journal Proletarian Social Policy and from 1925 mainly in the international workers' aid (1931-1935 member of the IAH executive and the international secretariat for social policy). As a sympathizer of the right wing of the party around the former party chairmen August Thalheimer and Heinrich Brandler , who were excluded from the KPD , she was no longer nominated as a candidate for the 1930 Reichstag election.
Because of her political activities, she was sentenced to six months in prison after the NSDAP “ seized power ” in 1933. In 1934 Arendsee emigrated to Moscow via Prague and Paris . There she worked, among other things, as an employee in the social and economic department of the Red Trade Union International (RGI), temporarily also in the management of the "Club of Foreign Workers". From 1941 she worked at Radio Moscow . Her husband, Paul Schwenk , who lived with her in the Soviet Union , was imprisoned here for years during Stalin's Great Terror . In 1943, Arendsee was the only woman to be one of the founders of the National Committee for Free Germany .
After the Second World War
After the end of the Second World War , Arendsee returned to Germany with Wilhelm Pieck in June 1945. As a member of the Central Committee of the KPD (1945/1946) and after the forced unification of the SPD and KPD to form the SED of the SED party executive (1946/1947), Arendsee devoted himself again to women's work. Since August 1945 she was a member of the women's committee at the Berlin magistrate and from 1946 to 1948 headed the social policy department of the FDGB . In 1949/1950 she was chairwoman of the Social Insurance Institution in Berlin.
Honors
Her urn was buried in the memorial of the socialists in the Friedrichsfelde central cemetery in Berlin-Lichtenberg .
On the occasion of her 90th birthday, the GDR's Deutsche Post issued a stamp in honor of Martha Arendsee in 1975. On the 25th anniversary of her death in 1978, a street in what was then the Berlin-Marzahn development area (today's Marzahn-Hellersdorf district ) was named after her, and a senior citizens' home located there also bears her name to this day. In addition, a polytechnic high school in Berlin was given its name.
In Berlin House has been around since June 2006, a photo gallery, titled Before the door set - in Nazism persecuted Berlin city councilor and magistrate members from 1933 to 1945 , is remembered in the well to Martha Arendsee.
literature
- A. Pieggatzki, St. Weber: Arendsee, Martha . In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon . Dietz Verlag 1970, pp. 12-14.
- Active Museum Association : In Front of the Door - Berlin City Councilors and Magistrate Members persecuted under National Socialism 1933–1945 , Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-00-018931-9 , page 141 f.
- Hermann Weber : The change in German communism. The Stalinization of the KPD in the Weimar Republic . tape 2 . European publishing company, Frankfurt am Main 1969, p. 63 f . (Short biography).
- Bernd-Rainer Barth , Helmut Müller-Enbergs : Arendsee, Martha . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
- Hermann Weber, Andreas Herbst : German communists . Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
- Eckhard Hansen, Florian Tennstedt (Eds.) U. a .: Biographical lexicon on the history of German social policy from 1871 to 1945 . Volume 2: Social politicians in the Weimar Republic and during National Socialism 1919 to 1945. Kassel University Press, Kassel 2018, ISBN 978-3-7376-0474-1 , pp. 2-4 ( online , PDF; 3.9 MB).
Web links
- Literature by and about Martha Arendsee in the catalog of the German National Library
- Martha Arendsee in the database of members of the Reichstag
- Martha Arendsee at Sozialistenfriedhof.de
Individual evidence
- ^ Martha-Arendsee-Strasse. In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein (near Kaupert )
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Arendsee, Martha |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German politician and women's rights activist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 29, 1885 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 22, 1953 |
| Place of death | Berlin |