Martha Naujoks

Martha Naujoks (born December 2, 1903 in Krefeld as Martha Pleul, † January 26, 1998 in Hamburg ) was a communist resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

Martha Pleul was the daughter of a weaver and a seamstress. In 1906 the family moved to Zwickau in Vogtland , in 1908 to Falkenstein / Vogtl. At the beginning of the First World War, as an eleven-year-old girl, Martha had to cut large balls of nettles while working from home. The father came to the Eastern Front , the mother was drafted into a powder factory as a moulder. In addition to working at home, she had to look after her younger sister Else and other children from the house. In 1916 the father was asked to work at the Leuna Works , and the family first moved to Dessau , then to Halle .

After finishing school in 1918, she attended a private Jewish business school. In order to raise the school fees, Martha and her mother had to earn some extra money from tailoring. Martha also learned shorthand and typing . In 1919 she joined the Free Socialist Youth (FJS). Like her parents, who converted from the SPD to the USPD after the war loans were approved, she became a member of the KPD in December 1920 . She worked at the Economic Council Organization (WRO) with Bernard Koenen , later she worked for the KPD district leadership Halle-Merseburg under the direction of Georg Schumann . During the March 1921 campaigns, she worked illegally in political management with Alfred Oelßner . Because of imminent arrests, she had to move to Hanover, where she worked for the district leadership of the KPD and was a functionary of the Communist Youth Association (KJVD). In 1922 she took part in the meeting of the Reich Committee of the KJVD in Hanover.

At the end of 1922 Martha Pleul moved to Hamburg and worked for the Hamburger Volkszeitung (HVZ). She took part in the Hamburg uprising in 1923 and was therefore in custody for three months. In 1926 she married Harry Naujoks , who became chairman of the Hamburg Communist Youth Association (KJVD) after the Hamburg uprising in October 1923. After her release from prison she worked again in the editorial office of the Hamburger Volkszeitung , later at the German-Russian Petroleum Society (DEROP) and the commercial agency of the USSR .

From 1933 the couple continued to work illegally for the KPD. Martha Naujoks was taken into so-called protective custody on July 28th . After her release, she continued to work illegally. From the beginning of 1934 until the autumn of 1935 she tried to reorganize the Hamburg party organization with Hans Westermann , Erwin Fischer and Horst Fröhlich after several waves of arrests. On September 30th, at the decision of the party leadership, she and Wilhelm Knöchel , who was delegated to the VII World Congress, crossed the Sudeten German border to Prague . There she was received by Walter Ulbricht and Hans Kippenberger . Until the beginning of 1936 she performed a. a. Frontier work . She then emigrated to the Soviet Union, where she lived under the party name Inge Karst. She first worked at the publishing house for foreign workers. In June 1937 she was expelled from the KPD in exile because of “political unreliability”; she had kept silent about the fact that her mother had temporarily belonged to the Lenin League . In April 1939 she was accepted back into the party and then worked for the Communist International (KI), the International Lenin School and, together with Ernst Fischer, in the secret successor organization of the KI, the so-called Institute 6 . Towards the end of the war, Martha was prepared for a parachute jump in Leuna and temporarily worked for the National Committee for Free Germany .

Martha Naujoks returned to Germany in June 1945. In Berlin she worked as an editorial secretary for the Tälichen Rundschau and later for the Berliner Zeitung . Only now did she learn that her husband was still alive after he had been pronounced dead by French and Russian newspapers in 1942. After she had found him again, after the KPD party congress in Berlin in 1946, she went to Hamburg with the Western delegates Max Reimann and Erich Hoffmann . There she became secretary of the KPD zone office, then until 1950 in the district leadership of the KPD Wasserkante. In the Agitation and Propaganda Department headed by Alfred Drögemüller , she was responsible for the publication of the theoretical journal Weg und Ziel from 1946 to 1948 .

Ehrenfeld at the Hamburg-Ohlsdorf cemetery . Background on the left, second row from the right, last stone: Harry and Martha Naujoks .

In 1950 Martha Naujoks had to give up her work due to illness, but remained politically active and played a major role in the publication of Harry Naujoks' Sachsenhausen book. Until her death, despite her poor health, she took an active part in the political events. She was one of the founding members of the Willi-Bredel-Gesellschaft Geschichtswerkstatt e. V.

The library of Martha and Harry Naujoks was bequeathed to the Sachsenhausen Memorial and with 2,400 volumes it is the most extensive individual collection.

On the Ohlsdorf cemetery , in the honorary field of the Geschwister-Scholl-Foundation, there is a joint pillow stone for Harry and Martha Naujoks, grid square Bo 73, no.12.

literature

• Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst (ed.): German communists . Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. Second, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz Verlag , Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 ( online ).

Web links

• Martha Naujoks: 80 years in the labor movement Obituary of the Willi-Bredel-Gesellschaft Geschichtswerkstatt eV
• Martha Naujoks at Frauenbiografien hamburg.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Harry Naujoks: My life in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp 1936–1942. Memories of the former camp elder. Modifications made by Ursel Hochmuth . Edited by Martha Naujoks and the Sachsenhausen Committee for the FRG. Röderberg-Verlag / Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag , Cologne 1987.
2. ↑ Library in the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum ( Memento of the original from October 8, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed October 8, 2018. 
3. ^ Pillow stone Harry and Martha Naujoks at genealogy.net