Meta Kraus bondage

Meta Kraus-Fessel (born Meta Fessel ; born August 6, 1884 in Przytullen , † 1940 in New York ) was a German anarchist, communist, journalist, civil servant, social expert and sexologist.

Life

Meta Fessel was the daughter of a landowner in what was then the province of Prussia in the German Empire. Today the area belongs to the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship in Poland. During the First World War, she worked from 1914 to 1918 at the municipal welfare office at the advice center for war invalids and surviving dependents in Frankfurt am Main . There she met her future husband Siegfried Kraus (* 1880 in Vienna), from whom she separated again shortly after the wedding.

From October 1, 1919, she was the first woman to be a civil servant in the Prussian Ministry for People's Welfare . In 1922 she was appointed government councilor. She headed the department for infant care and care for the morally vulnerable female youth. In 1924 she went into temporary retirement.

Politically, she first became a member of the SPD . In 1919 she switched to the Communist Party of Germany . There she worked for the International Workers Aid Foundation, which was founded in 1921, and in 1924 she was a co-founder of Rote Hilfe . During that time she worked for Magnus Hirschfeld . She turned more and more away from the official party line of the Stalinist KPD and became a supporter of anarchism . Among other things, she took care of his widow Zenzl after the murder of the anarchist Erich Mühsam , with whom she soon fell out.

After the seizure of power by the Nazi Party, she emigrated to Vienna. In 1938 she helped Max Nettlau escape to Amsterdam. She herself fled in the same year in the United States where they incurable 1940 suicide committed.

Afterlife

In 2008 Inge Helm published a double biography about her grandmother Hedwig Clara Schiemann and her lifelong friend Meta Kraus-Fessel. This contains the information that Zenzl Mühsam did not create the biography Der Leidensweg Erich Mühsam himself. This was the work of Meta Kraus-Fessel and was published by the Red Aid against the will of the real author. Kraus-Fessel wanted to prevent the anarchist Erich Mühsam from being appropriated by the Stalinist KPD.

Works

• with Siegfried Kraus: The organization and activities of the Städt. Welfare Office for War Survivors in Frankfurt , Frankfurt am Main, HL Brönner, 1919
• Police terror against children and art: documents on the history of the social republic of Germany , Berlin, Mopr Verlag, 1927

literature

• Inge Helm: Lived emancipation: courageous women between the kitchen, mother's cross and "Red Help" , Karin Kramer Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-87956-326-5

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c d} Meta Kraus-Fessel in the archive for the history of sociology in Austria at the Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz
2. ↑ LIVED EMANCIPATION ( Memento of the original from February 27, 2016 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. , Review by Nick Brauns on Emancipation lived: courageous women between the kitchen, mother's cross and "Red Help" on Rote-hilfe.de (accessed on February 27, 2016)
3. ↑ DNB 574458328
4. ↑ DNB 574458336