Milly Zirker

Milly Zirker (born January 4, 1888 in Cologne , † April 12, 1971 in Miami , Florida ) was a politically active German journalist of Jewish descent.

Milly Zirker was the daughter of the hat manufacturer Adolf Zirker and his wife Amalie (Malchen), b. Lindeck. She herself was not married and has no offspring.

During the Weimar Republic she worked as a journalist for the Berliner Acht-Uhr-Abendblatt . She was a member of the German League for Human Rights . In this context, she came into contact with well-known publicists and pacifists such as Carl von Ossietzky and Hellmut von Gerlach . In 1924 she was involved in the short-lived Republican Party of Germany . Between 1928 and 1933 she wrote 48 articles for the magazine Die Weltbühne , the majority of them under the pseudonym Johannes Bückler. As a secretary and close confidante, she followed von Gerlach, who emigrated in spring 1933, to Paris . There she was involved in various organizations in exile and in 1935/36, alongside Hilde Walter and others, played a key role in the Nobel Prize campaign for Carl von Ossietzky. Milly Zirker, who was officially expatriated from the German Reich in 1936, finally fled to the USA in 1941 . There is virtually no evidence that she was able to effectively build on her journalistic or political commitment there. The indication of the year of her death in 1971 goes back to the recently published research of a relative (see web link).

literature

• Michael Quetting: campaigner for democracy, international understanding and peace. Milly Zirker at Hellmut von Gerlach's side . In: Christoph Koch (Ed.) From Junker to Citizen. Hellmut von Gerlach - Democrat and Pacifist in the Empire and Republic, Munich 2009, pp. 19–48.

Web links

• Michael Quetting: Milly Zirker