Marie Ahlers

Marie Ahlers (born Marie Albrecht: 4 April 1898 - 17 April 1968) was a German politician (KPD/SED). She sat as a member of the national parliament ("Reichstag") between 1930 and 1933,[1] and was a senior party official in the Soviet occupation zone / German Democratic Republic after 1945.[2]

Life

Marie Albrecht was born in Siersleben, a small town in the countryside to the northwest of Halle. Although the little town is surrounded be arable land, it is on the eddge of a large coal field, and her father worked as a miner. After leaving school she undertook farm work and worked in clothes making. In 1917 she married Hermann Ahlers.[2]

In 1918 she joined the Independent Social Democratic Party ("Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" / USPD) which had broken away from the mainstream Social Democratic Party following intense and sustained disagreement within the party following a leadership decision to operate a parliamentary truce for the duration of the war. The next year she joined the Young Socialists. 1919 was also the year in which she was excluded from church membership.[3] In 1920 she joined both the Young Communists and the newly founded Communist Party itself.[2] From the foundation of the "Red Front Women's and Girls' League" (RFMB), which was the women's section of the quasi-military "Red Front Fighters' Alliance" ("Roter Frontkämpferbund") she was a member of its national leadership. Between 1929 and 1933 she servd as a town councillor in Eisleben and a member of the enlarged women's secretariat of the Communist Party.[2] She also served, between 1930 and 1933, as a member of the national parliament ("Reichstag"), representing the Merseburg electoral district.[3]

The political backdrop changed abruptly in January 1933 when the Nazi party took power and lost little time in creating a one-party state. The Reichstag fire at the end of February 1933 was instantly blamed, by the authorities, on "communists": politicians with a known communist past found themselves targeted for surveillance and worse. Ahlers did not stand for re-election to the Reichstaag in March 1933, the results of which were in any case arranged to give the Nazis a small overall majority in what now became an assembly of greatly diminished relevance. Ahlers found herself persecuted for her involvement in "national high treason" ("Hoch- und Landesverrates", Communist Party work being now illlegal) and for a time lived illegally (unregistered and in hiding).[2]

References

  1. ↑ "Kommunistische Partei ... Middle row, left". Reichstags-Handbuch. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München. p. 517. Retrieved 3 December 2016.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Hermann Weber; Andreas Herbst. "Ahlers, Marie geb. Albrecht * 4.4.1889, † 17.8.1968". Handbuch der Deutschen Kommunisten. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin & Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Berlin. Retrieved 3 December 2016.
  3. 1 2 "Ahlers, geb. Albrecht, Marie". Reichstags-Handbuch. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. München. 1930. p. 291. Retrieved 4 December 2016.
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