Grete Walter

Grete Walter (22 February 1913 - 21 October 1935) was a German resistance activist during the Hitler years.

She committed suicide by throwing herself from the third floor of a stairwell following a particularly brutal interrogation session at the Security Services' Main Office in Berlin.

Margarete "Grete" Walter was born in Berlin, the second of her parents' three daughters.

Her father was a coach driver.

Her mother worked as a domestic servant.

Later her father was able to set himself up in business with a little dairy.

Money was tight and the work running the dairy was hard, but while they were young, the girls' mother was able to focus on their upbringing.

She ensured that the girls attended school regularly and prepared for secure futures.

Grete attended a business-focused secondary school (...Handelsschule) and trained for office work.

She was still only 15 when she took her first job in 1928, starting out with the Berlin wholesale foods operation of the venerable foods conglomerate, Kathreiner AG.

Grete Walter appears to have inherited her politics from her mother: two of her maternal uncles were metal workers and, like many working in that sector, Communist Party members.

There are strong indications that her father, by contrast, was either uninterested in politics or else that, in common with many "small businessmen", his political views tended in a very different direction from those of his wife and her brothers.

1928, the year during which she took her first job, was also the year in which Grete Walter joined the Young Communists.

She eagerly participated in the creation of a Young Communist cell at her work place: the focus for the group, inevitably, was on recruiting the youngest in the workforce, including apprentices.

Walter also applied her enthusiasm and writing skills in "Die Kathreiner Mühle", a news sheet distributed to colleagues which did not hesitate to criticise the company's methods.

The publication appears to have been a team effort, but she certainly contributed both to the texts and to its production and distribution.

The extent to which management were aware of her involvement only became apparent a little later.

The backwash from the Wall Street Crash arrived with great force in western Europe: in Germany, in particular, industrial demand slumped and unemployment surged.

In 1930 Kathreiner AG imposed job cuts.

The energetic young communist was among the first to be lose her job.

Walter experienced great difficulty in her search for another job.

There are suggestions that she had been informally blacklisted.

She did, however, find herself with more time on her hands for political activities.

She undertook "communist youth work" in Berlin-Neukölln, the city quarter in which she lived.

She was an enthusiastic singer and pianist, and particularly loved to play with the workers' children belonging to the Young Spartacus League, In 1930, two years after joining the Young Communists (with which she would continue to engage actively), Grete Walter joined the Communist Party itself, apparently without daring to tell her parents that she had done so.

Her political talents and commitment had, however, been noticed elsewhere.

She received and happily accepted an invitation passed on the by Young Communists' Central Committee that she should spend a year in Moscow.

During 1930/31 Grete Walter spent a year in Moscow, attending the International Lenin School and seeing for herself the first country in the world where a genuine attempt to build a true socialist society was under way.

She returned to Neukölln in the summer of 1931 and became a member of the Young Communists district leadership team ("Bezirksleitung").

The economic situation had deteriorated further, with millions unemployed, and mass-poverty an intensifying problem.

Politics were spilling onto the streets and becoming ever more polarised.

With uniformed National Socialist populists an increasing presence on the city streets, and Grete Walter's own political involvement apparently no secret to anyone, it remained impossible for her to find paid employment.

Her youthful political career progressed, however: she was soon recruited onto the Young Communists regional leadership team for Berlin, while continuing her work with children.

It was, according to one source, a reflection of her positivity and joyous energy that the children called her "Pferdchen" ("Little Horse").

Neukölln was known as a district in which many Communists and Socialists were living: during 1932 it was increasingly on the receiving end of visits from gangs of National Socialist paramilitaries.

Fights were not infrequent.

With her comrades Grete Walter was successful in ensuring that working class youngsters in the area were not excessively influenced by the fascists.

It became evident early in 1933 that her involvement had nevertheless been noted.

At the start of 1933 Walter was herself elected to membership of the Young Communist Central Committee, becoming its youngest member.

At the same time the Hitler government, exploiting the political polarisation and parliamentary deadlock which the National Socialists had done much to exacerbate, took power and lost no time in transforming Germany into a one-party dictatorship.