Maria Wachter

Maria Wachter (21 April 1910 – 18 August 2010) was a political activist (KPD) who resisted Nazism both before and after 1933.

She spent most of the twelve Nazi years in exile or detained in camps and prisons.

Her father had been a Social Democratic activist as a young man, described by his daughter as an "outspoken revolutionary", but in 1914 he was conscripted into the army.

He survived the First World War, but with his political spirit broken.

To his daughter's growing bewilderment as she grew up, and then to her enduring regret, his priority became to avoid losing his job with the city power supply company.

Maria Wachter joined the Communist Party in 1930.

By this time she had already trained for office work and become a member of "Dynamo", a workers' sports association which had been her route to the Communist Party.

In Amsterdam she was seized with self doubt, convinced that her fellow students would all be steeped in Marxist theory while she, having joined the Communist Party only in 1930, knew next to nothing about the relevant philosophical underpinnings.

A helpful comrade was able to reassure her, however, lending her "The State and Revolution" by Lenin as well as "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State" by Engels, and patiently talked her through them.

Her self-doubt was only partially expunged by this, but the solicitous Amsterdam comrade nevertheless calmed her nerves sufficiently to persuade her to proceed to Moscow where, as she later told an interviewer, her time at the International Lenin School would prove to be the most beautiful time in her life ("die schönste Zeit in meinem Leben").

The focus of her studies at the International Lenin School was on the History of the Labour Movement, German History and Political economy, all through the prism of Marxism.

Early on students were assessed to determine whether they should study for eighteen months, or whether they would be able to complete the curriculum in nine months.

Wachter was assigned to the nine-month cohort, which comprised 45 students.

She was an enthusiastic scholar, especially of Political economy.

Lessons were held partly in Russian and partly in German, but this was changed in the interests of efficiency: language classes were dropped and the other classes were later held entirely in German.

During her time in Moscow she got to know several people who would later become members of the ruling elite in the German Democratic Republic, including Wilhelm Pieck and Herbert Wehner.

A year later, in 1931, she joined the Agitprop theatre group "Nord-West-Ran" which had been established in Düsseldorf by Wolfgang Langhoff.

A fellow member of the "Nord-West-Ran", until his arrest later that year, was Hilarius Gilges.

On 26 January 1932, when Adolf Hitler, as leader of the opposition Nazi Party, came to present his programme to 300 Düsseldorf industry and bank chiefs at a meeting of the Düsseldorf Industrial Society, Wachter was one of the many demonstrators who gathered in front of the prestigious Parkhotel chanting "Wer Hitler wählt, wählt den Krieg" ("Voters for Hitler are voting for another war").

1932 was a year of two general elections at the end of which, despite receiving only slightly more than a third of the votes cast, the Nazi Party emerged as the largest single party, which was sufficient to support a successful power grab at the start of 1933.

After this the Nazis lost little time in creating a one party dictatorship.

The Reichstag fire at the end of February 1933 was immediately blamed on "communists" whose political activities had become illegal.

Wachter joined an "underground" resistance group in Düsseldorf.

Within the group her value was increased by the fact that she was the only one of the comrades who knew how to type.

In a later interview she insisted that there was no systematic gender bias within the group, but nevertheless pointed to examples of the ways in which having female members enhanced operational flexibility.

In Düsseldorf the political left had always been strong, and the distribution of (illegal) Communist Party leaflets through people's letter boxes was best accomplished using a perambulator.

Distribution was typically undertaken by teams of four, and while two comrades loitered at the ends of the street, the mixed gender couple actually delivered the material.

If a uniformed official was spotted, one of the comrades would casually whistle while the two people making the deliveries would instantly engage in passionate embrace with one another.

Within the Düsseldorf resistance group, by 1935 she was working increasingly closely with Elli Schmidt ("Irene Gärtner") and Heinrich Wiatrek ("Fritz Weber"), both of whom had returned from Moscow, equipped with their party pseudonyms, the previous year.

It was Wiatrek who proposed that Maria Wachter should also be sent to Moscow to undertake a course at the International Lenin School there: this would remove her from Germany at a time when it seemed arrest her by the Gestapo was looming closer every day.

She set out for Moscow in May 1935, travelling via the Netherlands.

She stayed in Moscow from May 1935 till the autumn of 1937.

It had been a condition of her participation that on completion of the course she should return home and resume her contribution to anti-fascist resistance, but in 1936 this proved to be impossible.

By 1937 Germany's Communist leaders had either been arrested or had fled into exile.

The exiled leadership were concentrated in Paris and Moscow.

Smaller centres were opened in the other countries surrounding Germany.

She was asked in 2010 if she was proud, on the occasion of her hundredth birthday, to be among the last survivors of those who had resisted the Nazis.

Evidently she was not.

But she was proud to have been a member of the Communist Party for nearly eighty years.

Maria Wachter was born in Düsseldorf.