Agnes Asche (13 December 1891 – 7 January 1966), also known as Agnes Bertram and Agnes Jünemann, was a German

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...

who resisted the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hit ...

. A street in

Hanover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...

is named in her honor.

Biography

Asche became a widow when her first husband died during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

. From 1919 to 1923, she was active in the Sozialverband Deutschland (Social Association of Germany), which assisted war veterans. She was first a volunteer and then became a consultant in the main

pension A pension (, from Latin ''pensiō'', "payment") is a fund into which a sum of money is added during an employee's employment years and from which payments are drawn to support the person's retirement from work in the form of periodic payments ...

office. In 1924, she became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, but by 1932 she was a member of the

Socialist Workers' Party of Germany The Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (german: Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, SAPD) was a centrist Marxist political party in Germany. It was formed as a left-wing party with around 20,000 members which split off from the SPD i ...

. In the middle of 1933, while known as Agnes Jünemann, she joined the communist-oriented and worked to distribute ''Klassenkampf'' (''Class Warfare''), the illegal newspaper put out by Otto Brenner and

Eduard Wald Eduard Wald (10 March 1905 – 5 November 1978) was a Communist politician, trade unionist and member of the German Resistance against Nazism. Biography Eduard Wald, known as Edu, was born in Kiel, Germany, where he attended school. He reached up ...

. On 11 September 1934 she was arrested for high treason and taken to the

court prison for pre-trial detention. In June 1935, she was sentenced to three years in prison by the Hamm Higher Regional Court as part of the larger procedure against Otto Brenner. She served her sentence in the Ziegenhain Prison near

Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2 ...

; she did not see her son for two and a half years. After her release from prison in September 1937, she worked as a machine knitter. She remained active in resistance circles until the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. At the end of 1943, she married Otto Asche, a local to the area who worked at the ; Otto Asche was elected as a socialist member to the town council of

Offleben Offleben is a former municipality in the district of Helmstedt, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It was Incorporated into the newly formed Büddenstedt on 1 March 1974. Since 1 July 2017 Offleben is part of Helmstedt Helmstedt (; Eastphalian: ''Helms ...

in 1946. After World War II, she was a member of the Socialist Party of Germany, but she was expelled from the party in 1960.

Legacy

A street in Ricklingen in Hanover was named in her honor in 1990.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Asche, Agnes 1891 births 1966 deaths German resistance members German women activists German socialists People from Hanover 20th-century German women