Anna Reitler (born Anna Schnitzler: 3 June 1894 - 23 June 1948) was a German politician ( KPD).

Life

Anna Schnitzler was born into a working-class family in Liblar, a small town to the southwest of

Cologne Cologne ( ; ; ) is the largest city of the States of Germany, German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city pr ...

. She attended junior school locally after which she went into

domestic service A domestic worker is a person who works within a residence and performs a variety of household services for an individual, from providing cleaning and household maintenance, or cooking, laundry and ironing, or care for children and elderly ...

. At some stage she moved to the city,

, and it was here that she married. In 1918 Anna Reitler became a member of the recently formed Independent Social Democratic Party (''"Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands"'' / USPD). The party had been created the previous year as a result of a split in the more mainstream

Social Democratic Party The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology. Active parties Form ...

, primarily over the issue of whether or not to continue to vote in support of financing the

war War is an armed conflict between the armed forces of states, or between governmental forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations, or between such organi ...

. Two years later the USPD itself broke apart, and Reitler was part of the left-wing majority that now joined the Communist Party. Within the party she undertook various unpaid functions, and became the long-standing head of its women's section, for the Middle-Rhine regional party leadership (''"Bezirksleitung Mittelrhein"''). She also took temporary responsibility for the party's Cologne newspaper, "Sozialistische Republik". Anna Reitler was a delegate to the eighth party congress at the end of 1923, and in May 1924 she stood successfully as a communist party candidate for

election An election is a formal group decision-making process whereby a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold Public administration, public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative d ...

to the national parliament (''Reichstag''). 1924 was a crisis year, marked by economic collapse, destitution and two general elections, but Anna Reitler was not re-elected in the December election of that year. She subsequently played no further part in politics, even after

1945 1945 marked the end of World War II, the fall of Nazi Germany, and the Empire of Japan. It is also the year concentration camps were liberated and the only year in which atomic weapons have been used in combat. Events World War II will be ...

. Anna Reitler died in

Markkleeberg Markkleeberg () is an affluent suburb of Leipzig, located in the Leipzig district of the Free State of Saxony, Germany. The river Pleiße runs through the city, which borders Leipzig to the north and to the west. Markkleeberg is known to be th ...

(on the southern edge of

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

) on 23 June 1948.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Reitler, Anna People from Erftstadt Politicians from the Rhine Province Members of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic 20th-century German women politicians Independent Social Democratic Party politicians Communist Party of Germany politicians 1894 births 1948 deaths