Tilly Spiegel
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Ottilie "Tilly" Spiegel (10 December 1906 - 1988) was an
Austrian Austrian may refer to: * Austrians, someone from Austria or of Austrian descent ** Someone who is considered an Austrian citizen * Austrian German dialect * Something associated with the country Austria, for example: ** Austria-Hungary ** Austria ...
political activist, first as a member of the Communist Party and then as part of the wartime resistance. After her actions had earned her a term of imprisonment during the Austrofascist period she fled the country, ending up as in Paris as a member of the
French Resistance The French Resistance ( ) was a collection of groups that fought the German military administration in occupied France during World War II, Nazi occupation and the Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy#France, collaborationist Vic ...
. Her parents were murdered by
the Nazis The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor, the German Workers ...
but five siblings managed to emigrate to England or to the United States. In 1945 the merger combining Germany and Austria was reversed at the insistence of the occupying powers whose military victory had put an end to the Hitler regime. Tilly Spiegel returned to
Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...
(where she had spent her student years) and was one of the first researchers to study the histories of victims of
National Socialism Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During Hitler's rise to power, it was frequ ...
. Books that she published were frequently consulted and quoted by subsequent researchers.


Biography


Family provenance

Ottilie Spiegel was born in Novoselica near
Chernivtsi Chernivtsi (, ; , ;, , see also #Names, other names) is a city in southwestern Ukraine on the upper course of the Prut River. Formerly the capital of the historic region of Bukovina, which is now divided between Romania and Ukraine, Chernivt ...
in
Bukovina Bukovina or ; ; ; ; , ; see also other languages. is a historical region at the crossroads of Central and Eastern Europe. It is located on the northern slopes of the central Eastern Carpathians and the adjoining plains, today divided betwe ...
, which at that time was a multi-cultural frontier region of the
Austro-Hungarian empire Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military and diplomatic alliance, it consist ...
. Across the border to the east of
Chernivtsi Chernivtsi (, ; , ;, , see also #Names, other names) is a city in southwestern Ukraine on the upper course of the Prut River. Formerly the capital of the historic region of Bukovina, which is now divided between Romania and Ukraine, Chernivt ...
lay the
Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...
. Ottilie was the eldest of her parents' six recorded children. Karl Spiegel (1880-1941), the children's father, was a businessman. In 1941 both Tilly Spiegel's parents were killed by the authorities in the Izbica "transit-ghetto", created that year in part of a village in the countryside east of
Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...
and
Lublin Lublin is List of cities and towns in Poland, the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the centre of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin i ...
.


Early years

While she was young the family evidently moved to
Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...
, which is where Spiegel attended school. Between 1925 and 1933 she worked at a succession of mostly clerical jobs in the city. At one stage during her time in Vienna she was employed as a gymnastics teacher. Between 1927 and 1930 she also held, in parallel, functions within the Young Communists and was a trades union member. She joined The Party in 1930 after which she combined party duties with her non-political work. By 1933, which is when the party was banned by emergency degree as the country transitioned to post-democratic government, she was working for the party leadership team for the Vienna city and the surrounding region. Subsequently, she continued to work "underground" (illegally) for the party, serving between 1933 and February 1935, and taking on the party leadership role for "District 4" (Kreis IV).


Arrest and emigration

Her political activity led to her arrest in February 1935, and in November 1935 she was sentenced to a 18-month prison term. In March 1936 the sentence was reduced to 14 months. In Autumn 1937, still at liberty, Tilly Spiegel emigrated to
Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
. Here she organised frontier crossing documentation for Austrian Communists transferring via Switzerland to
Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...
to fight with the
International Brigades The International Brigades () were soldiers recruited and organized by the Communist International to assist the Popular Front (Spain), Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. The International Bri ...
in the
civil war A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...
which had been triggered in July 1936 when a group of Spanish generals had staged an attempt to overthrow the increasingly unstable government. Her activity was evidently illegal, and the Swiss authorities arrested Spiegel near the Austrian frontier at Rorschach in May 1937. She was detained and sentenced in nearby St. Gallen and then, in May 1938, expelled from the country. Instead of returning home to Vienna she now crossed the frontier (illegally) into France, settling in
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
where, until the outbreak of war, she supported herself as a gymnastics teacher.


Paris

In November 1938 she teamed up with Marie Pappenheim to establish the "Cercle Culturel Autrichien" (''loosely, "Austrian cultural circle"''). The "circle" involved itself in support for refugees and women identified, after war was declared, as enemy aliens and interned in Paris. It was financed from Spiegel's earnings as a gymnastics teacher. On 3 September 1939 France and Britain declared war on Nazi Germany: on the streets of Paris and London eerily little changed, as the governments in those cities waited to see what Chancellor Hitler would do next. The answer arrived on 10 May 1940 when the
German army The German Army (, 'army') is the land component of the armed forces of Federal Republic of Germany, Germany. The present-day German Army was founded in 1955 as part of the newly formed West German together with the German Navy, ''Marine'' (G ...
invaded and quickly overran the northern half of France, taking over in Paris during the second week of June. From the end of 1940 or early 1941, Tilly Spiegel was actively engaged in resistance work for Travail Allemand (TA), an anti-fascist organisation of German expatriates that increasingly operated as a section of the
French Resistance The French Resistance ( ) was a collection of groups that fought the German military administration in occupied France during World War II, Nazi occupation and the Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy#France, collaborationist Vic ...
.Most were communists, many had fled
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
to escape life-threatening political and/or race-based persecution. A lot of TA members had fought in the
Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War () was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republican faction (Spanish Civil War), Republicans and the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the Left-wing p ...
, and ended up in France after the Falangist victory. One returnee from the Spanish Civil War who ended up as a TA resistance leader was Franz Marek, a leading Austrian communist intellectual originally from Galicia. It was probably through the TA that Tilly Spiegel met Franz Marek. At some stage they married: much later, in 1974, that marriage ended in divorce.


Resistance

Between 1941 and 1943 Tilly was based in Nancy as a "regional TA instructor" for
Meurthe-et-Moselle Meurthe-et-Moselle () is a '' département'' in the Grand Est region of France, named after the rivers Meurthe and Moselle. Its prefecture and largest city is Nancy and it borders the departments of Meuse to the west, Vosges to the south, ...
. Later she transferred to
Lille Lille (, ; ; ; ; ) is a city in the northern part of France, within French Flanders. Positioned along the Deûle river, near France's border with Belgium, it is the capital of the Hauts-de-France Regions of France, region, the Prefectures in F ...
to undertake similar duties in respect of the Nord department and
Pas-de-Calais The Pas-de-Calais (, ' strait of Calais'; ; ) is a department in northern France named after the French designation of the Strait of Dover, which it borders. It has the most communes of all the departments of France, with 890, and is the ...
. Both these areas were in what then Germans had defined as
Zone interdite The (Forbidden Zone) refers to two distinct territories established in German–occupied France during the Second World War after the signature of the Second Armistice at Compiègne, namely, a coastal military zone running along the entire Atla ...
, subjected to additional movement restrictions on local populations and higher levels of
Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...
and military supervision than most of occupied northern France. Sources are understandably vague about the details of Spiegel's resistance work, but there can be little doubt that as a communist resistance member easily identifiable as a non-local, her activities would placed her in extreme danger. In 1943 the focus of her activities evidently returned to
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
: it was probably in August 1944 that she was arrested by the
Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...
and detained, like her husband, in Fresnes Prison, a short distance to the south of the city. They were scheduled for execution. By the end of the month Paris had been liberated and both were released in the turmoil that accompanied the German military withdrawal.


After the war

In or before August 1945 Tilly Spiegel returned to
Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...
where the Communist Party was no longer banned. Indeed, the Soviets had used their influence with the other occupying powers to ensure that there were seven communists in the new government. She rejoined the party's city leadership team (''Bezirksleitung''), remaining a member of it between 1945 and 1968. In addition, she quickly engaged in the work of building up what subsequently became the Documents Archive of the Austrian Resistance (''"Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes"'' / DÖW). She worked closely with the DÖW's head of research, Herbert Steiner (1923-2001). Others involved included her former resistance comrade, Selma Steinmetz, along with Jonny Moser and Herbert Rosenkranz. During the 1960s these, Spiegel and the others were among the first researchers into Austria's National Socialist period to focus on the regime's victims. Moser investigated the
persecution of Jews The persecution of Jews has been a major event in Jewish history prompting shifting waves of refugees and the formation of diaspora communities. As early as 605 BC, Jews who lived in the Neo-Babylonian Empire were persecuted and deported. Antis ...
while Steinmetz concentrated on government treatment of the
Sinti The Sinti (masc. sing. ''Sinto''; fem. sing. ''Sintetsa, Sinta'') are a subgroup of the Romani people. They are found mostly in Germany, France, Italy and Central Europe, numbering some 200,000 people. They were traditionally Itinerant groups i ...
and
Romani people {{Infobox ethnic group , group = Romani people , image = , image_caption = , flag = Roma flag.svg , flag_caption = Romani flag created in 1933 and accepted at the 1971 World Romani Congress , po ...
. Spiegel worked on what had happened to women and girls engaged in antifascist resistance and Rosenkranz studied Austria's experience of the November 1938 pogrom (''"Kristallnacht"'').Renée Winter: Geschichtspolitiken und Fernsehen: Repräsentationen des Nationalsozialismus im frühen österreichischen TV (1955-1970). transcript Verlag 2014, p. 152 During the later 1960s, even before the crushing of the
Prague Spring The Prague Spring (; ) was a period of liberalization, political liberalization and mass protest in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected Secretary (title), First Secre ...
, Spiegel seems to have engaged in major "inner-party criticism" over the path taken by postwar communism. Little is known of her final years.


Celebration

Tilly Spiegel was awarded the Golden Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria


Notes


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spiegel, Tilly 1906 births 1988 deaths Communist Party of Austria politicians Austrian resistance members French Resistance members Politicians from Vienna People from the Duchy of Bukovina Historians of Nazism Recipients of the Decoration for Services to the Republic of Austria