Ilse Stöbe

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Ilse Stöbe

Ilse Frieda Gertrud Stöbe (17 May 1911 – 22 December 1942) was a German left-wing journalist and anti-Nazi resistance fighter. She was born and died in Berlin.[1][2]

Life[edit]

Ilse Stöbe grew up in a working-class home in Berlin. Stöbe was the only daughter of carpenter Max Stöbe and his wife Frieda née Schumann. She had an eight-year-older half-brother from her mother's first marriage, Kurt Müller.[3] The family spent their first year at Mainzer Straße 1 in Lichtenberg, Berlin,[4] before the couple moved to Jungstrasse 14 in Berlin.[3] Both her parents were communist sympathisers but didn't join the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Her half-brother was radicalised in an area blighted by poverty and unemployment, became an active KPD member who took part in bloody battles between the KPD and the SPD.[3] There is little information about their youth.[5] However, it is likely she attended the local secondary school located about 3 minutes from her house, before receiving a recommendation to move to grammar school, attending School at the Rathaus [de].[6] At Rathaus, she met her life long friend, later publisher and author Helmut Kindler [de].[6] In 1927, her parents had separated and as a single parent her mother couldn't afford the fees, forcing her to leave in 1927. Her father was no longer mentioned in her letters to mother, whom she was close to.[6] Stöbe then attended a trade school to learn a profession as a shorthand typist.[6]

Career[edit]

In April 1929, Stöbe began working in marketing department of the publishing house of Rudolf Mosse and then worked as secretary to the journalist and writer Theodor Wolff in the Berliner Tageblatt.[7] There she met the jewish editor and communist[8] Rudolf Herrnstadt, eight years her senior and became good friends with him[9] and eventually became engaged.[10] Herrnstadt believed that the political ideology of capitalism with its inherent structural problems in the 1920's would be replaced by socialism, or indeed communism.[11] From the beginning, Stöbe shared the same political ideology as Herrnstadt. There was an expectation that both of them would join the KPD and several sources state that Stöbe joined the KPD in 1929.[1][12] However a study by the German historian Elke Scherstjanoi found that they were more useful to the communist party, outside the KPD.[13]

From 1931, she worked with Herrnstadt, who built up an intelligence group of the Am Apparat (Military section) of the Communist International, which in addition to him and Stöbe, Gerhard Kegel and his wife Charlotte Vogt, at times also the publisher Helmut Kindler and the lawyer Lothar Bolz all belonged. Together with Herrnstadt in 1934, they moved to Warsaw, where she worked as a foreign correspondent for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung until September 1939 and also wrote for other Swiss newspapers. Stöbe was then a member of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party) and in mid-1934 was appointed Cultural Attaché of the Nazi party's foreign office in Poland.[citation needed]

According to Helmut Kindler, she remained in contact with him as her childhood friend.[14] During the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Stöbe met the Swiss publisher Rudolf Huber, who left her a major part of his fortune in his will when he died in 1940.[15]

Shortly before the German invasion of Poland, she returned to Berlin from Warsaw and worked in the information department of the Foreign Office. There she met the journalist Carl Helfrich, with whom she lived until her arrest in 1942. According to her will, he was the tenant of her flat in Ahornallee 48 in Charlottenburg, Berlin.[16]

Resistance[edit]

Initially, from 1930, Stöbe was a member of the reconnaissance group of Rudolf Herrnstadt, where he was listed under the name of Friedrich Brockmann, and from that time began to volunteer for Soviet intelligence under the pseudonym Arbin. In Soviet intelligence, Stöbe received the pseudonym "Arnim". During Herrnstadt's trip to Prague in 1930, she began to work directly with the Soviet resident in Berlin, Yakov Bronin, who was introduced to her as "Dr. Bosch."[17]

Gerhard Kegel, who was an employee of the Foreign Office in Berlin from 1935 to 1943, supported Stöbe in her clandestine intelligence activities after returning from Poland.[18] She allegedly continued this activity until her arrest in 1942.[19]

Stöbe was arrested on 12 September 1942 by the Gestapo, allegedly for spying for the Soviet Union and for membership of the Red Orchestra (Die Rote Kapelle). A Gestapo report of November 1942, stated a radio message from the Soviet Union informed that a parachuted resistance fighter would come to her address. After seven weeks of torture she was compelled to confess to conspiratorial connections to the Soviet secret service and to people such as Rudolf von Scheliha.[20] He was arrested on 12 October 1942. Both were sentenced to death for treason on 14 December 1942 by the Reichskriegsgericht, and executed on 22 December 1942 in the Plötzensee Prison in Berlin, she by guillotine and he by hanging from a meathook. The Soviet agent, Heinrich Koenen, who had landed in Germany by parachute, was arrested at her house by a waiting Gestapo official. Her mother was also arrested and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she died in 1943.[21] Stöbe's brother Kurt Müller was able to escape arrest and continue his resistance activities with the resistance group, the European Union Resistance. He was murdered in June 1944.[22]

Stöbe (code name "Alta") repeatedly sent warning messages to the Soviet Union about the impending German invasion of the Soviet Union well in advance of the attack.[23]

Awards and honours[edit]

She was the only woman to be featured on a special coin issued by the East German Ministry of State (Stasi) to commemorate important spies in Communist service during the war. The Ilse Stöbe Vocational School in Market Street, Berlin is named in her honour.[24]

In July, 2014, Germany's Foreign Ministry honoured Ilse Stöbe for her actions against the Nazis.[25]

Literature[edit]

Memorial plaque, Frankfurter Allee 233, in Lichtenberg, Berlin

Witnesses[edit]

  • Wolff, Theodor (1937). Die Schwimmerin. Ein Roman aus der Gegenwart [The swimmer. A novel from the present.]. Zürich.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Gerhard, Kegel (1984). In den Stürmen unseres Jahrhunderts : ein deutscher Kommunist über sein ungewöhnliches Leben [In the storms of the century: a German Communist about his unusual life] (3rd ed.). Berlin: Dietz Verlag. ISBN 3-320-00609-6.
  • Helmut, Kindler (1992). Zum Abschied ein Fest : die Autobiographie eines deutschen Verlegers [To leave one party: the autobiography of a German publisher]. Munich: Droemer Knaur. ISBN 3-426-75042-2.

Biographical-historical[edit]

    • Ilse Stöbe: Wieder im Amt : eine Widerstandskämpferin in der Wilhelmstraße [Ilse Stöbe: Back in office: a resistance fighter in Wilhelmstraße - 2nd extended edition with a preface by Gregor Gysi and an appreciation by Frank-Walter Steinmeier on the occasion of the inclusion of Ilse Stöbe on the panel of honor in the Foreign Office] (2nd supplemented and updated ed.). Hamburg: VSA: Verlag. 2015. ISBN 978-3-89965-660-2.
  • Liebmann, Irina (2008). Wäre es schön? Es wäre schön! : mein Vater Rudolf Herrnstadt. Berlin: Berlin Verlag. ISBN 978-3-8270-0589-2.
  • Brüning, Elfriede (2010). Gefährtinnen : Porträts vergessener Frauen [Companions: portraits of forgotten women] (in German) (2nd ed.). Berlin: Dietz-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-320-02242-6.
  • Brüning, Elfriede (18 May 1986). "Kundschafterin für die Sowjetunion. Zum 75. Geburtstag der Kommunistin Ilse Stöbe" [Scout for the Soviet Union. On the occasion of the 75th birthday of Communist Ilse Stöbe] (in German). Berliner Verlag. Berliner Zeitung.
  • Zimmermann, Kurt (1980). The Big Unknown. Berlin: Militärverlag der DDR.
  • Luise Kraushaar and others: Deutsche Widerstandskämpfer 1933–1945. Biografien und Briefe. [German Resistance fighters 1933-1945. Biographies and letters.] edition. vom Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus beim Zentralkomitee der SED; Dietz-Verlag, Berlin 1970, Volume 1, pp. 657ff; Volume 2, pp. 561f
  • "Ilse Stöbe (1911 - 1942) im Widerstand gegen das "Dritte Reich"" (PDF). Institut für Zeitgeschichte. Berlin: Leibniz Institute of Contemporary History. 27 August 2013. Retrieved 11 February 2023.

Historical environment[edit]

  • Kraushaar, Luise (1981). Berliner Kommunisten im Kampf gegen den Faschismus, 1936 bis 1942. Robert Uhrig u. Genossen [Berlin communists in the fight against fascism, 1936 to 1942.] (in German). Berlin: Dietz. OCLC 164623936.
  • Rosiejka, Gert (1986). Die Rote Kapelle : "Landesverrat" als antifaschist. Widerstand [Die Rote Kapelle : "Landesverrat" als antifaschist. Widerstand] (in German) (1st ed.). Hamburg: Ergebnisse-Verlag. ISBN 3-925622-16-0.
  • Lota, Wladimir (2004). Al ta protiv Barbarossy Sluzhba vneshnej razvedki ["Alta" against "Barbarossa"] (in Russian). Molodaya gvardiya. ISBN 5235027264. (online, russisch)

Citations[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Adams 2009, p. 2009.
  2. ^ "Ilse Stöbe". Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand (in German). German Resistance Memorial Center. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
  3. ^ a b c Coppi & Kebir 2013, p. 18.
  4. ^ Müller-Enbergs 1991a, p. 32.
  5. ^ Coppi, Danyel & Tuchel 1994, p. 263.
  6. ^ a b c d Coppi & Kebir 2013, p. 19.
  7. ^ Coppi & Kebir 2013, pp. 20–21.
  8. ^ Coppi & Kebir 2013, p. 24-25.
  9. ^ Coppi & Kebir 2013, p. 27.
  10. ^ Coppi, Danyel & Tuchel 1994, pp. 262–264.
  11. ^ Coppi & Kebir 2013, p. 24.
  12. ^ Müller-Enbergs 1991a, p. 31.
  13. ^ Scherstjanoi 2014, p. 14.
  14. ^ Helmut Kindler (20 October 2017). Zum Abschied ein Fest: Die Autobiographie eines deutschen Verlegers (in German). Rowohlt Repertoire. ISBN 978-3-688-10642-4. Retrieved 21 April 2019.
  15. ^ Coppi, Danyel & Tuchel 1994, pp. 262–276.
  16. ^ Coppi, Danyel & Tuchel 1994, pp. 263–271.
  17. ^ Müller-Enbergs, Helmut (1991), "Welchen Charakter hatte die Volkskammer nach den Wahlen am 18. März 1990?", Politische Klasse und politische Institutionen, Schriften des Zentralinstituts für sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung der Freien Universität Berlin, vol. 66, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, pp. 235–255, doi:10.1007/978-3-322-94153-4_10, ISBN 978-3-531-12306-6, retrieved 2021-12-10
  18. ^ Gerhard, Kegel (1984). In den Stürmen unseres Jahrhunderts : ein deutscher Kommunist über sein ungewöhnliches Leben [In the storms of the century: a German Communist about his unusual life] (3rd ed.). Berlin: Dietz Verlag. ISBN 3-320-00609-6.
  19. ^ Müller-Enbergs 1991a, pp. 264, 274, footnote 20.
  20. ^ Kesaris, Paul. L, ed. (1979). The Rote Kapelle: the CIA's history of Soviet intelligence and espionage networks in Western Europe, 1936-1945. Washington DC: University Publications of America. p. 151. ISBN 0-89093-203-4.
  21. ^ Woermann, Heinrich-Wilhelm (1991). Widerstand in Charlottenburg (PDF) (in German). Vol. 5 (2nd updated ed.). Berlin. p. 133. Retrieved 21 April 2019.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  22. ^ Coppi, Danyel & Tuchel 1994, p. 265.
  23. ^ Article in the Spiegel Online English edition by Klaus Wiegrefe, 2013-10-01
  24. ^ Müller-Enbergs 1991a, p. 70.
  25. ^ Article in the Belfast Telegraph, 2014-7-20

Bibliography[edit]

  • Adams, Jefferson (1 September 2009). Historical Dictionary of German Intelligence. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-6320-0.
  • Coppi, Hans Coppi; Danyel, Jürgen; Tuchel, Johannes (1994). Die Rote Kapelle im Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus [The Red Orchestra in Resistance to National Socialism]. Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand. ISBN 978-3-89468-110-4.
  • Coppi, Hans; Kebir, Sabine (2013). Ilse Stöbe : wieder im Amt : eine Widerstandskämpferin in der Wilhelmstrasse : eine Veröffentlichung der Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung [Ilse Stöbe: back in office: a resistance fighter in the Wilhelmstrasse: a publication of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation] (in German). Hamburg: VSA. ISBN 978-3-89965-569-8.
  • Scherstjanoi, Elke (2014). "Verräterin oder Patriotin? Ein Gutachten des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte" [Traitor or patriot? An opinion of the Institute of Contemporary History]. Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (in German). 62 (1). Munich: De Gruyter Oldenbourg (Deutschland): 139–156. doi:10.1515/vfzg-2014-0006. S2CID 199575964.
  • Müller-Enbergs, Helmut (1991a). Der Fall Rudolf Herrnstadt: Tauwetterpolitik vor dem 17. Juni [The case of Rudolf Herrnstadt: Thaw policy before 17 June] (in German). Berlin: Christoph Links Verlag. ISBN 978-3-86153-003-9.
  • "Ilse Stöbe". Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand (in German). German Resistance Memorial Center. Retrieved 23 February 2018.
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