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 e ...

who resisted the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

. 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 one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. 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 The Social Democratic Party of Germany (german: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, ; SPD, ) is a centre-left social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany. Saskia Esken has been the ...

, 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 in ...

. 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 Otto Brenner (8 November 1907 – 15 April 1972) was a German trades unionist and politician. Between 1956 and 1972 he was the leader of the powerful IG Metall ''(Industrial Union of Metalworkers)''. In a tribute published in 1967 to celebrate ...

and Eduard Wald. 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 2020 ...

; 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 vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. 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 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 Ricklingen is a borough and a quarter of Hanover, in Lower Saxony, and in Germany. The borough Ricklingen consists of the quarters Bornum, Mühlenberg, Oberricklingen, Ricklingen and Wettbergen. It is the home of Rugby football sports club DRC Han ...

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