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

KPD The Communist Party of Germany (german: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, , KPD ) was a major political party in the Weimar Republic between 1918 and 1933, an underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and a minor party in West German ...

Life

Anna Schnitzler was born into a working-class family in

Liblar Erftstadt () is a town located about 20 km south-west of Cologne in the Rhein-Erft-Kreis, state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The name of the town derives from the river that flows through it, the Erft. The neighbouring towns are Brühl ...

, a small town to the southwest of

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

. She attended junior school locally after which she went into

domestic service A domestic worker or domestic servant is a person who works within the scope of a residence. The term "domestic service" applies to the equivalent occupational category. In traditional English contexts, such a person was said to be "in service ...

. 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 Fo ...

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

war War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...

. Two years later the USPD itself broke apart, and Reitler was part of the left-wing majority that now joined the

Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...

. 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 by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has opera ...

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 and the fall of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. It is also the only year in which Nuclear weapon, nuclear weapons Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have been used in combat. Events Below, ...

. Anna Reitler died in

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

(on the southern edge of

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

) 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