Ingeburg Gertrud Werlemann (also ''Ingeburg Gertrud Wagner'') (* 28 April 1919 in Berlin-Altglienicke; † 12 September 2010) was a German secretary and photographer. During the
Second World War
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 ...
After training as a secretary and stenographer, she worked for various state institutions. She had been a member of the
NSDAP
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
since September 1938. At the beginning of March 1940, she joined the
Reich Security Main Office
The Reich Security Main Office (german: Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA) was an organization under Heinrich Himmler in his dual capacity as ''Chef der Deutschen Polizei'' (Chief of German Police) and ''Reichsführer-SS'', the head of the Nazi ...
, where she eventually worked for Eichmann. In June 1944, she married Heinz Wagner, an officer in the
Wehrmacht
The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previous ...
. She was interned in the
Soviet occupation zone
The Soviet Occupation Zone ( or german: Ostzone, label=none, "East Zone"; , ''Sovetskaya okkupatsionnaya zona Germanii'', "Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany") was an area of Germany in Central Europe that was occupied by the Soviet Union as a c ...
from 1945 to 1948. Soon after, she divorced her husband.
From April 1951, Ingeburg Wagner lived in
Bonn
The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ruhr r ...
, where she worked as a businesswoman and photographer. Later she moved to
Garmisch-Partenkirchen
Garmisch-Partenkirchen (; Bavarian: ''Garmasch-Partakurch''), nicknamed Ga-Pa, is an Alpine ski town in Bavaria, southern Germany. It is the seat of government of the district of Garmisch-Partenkirchen (abbreviated ''GAP''), in the O ...
. Already during her internment in Soviet Special Camp No. 7, she met Käte Werth and formed a relationship with her that lasted until her death. After the
Bundestag
The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet") is the German federal parliament. It is the only federal representative body that is directly elected by the German people. It is comparable to the United States House of Representatives or the House of Commons ...
passed the Civil Partnership Act in 2001, she entered into an officially registered partnership with Werth.Marcus Gryglewski Eichmanns Sekretärin In: taz, 17 Januar 2020, last seen 23. Januar 2022.
Wannsee conference
At the conference, high-ranking representatives of the party and the state coordinated the persecution and murder of the European Jews. In addition to them, a typist was also present, as
Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( ; ; 7 March 1904 – 4 June 1942) was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust.
He was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (inclu ...
. By fortunate circumstances, a copy of this has been preserved and is today considered an important source on the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
.
Among other things, it can be concluded from a witness statement by Wagner (Werlemann) in 1962 that she took notes at that conference. She was neither charged nor convicted, according to historian Marcus Gryglewski. He sees Wagner as an example of how German post-war society was hardly interested in dealing with national socialist crimes, legally or otherwise. On top of that, there was a lack of awareness of female perpetrators and desk-top perpetrators. But according to a later decision of the German
Federal Court of Justice
The Federal Court of Justice (german: Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) is the highest court in the system of ordinary jurisdiction (''ordentliche Gerichtsbarkeit'') in Germany, founded in 1950. It has its seat in Karlsruhe with two panels being situat ...
, one could also support a killing machine without having killed directly.Marcus Gryglewski Eichmanns Sekretärin In: taz, 17. Januar 2020, last seen 23. Januar 2022.
Media portrayal and gender of the secretary
The identity of the secretary is not totally undisputed. The 2001 British-American film ''
Conspiracy
A conspiracy, also known as a plot, is a secret plan or agreement between persons (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder or treason, especially with political motivation, while keeping their agree ...
'' features a male stenographer, played by Simon Markey. Alex J.Kay in 2019 defended this choice because Eichmann at his trial had "expressly stated that the stenographer had been male."
Christian Mentel on the other hand follows the theory that Werlemann was the note taking secretary, and on the pages of the present day museum of the Wannsee conference house, Wolfgang Benz briefly mentions an "unknown female secretary" ''(einer unbekannten Sekretärin)'' that helped Eichmann with the notes.Wolfgang Benz: Die Wannseekonferenz – Vor 65 Jahren '' In: ''Tribüne'', vol. 45 (2006), No. 4, pp. 164–170, p. 164.
Werlemann was portrayed by Anita Mally (simply as "secretary") in a 1984 German TV film and by Lilli Fichtner in the 2022 version (under the name Ingeburg Werlemann). In both versions, the secretary takes notes by hand.