Elisabeth Schumacher

Elisabeth Schumacher (née Hohenemser, 28 April 1904 in Darmstadt – 22 December 1942 in Berlin-Plötzensee, executed) was a resistance fighter in the Third Reich. She belonged to the Red Orchestra ("Rote Kapelle") resistance group.

Life

Elisabeth was born to the engineer Fritz Hohenemser, who came from a Jewish family of bankers from Frankfurt am Main. Her mother was from a Christian family and came from Meiningen. In 1914, the family moved from Strasbourg (then Straßburg in Germany) to Frankfurt am Main. Fritz Hohenemser died shortly thereafter as a soldier in the First World War. With her mother and siblings, Elisabeth then moved to Meiningen.

As of 1921, once again living in Frankfurt, she studied on and off until 1925 at the Applied Arts School ("Kunstgewerbeschule") in Offenbach. Until 1928, she worked in an applied arts studio so that she could later study art in Berlin, which she did until 1933. After completing her studies, she was active at the German Labour Museum ("Deutsches Arbeitsmuseum"). Owing to the Nuremberg Laws, she was deemed to be a "half-Jew" ("Halbjüdin"), and therefore could not expect to hold a steady job, but only to do freelance work.

Resistance activities

In 1934, Elisabeth Hohenemser married the sculptor Kurt Schumacher, a staunch Communist. The couple became part of the circle of friends that included Libertas and Harro Schulze-Boysen, and Mildred and Arvid Harnack, which the Gestapo would later call the Red Orchestra ("Rote Kapelle"). The group busied itself giving handbills out, and documented the Nazi régime's crimes.

Schumacher wanted to protect Jewish relatives from deportation. Moreover, she believed there were possibilities of negotiating peace with the Soviet Union. The Schuhmachers were likely trying to warn the Soviets by wireless about the forthcoming German invasion (Operation Barbarossa) early in 1941. In August 1942, they both took in the Communist Albert Hößler (or Hössler), who since the 1930s had lived in the Soviet Union and had now parachuted into Germany to help the resistance group convey information to the Soviet Union.

Arrest and death

In 1942, after a wireless message was decoded, many members of the Red Orchestra were arrested. On 12 September of that year came Elisabeth Schumacher's arrest at her flat. Like her husband, she was sentenced to death on 19 December 1942 at the "Reichskriegsgericht" ("Reich Military Tribunal") for "conspiracy to commit high treason", espionage, and further political misdeeds.

Elisabeth Schumacher was beheaded on 22 December 1942 at Plötzensee Prison. Forty-five minutes earlier, her husband had been hanged there.

Quotations

*"Dieser Krieg nimmt immer wahnwitzigere Formen an." ("This war takes on ever crazier forms.") (Elisabeth Schumacher im März 1941)

*"„Es gibt hier entsetzlich viel Trostlosigkeit und Elend auf Schritt und Tritt. Im Judenlager ist Flecktyphus ausgebrochen." ("There is here an appallingly great deal of bleakness and misery at every turn. In the Jewish encampment typhus has broken out.") — in a letter to her family, 1941.

External links

* [http://www.stadtgeschichte-ffm.de/service/gedenktafeln/schumacher.htm Webpage about memorial plaque to Elisabeth Schumacher] (in German)