Ella Ehlers (born Ella Schimpf: 30 May 1904 – 9 April 1985) was a German Kindergarten teacher. Through her work, in 1926 she met , a political activist who at around the same time was readmitted to the Communist Party. She became his secretary and then, in 1928, his wife. Ella Schimpf had grown up in a heavily politicised family, and she now participated energetically with her husband in the increasingly polarised politics of the time. After 1933 she engaged in dangerous (and illegal) anti-government resistance, but she nevertheless survived the twelve Hitler years.
In 1945 she rejoined the (no longer illegal) Communist Party, but switched the next year to the SPD and built a new political career in Bremen, at times working closely with her husband who became a senator and later, between 1959 and 1963, mayor of the city. Her own focus was mostly on the social and welfare sectors. She was involved in the setting up of several new support organisations. Ella Ehlers' final major role came in 1964 when she was appointed to chair the state committee of the .
Life.
Provenance and early years.
Ella Schimpf was born in Dresden, the youngest of her parents' three children. Karl Schimpf, father worked as a glazier and cabinet maker. Her mother Maria had worked in one of Dresden's many cigarette factories, but after the births of the children switched to making hand-rolled cigarettes as a . Both her parents were active trades unionists and, by 1900, members of the still far from mainstream Social Democratic Party ("Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" / SPD). Politics and socialism were frequently discussed within the family, often with great passion. At the age of eight Ella would join her brother to deliver the pro-SPD Leipziger Volkszeitung (Newspaper), in order to be able to contribute to the family housekeeping budget.
War.
In 1914, when she was ten both her parents resigned from the SPD, horrified by the decision of the party leadership in the Reichstag (national parliament) to vote in favour of war credits to help finance the war which had broken out in July. That decision was contentious with many party members; and by the time the war ended four years later had led to a party split and thereby, indirectly, the launch of the Communist Party of Germany During December/January 1918/1919. Her parents joined the Communist Party in 1920. Ella and her siblings joined the Young Communists.
Work and qualification.
1918 was the year in which she left school and went to work in the children's ward at a nearby hospital and, later, at as a domestic assistant at a sanatorium. When she had been younger she had planned to become a teacher, and now she was keen to train and qualify for a career in nursing, but both options were closed off to her by the absence of the necessary funds in the family. Nevertheless, her extensive hands-on experience of childcare would later prove invaluable for her subsequent career in the care sector and, after 1928, in politics. In 1922 a "free place" came up for a traineeship as a Kindergarten teacher and registered children's nurse: she grabbed her opportunity.
Barkenhoff.
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The children came from miserable backgrounds, often made worse by a parent's imprisonment. Now [in the Barkenhoff] they were to be nurtured in order not merely to restore them physically, but also so that they might acquire experience of solidarity and be educated to become politically thinking individuals.
"Ella Ehlers"
Following qualification, Schimpf worked between 1924 and 1928 at the in Worpswede, a small town set in the flat marshlands to the north of Bremen that had become home to a lively artistic community since the end of the 19th century. was a large detached house that had been acquired by the artist-turned-pacifist Heinrich Vogeler in 1894, and which after the First World War was made available by its owner to "Red Aid", a communist led workers' welfare organisation with well-publicised links to its Moscow based sister organisation ("Междунаро́дная организа́ция по́мощи борца́м револю́ции" / МОПР). Red Aid reconfigured the house for use as a rehabilitation home for the children of killed Communist activists and those who had been arrested and detained in the aftermath of the uprisings in the ports and industrial cities during 1918/19. Other sources emphasize the extent to which many of the children looked after in were "half-orphans" (the children of war-widow mothers) and children from families in which the fathers had been too badly wounded in the war to be able to find work and provide for their own children. According to at least one source the Barkenhoff children's home was organised on a "collective" basis. Elsewhere it is stated that Ella Schimpf/Ehlers was placed in overall charge of it in 1926 and ran it for the next two years.
A very political marriage.
It was through the highly politicised children's home at which she worked that in 1926 Ella Schimpf met . Ehlers was a prominent member of the Communist Party and the newly appointed secretary of "Red Aid". The two of them quickly formed an intense personal relationship which, as matters turned out, would become life-long. They married at some point between 1928 and 1935: sources differ. The marriage would remain childless. By the time the Ehlers relocated to Berlin in 1928 they were both committed members of the Communist Party which was itself in a state of intensifying inner turmoil.
Party ructions.
In 1929 Ella Ehlers took over the direction of a MOPR ("International Red Aid") children's home in Elgersburg, in the countryside south of Erfurt in Thuringia, from where every two months she visited her husband who had remained in Berlin. Over the next couple of years she became caught up in the backwash from the ferocious party ructions of the period, both on account of her husband and on her own account. Ever since Ernst Thälmann had become party leader in 1925 there had been a drive from the top for the Communist Party of Germany to align itself more closely - and some thought ever more unquestioningly - with the uncompromising anti-Trotskyite "hardline" version of communism which by this time was being propounded and implemented by the Soviet party under Stalin. One result of this in Germany was an unbending hostility to the centre-left Social Democratic Party, which contributed to a division on the political left of German politics that would prove disastrous in the build-up to 1933. Adolf and Ella Ehlers had relocated to Berlin, and had remained there, in order that he might undertake an important job as national head of the propaganda department for "Red Aid". Sources indicate that his appointment to the job took effect during or shortly after 1927. However, by 1929 he was becoming increasingly estranged from the Stalinist party leadership, and when the party split during 1929/30 he was one of a large number of senior comrades who ended up as members of the so-called Communist Party of Germany (Opposition), which in the short term sought (unsuccessfully) to replace the "mainstream" Communist Party. Ella Ehlers had no difficulty in backing her husband and the other members of the break-away party. Sources are not entirely clear about the chronology of the next couple of years, but during or before 1930 Adolf Ehlers lost his job as head of the propaganda with "Red Aid". Ella Ehlers was having her own problems at Elgersburg with the Comintern "permanent representative" to Germany, Elena Stasova and with Erna Halbe who had been parachuted in by the party leadership to join her as co-leader at the MOPR children's home. In or before 1931 Ella Ehlers was removed from her position at the children's home and expelled from the party.
Back to Bremen.
The Ehlers now moved back to Bremen where in the immediate term they now lived with Ella's older sister Grete Deisen and her husband Wilhelm, who had their home in the Osternburger Street near the city centre. was a fellow Communist activist who, like the Ehlers, had broken away from the "mainstream" party. Neither of the Ehlers was able to find work, and they stayed with the Deisen's, accommodated in an improvised apartment in the attic, for longer than any of those involved might have anticipated. A particular difficulty was that had fallen seriously ill. He remained unemployed for six and a half years. Ella Ehlers therefore trained and qualified for office work, after which she took a clerical job with a small Bremen coffee business. Subsequently or concurrently she also undertook typing and office work with the Bergolin paint factory. The proprietor was aware of her anti-government political views, but protected her. Throughout the middle 1930s, till 1938, Adolf and Ella Ehlers were entirely dependent on Ella's wages for putting food on the table.
Politics and resistance.
During 1932 the couple joined the Socialist Workers' Party ("Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands" / SAPD), which had been formed the previous year by break-away former members of the SPD. With German politics increasingly spilling onto the streets as the political parties became ever more polarised, and with the Reichstag ("national parliament") becoming gridlocked by the mutual contempt of the principal populist parties (and not helped by continuing refusal of the Communist Party to discuss any sort of parliamentary coalition or collaboration with anyone else), the SAPD was formed out of a fear that political division on the left was opening a path to power for populist nationalists of the right. It proved a prescient fear, and one with which the Ehlers identified. In Bremen most of the former communists who had switched to the (as matters turned out short-lived) KPD(O) as part of the party split of 1929/30 also switched over to the SAPD.
In January 1933 the Hitler government seized the opportunity presented by the political gridlock to take power. The new government lost no time in transforming Germany into a one-party dictatorship Political activity (unless on behalf of the ruling National Socialists) was outlawed. "Red Aid" was banned as part of the Reichstag Fire Decree at the end of February 1933. The Ehlers by now had their own apartment which very soon became a secret meeting place for the now illegal political activity which they continued to undertake with party comrades. Resistance activism under a dictatorship tends to go unreported unless those who engage in it end up in court, in which case records of statements used for the trial often provide a relatively detailed version of what was done or at least alleged. Ella Ehlers appears never to have been caught. Sources recall that during the twelve years of the Hitler government she undertook (and according to at least one source organised) illegal courier work which kept SAPD comrades in touch with one another. Elsewhere it is recorded that she was involved in helping endangered female comrades to escape the country. In 1934 the underground SAPD made contact with the "Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund" ("loosely, "International Socialist Militant League""), an organisation of German socialists who had set up an exiled leadership group in Sweden. There was a regular exchange of documents involving the SAPD leader August Enderle who was based in Stockholm from 1934 and who evidently had access to a printing press. A communication channel was set up involving members of the International Transport Workers' Federation, working on the ships sailing between the Swedish parts and Bremen. In addition it is recorded that on at least two occasions Ella Ehlers herself made the trip from Berlin to Hamburg in order to meet a woman in a café who gave her printed pamphlets for onward distribution in Germany. In connection with her courier work during the war years Ella Ehlers also established firm and lasting friendships both with Irmgard Enderle and with the future Berlin mayor and West German chancellor Willy Brandt, who after 1940 assumed an increasingly prominent role among the German socialist resistance activists based in Norway and Sweden.
It is impossible to know how far the security services were aware of the extent of the illegal contacts that Adolf and Elly Ehlers sustained on behalf of the SAPD. Certainly their house was subjected to frequent and thorough searches and they themselves were burdened with a succession of checks and reporting requirements. They nevertheless seem to have avoided lengthy periods of detention. Despite his political record, in 1938 finally managed to find