Bertha Clark

Bertha Braunthal (1 February 1887 – 1968) was a communist politician in Germany from the party's creation in 1920 till her emigration to London in 1933. She was also a first-wave feminist.

Sources sometimes identify her as Bertha Braunthal-Clark, reflecting her marriage in or before 1933 to the Scottish born communist Willie Norby Clark.

Life Braunthal was the eldest of six children born into a Jewish family in Vienna. Her father, Maier Braunthal (1836–1914), originally from Odessa, worked as an accountant. Two of her younger brothers, Julius Braunthal (1891–1972) and Alfred Braunthal (1897–1980) would also grow up to become notable as pioneers of twentieth century socialism. She worked on the party newspaper, Die Kämpferin#tag:ref|Die Kämpferin "The [female] battler" / The Woman Warrior During this period she was working alongside Clara Zetkin, Hertha Sturm and Martha Arendsee editing the party newspaper, Die Kommunistin ("The Woman Communist").

Braunthal participated at the Second International Communist Women's Conference in June 1921 before travelling on to Moscow to join in at the World Congress of the Communist Third International. As the German communists sustained their reputation for factionalism, during the internal party crisis of 1921 she was part of the left-wing majority on the Party Executive that voted through the expulsion of Paul Levi. In August 1921 at the Seventh Party Conference at Jena, and again at the Eighth Party Conference at Leipzig in January/February 1923, she was re-elected to the Party Executive and mandated to lead the party's Women's Secretariat. While retaining her membership of the exiled German Communist Party, Bertha Clark now also joined its British counterpart. No source has been located to suggest that they were arrested and detained by the British authorities in 1940, however.

After the unexpected dissolution of the Comintern in 1943, Bertha Clark undertook translation work for the British Communist Party. She died in the London quarter of Islington during the early summer of 1968. Some sources give the year of her death as 1967.