Elisabeth Jäger

Elisabeth Jäger (née Morawitz; 25 September 1924 – 28 June 2019) was an Austrian journalist, based from 1950 in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). She was a committed anti-fascist and a survivor of the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Provenance and early years Leopoldine Elisabeth "Lisl" Morawitz was born into a conventionally catholic family

It was not just the Morawitz children who backed the anti-fascist resistance. August Morawitz, Elisabeth's father, hid the duplicating machine they used for preparing their leaflets; and she later found out that her mother, too, had been collecting money for "Red Aid" and, indeed, making their apartment available for "illegal meetings". However, August Morawitz died in March 1941.

At the beginning of July 1945 Lisl Morawitz returned home to Vienna. The political situation was unstable and unpredictable, but over the next few years the country was divided into four military zones of occupation. The area surrounding Vienna comprised the Soviet occupation zone, although the city itself was separately divided, with roughly 60% under Soviet occupation and smaller occupation zones administered by US, British and French occupation forces. The defining backdrop was one of austerity leading, on occasion, to acute hunger, as supplies were diverted from the Soviet zone to the Soviet Union. Sources are largely silent about Lisl Morawitz's activities during this time, but in or before 1950 she married Max Bair.

Max Bair alias Martin Jäger Max Bair was a "farm boy" from the Tirol ("ein Tiroler Bauernbub").

To the north, most of Germany had also been divided into military zones of occupation. It appeared that the Soviets had given very much more attention to planning for this outcome in Germany, and although not everything had gone to plan, in October 1949 the region administered as the Soviet occupation zone in Germany had been relaunched as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic (East Germany). In 1950 Max Bair changed his name to Martin Jäger, and with his new wife, Elisabeth relocated to the German Democratic Republic where they would build a new life together. During the years that followed she worked for the East German radio service, for various newspaper publishing houses, and at the Ministry for Culture and the Arts. In presentations to school children and young people she testifies to her own experiences and warns against the consequences of right-wing extremism, fascism and totalitarianism.

Honours On 13 June 2008 Minister-President Platzeck conferred on Elisabeth Jäger the Order of Merit of Brandenburg in recognition of her consistent public opposition to political amnesia in respect of the twentieth century dictatorships.