Erna Louise Margaretha Lang

Erna Lang (born Erna Demuth: 30 June 1892 – 18 May 1983) was a German activist participant in the November Revolution and politician.

Between 1913 and 1918 she was married to Max Halbe who was killed in the war. Her second marriage, to Joseph Lang, took place in 1941. Therefore, sources covering her political and later activities may identify her as Erna Halbe or as Erna Lang.

Life Provenance and early years Erna Louise Margaretha Demuth was born in Hamburg. Ernst Demuth, her father, was a member of the Furriers' Trades Union and a Social Democratic Party (SPD) official, but he died in 1912. Erna Demuth trained and qualified at the Hamburg Fröbel College as a Kindergarten teacher, and it was in this profession that she worked for five years.

Communist Party official In the event, the authority and legitimacy of the Workers' and Soldiers' Soviet/Council was never accepted by most Hamburgers, and the Hamburg Parliament ("Hamburgische Bürgerschaft;") soon recovered a level of control of city administration. In 1920 Erna Halbe was appointed Women's Secretary for the party regional leadership team ("Bezirksleitung") for the Wasserkante district, comprising Hamburg and a large surrounding area of Holstein to the north of the Elbe.

Nazi Germany and exile The Nazis nevertheless took power in January 1933 and lost little time in transforming Germany into a one-party dictatorship. The Reichstag fire in February 1933 was instantly blamed on "communists", and it was indeed those with any sort of history of communist activism who now found themselves targeted with particular intensity by the authorities. Many fled abroad: others were arrested. Erna Halbe continued with her (now illegal) political work in Berlin till 30 May 1933 when the Gestapo searched her house and arrested her. She was now held at the women's prison Berlin's Ballin Street in "protective custody" till 2 August 1933. Following her release, working with Walter Fabian and Joseph Lang she resumed her co-ordination work for the underground SAPD.

During the early summer of 1934 a succession of her political comrades were arrested and disappeared. Aware that her own re-arrest was only a matter of time, in June 1934 she escaped to Prague. In Czechoslovakia she lived in exile with Joseph Lang, and worked in the border with Germany helping to organise the escapes into Czechoslovakia of other political exiles. Back in Berlin, in 1938 the Gestapo learned of her activities from her political friends who had failed to escape in time, and demanded that she be handed over by the Czechoslovak government. The government rejected the demand, but at the same time "requested" her to leave the country as quickly as possible. Travelling via Vienna and Zürich she made her way to Paris which by this time - along with Moscow - had become home to several thousand German political exiles and the de facto headquarters of several exiled left wing German political parties.

Although during the 1930s France was more welcoming than other western European countries to refugees from Nazi Germany, by 1940 the welcome was wearing thin, and for a couple of years the refugees had been required to report and confirm their details at the town halls each week. This meant that when, following the German invasion in May 1940, the authorities reacted by identifying the political and racially defined German refugees as enemy aliens, they had accurate up to date records on where the enemy aliens were all living. Erna Halbe and Joseph Lang were, with several hundred others, rounded up overnight and interned in May 1940. Shortly afterwards they were transported to the Gurs internment camp in the south of the country, in the hills to the west of Toulouse. At this stage, not withstanding the very basic level of the accommodation, Gurs was not set up for enforced detention and inmates were able to leave the camp in the day time. As political refugees under imminent threat they both obtained immigration visa for admission to the United States. Joseph Lang, (who was Jewish) made his way to Lisbon, but Halbe was unable to obtain an exit visa from the French authorities, who were also holding on to her identity papers. In the end she was able to catch up with Lang after a brief delay, but she achieved this only after crossing the Pyrenees on foot, carrying a forged birth certificate. On 14 December 1940 Halbe and Lang arrived together in New York City on a ship from Lisbon.

Shortly after arriving in New York Erna Halbe and Joseph Lang married. They support themselves initially through casual work, later setting up a little textiles business. After 1945, with friends, they organised support for a number of persecuted socialists in Germany. At the end of 1950 Joseph and Erna Lang returned to Germany where till 1954 Erna Lang continued to work for the Frankfurt office of the International Rescue Committee.

Back in Germany (after May 1949, West Germany) the Langs settled in Frankfurt am Main. In January 1951 Erna Lang rejoined the SPD, and she remained politically engaged. Joseph Lang, also a member of the party, played an important part in trades union and party affairs in the Frankfurt and South Hessen regions until his death in 1973. By 1981 it was reported that Erna was living in a retirement home in Frankfurt, the city in which she died on 18 May 1983.