Gertrud Classen

Gertrud Classen (3 July 1905 – 3 September 1974) was a German resistance activist during the Nazi years.

Her training was as an artist, and after the war she was able to make a career as a sculptor in the German Democratic Republic, despite being frequently hospitalised during the later 1940s by the osseous tuberculosis from which she suffered.

Life Gertrud "Tutta" Classen was born in Königsberg, the capital of East Prussia which at that time was part of Germany. After a successful school career she entered the Königsberg Arts Academy. Classen had been politically engaged since her school years, and in 1930 she moved to Berlin, switching to the "Berlin Academy for Graphic Arts and Sculpture" ("Berliner Akademie für Grafik und Steinbildhauerei"). went underground and was finally crushed in 1935.

It is known that after the Nazis came to power Classen was involved in illegal leaflet distribution.

War returned in the late summer of 1939 and Classen was briefly arrested in 1940. as a "Meisterschülerin" (loosely: "Master student").