Hanna Sandtner

Hanna Sandtner (born Johanna Ritter: 26 August 1900 - 26 February 1958) was a German politician (KPD). She served as a member of the national parliament (Reichstag) between 1931 and 1932.

Life Johanna Ritter was born in Munich. Her father worked as a chauffeur. As a young woman she worked in a packaging factory and as a book keeper. She joined the anti-war left-wing Spartacus League in 1918. Less than two years later she was a founder member of the German Communist Party. During 1919, she received a six-month jail sentence because of her involvement in the short-lived Munich Soviet (Räterepublik) episode. convicted of "Offences against the Explosives Law" (Vergehen gegen das Sprengstoffgesetz). taking over the seat made available by the mid-term resignation of her party comrade, Ernst Reinke. She was one of those who represented the Berlin electoral district (Wahlkreis 2)".

In February 1934 she fled to Moscow where she settled, attending courses at the International Lenin School. In December 1934 she was ready to return to the west: travelling under a false name she moved to Austria which at this stage was still a separate state, albeit one where the new government was in many ways closely aligned, philosophically, with Nazi Germany. During the next few months she worked with the leadership of the (since 1933 illegal) Austrian Communist Party. On 30 October 1935 Sandtner, who at this stage was living under the name "Anna Gelb", was arrested in Vienna. In March 1936 she was convicted of "high treason" and sentenced to one and a half years of imprisonment.

Hanna Sandtner was released, however, as part of an amnesty in July 1936. During 1937 she moved to Czechoslovakia and worked for the communist movement in Prague till the German occupation took effect. In 1940 the two of them fled to Sweden, supported by the Nansen Hjelp humanitarian organisation. a function which appears to have been connected with the health insurance reforms being implemented by the Central Committee member, Helmut Lehmann.

In September 1948 Hanna Sandtner fell seriously ill. She went to Switzerland for several months in order to recover her health and, it has been suggested, mandated by the party hierarchy to keep an eye on the prominent communist novelist Erich Weinert, who was also, accompanied by his wife, visiting Switzerland in the hope of a cure.

In October 1949 the region administered as the Soviet occupation zone was relaunched as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic, a new kind of one-party dictatorship. At the top of the ruling party there were no dramatic personnel changes, but a year later, with international political tensions high and the East German government increasingly nervous, Hanna Sandtner was relieved of her senior police job and switched to the debt recovery service. In her final years Hanna Sandtner became increasingly embittered. In October 1953 she approached Hermann Matern, a powerful member of the Party Central Committee, with her concerns about the "mysterious circumstances" surrounding the death of Paul Jahnke. Her approach was not successful. In July 1954 she received a formal rebuke for an attitude damaging to the good of the party (parteischädigenden Verhaltens).