Hedwig Krüger

Hedwig Krüger (born Hedwig Hennig; 1 April 1882 – 16 February 1938) was a German Communist politician. She was a member of the national parliament ("Reichstag") between May and December 1924.

Life Early years Hedwig Hennig was born in Leipzig. In the internal party strife that was a feature of the Communist Party during the 1920s she tended to find herself on the left of the party, grouped with comrades such as Ruth Fischer and Arkadi Maslow. She continued with the same group in 1925 when the party leadership was captured by a stalinist group centred on Ernst Thälmann. The Soviet and German communist parties were closely connected, and in September 1926 she was one of those who signed what came to be known as the "Letter from 700" ("Brief der 700"), protesting against Thälmann's uncritical backing for Stalin. However, she almost immediately came under pressure from the Party Central Committee and retracted her support for that letter, declaring that she should never have signed it in the first place. Even after this, however, meetings took place of comrades opposed to the party leadership such as, notably.

In April 1927 she received a further warning from the Central Committee after she signed a protest against the exclusion from the party of and others around him. As preparations were made for the 1928 General Election, Hedwig Krüger's name was no longer on the Communist Party candidate list. After this she no longer took any leading role within the party.

Nazi Germany In January 1933 the backdrop changed dramatically when Nazis took power and converted Germany into a one-party dictatorship. Hedwig Krüger's work for the Communist Party, now undertaken under the false name "Rühle", was now illegal. She took work as a travelling sales agent for a Leipzig business, but was arrested at Leipzig in November 1934. She faced interrogation by the Gestapo in Leipzig and then in Halle. On 13 December 1934 she was placed in Moringen concentration camp. She was scheduled for release in May 1935, but after the camp administrators had determined that her communist convictions were undinimished she was allocated a further four weeks in solitary confinement. On 13 June 1935 she was released and returned to Halle.

Personal Around 1920 she married a carpenter called Max Krüger. He shared her political beliefs, but was less politically active than she, and he died in 1927. Childless, Hedwig Krüger nevertheless now found herself supporting her mother with bringing up the four children of her sister, also recently deceased, as well as her brother's son.

Hedwig Krüger died at Halle on 18 February 1938 as a result of her treatment in the concentration camp, where an appendicitis operation had been inappropriately deferred.