Helene Overlach

Helene Overlach (19 July 1894 – 7 August 1983) was a German Communist party official and politician. Unusually for a woman at that time, between 1928 and 1933 she served as a member of the German parliament ("Reichstag") in Berlin, representing Electoral District 22 (Düsseldorf East). During the Hitler years her relatively high political profile before 1933 earned her the close attention of the security services. She survived, despite spending much of the time during those twelve years in prisons and concentration camps: her health was badly affected.

Biography Provenance and early years Helene Overlach was born in Greiz, a small manufacturing town in the hill country south of Leipzig. She was the third of her parents' four recorded children. Following the outbreak of war in the late summer of 1914 she had, in addition, volunteered as a nursing auxiliary at one of the city's improvised military hospitals. In 1915 one of her brothers died as a result of war injuries sustained at the front. In 1921 she also took a job with the party, working as a typist-secretary at the young party's main office in Berlin. During this period she worked for a time with Wilhelm Pieck, a clever and ambitious politician who would emerge nearly thirty years later as the first president of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). For Communist members, including Helene Overlach, Reichstag membership came with membership of the Bund der Freunde der Sowjetunion ("Association of Friends of the Soviet Union" / BdFSU)), which had been set up on 4 November 1928 in the context of Party Leader Thälmann's strategy of moving closer to the Soviet Communist Party (in the process further isolating the Communist Party from potential political allies in Germany).

Overlach remained a member of the Reichstag from May 1928, through three more general elections, until March 1933, despite being out of the country for much of the time. The birth of her daughter Hanna around this time also provides context for her (temporary) disappearance from the political scene. There are suggestions that her release came in May Typhus was rife. Helene Overlach was still not physically robust, and her health now deteriorated alarmingly.

The immediate aftermath of war was a chaotic time, especially in what remained of Germany: normally reliable sources differ significantly about Helene Overlach's stay in Sweden. One states that following her arrival in southern Sweden she was interned until July 1945: she then, in August 1945, returned to Berlin. 1955 Patriotic Order of Merit in silver 1964 Patriotic Order of Merit in gold 1969 Patriotic Order of Merit, gold clasp 1974 Order of Karl Marx