Hilde Meisel

Hilde Meisel (31 July 1914 – 17 April 1945) was a Jewish German socialist and journalist who published articles against the Nazi regime in Germany. While in exile in England, she wrote under the pseudonym Hilda Monte, calling for German resistance to Nazism in magazines, books and in radio broadcasts. She acted as a courier and repeatedly undertook secret operations in Germany, Austria, France and Portugal, although as a social democrat and Jew, it was extremely dangerous for her to do so. Other code names she used in exile were Hilde Olday, Selma Trier, Helen Harriman, Eva Schneider, H. Monte, Hilda Monte and Hilde Monte.

Early political influences Meisel was born to Rosa and Ernst Meisel, the younger of two daughters in a middle-class, German Jewish family in Vienna. With hostilities breaking out that resulted in the start of World War I, the family moved back to Berlin in 1915. They had previously lived there and her older sister had been born there in 1912. Meisel's father exported and imported household goods for a living.

Meisel attended the Berlin Lyceum from 1924 to 1929. She then went to England, where her uncle, the conductor and composer Edmund Meisel, was then living and working in London. That same year, she undertook in the local London group her first activities with the Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund (ISK), a socialist group that split from the SPD during the Weimar Republic and was active in the fight against Nazism. In January 1931, Hilde Meisel went back to Germany. Toward the end of 1934 she emigrated to Paris, where she was needed for the editorial work at the ISK headquarters established there. established friendships with political contacts in different countries. She lived in Paris for a time, from where she made regular trips back to Germany to aid underground trade union groups, before relocating back to the UK in 1936. She also acted as a courier and smuggled literature into Germany and helped those under threat by the Gestapo to escape from Germany. The last time that Hilda Monte returned from Germany (in the direction of Belgium) was on September 3, 1939.

To avoid being deported, Meisel entered into a marriage of convenience with the British-German caricaturist and cartoonist John Olday in 1938. allowing her to carry out her work in England more easily and Meisel developed a busy career as a journalist, writing articles for The Vanguard, Sozialistische Warte, Left News and Tribune. In addition she was a lecturer for the Workers' Educational Association. During this period she lived in Sleights in the North Riding of Yorkshire with Austrian artist Hannes Hammerschmidt and his wife Tess. Also at this time, she approached George Strauss, left-wing Labour MP and one of the financiers and founders of Tribune, for money to fund an assassination attempt on Hitler: according to him, he arranged for her to meet financial journalist Werner Knop, who agreed to provide support, although the attack did not materialise.

Leaves the ISK In April 1939, Monte leaves the ISK due to differences with Willi Eichler regarding her work assignments. Hellmut von Rauschenplat followed later that year for his own personal reasons.

The Unity of Europe Originally, Meisel worked on the book, The Next Germany. A Basis of Discussion on Peace in Europe with Walter Auerbach, Fritz Eberhard, Otto Kahn-Freund and Kurt Mandelbaum, but left the project because of differences of opinion.

Her ideas and comprehensive approaches to the economic integration of Europe were then published in her own book, "The Unity of Europe". Among other topics, it covered the economic requirements of a postwar Europe. Many German university students have written their diplom theses using this book.

Both books were published in 1943. The "Sozialistische Mitteilungen: News for German Socialists in England" wrote,

In a short chapter of her new book, The Unity of Europe (published by the Left Book Club), Hilda Monte debates the status of Germany in a new Europe; in principle, in the same sense as The Next Germany, published around the same time. Monte's highly readable book is rich in factual material and instructive discussion of the political and economic problems in Europe's future. It stresses, in particular, the recent opposition of the highly industrialized West and agrarian southeastern Europe; the export difficulties on the one hand, rural poverty on the other, crises, tensions and which involved uncertainty and was one of the causes of the war.

Secret mission to Switzerland In summer 1944, Meisel was recruited for the "Faust Project" of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), who were looking for some 200 agents to obtain military and political news from Germany. The OSS held several training programs for the participants in a small private house outside London. The teachers were members of the U.S. Army, including several immigrants. The participants were briefed on practical aspects of everyday life in Nazi Germany, such as ration cards, how to acquire an apartment and other bureaucratic requirements they'd need to navigate in order to find work. At the end of the course, they were trained in parachuting. Because the pending trips were secret, they were forbidden to talk to their friends about their plans.

In September 1944, Meisel and flew to France.

René Bertholet brought Hilda Monte and Anna Beyer to the Ticino Alps near Intragna, Switzerland. In the Centovalli valley, the Bertholets maintained a couple of old farmhouses, named "Al Forno", which were used to hide a number of militants waiting to be infiltrated into Germany. Another part of the waiting period was spent in Zurich.

Near the end of the war, Meisel, Beyer, Hanna Bertholet and Änne Kappius received an invitation from the American headquarters in Bern to discuss returning to Germany to engage in acts of sabotage, but they declined. A little later, Meisel made contact with , who later became editor of the Frankfurter Rundschau, to establish links with Austrian resistance groups from Ticino.

On 17 April 1945, while trying to cross the border illegally from German-occupied Austria into Liechtenstein, Monte was shot when she made a dash for the frontier at Tisis near Feldkirch.

Legacy Stolperstein in Berlin-Wilmersdorf for Hilda Monte, Landhausstrasse 3. There are two streets named after Hilda Monte: Hilda-Monte-Straße in Bergkamen and Hilda-Monte-Weg in the Bergedorf quarter of Hamburg. There is a memorial dedicated to Monte in Feldkirch and a Stolperstein for her in Berlin (see photo, above). There is a permanent display about Hilda Monte at the Jewish Museum in Hohenems, Austria, not far from where she was killed in action.

After 1945, there was a certain amount of speculation surrounding Hilda Monte. In particular, the alleged connection to the Bürgerbräu assassination attempt in November 1939 has been unequivocally disproved by historical evidence by 1969 at the latest.

In 2026, Ugo Giuliani published The Europeanist, a historical novel inspired by the life of Hilde Meisel, also known as Hilda Monte.

Meisel's literary work Books and brochures As Hilde Meisel: Gedichte Hans Lehnert - Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg (1950)

As Hilda Monte: How to conquer Hitler, with Hellmut von Rauschenplat - Jarrolds, London (1940) Help Germany to revolt!, with Helmut von Rauschenplat - Victor Gollancz Ltd and the Fabian Society, London (1942) The Unity of Europe, with introduction by Henry Noel Brailsford - Victor Gollancz Ltd, London (1943) Where freedom perished, foreword by Jennie Lee - Victor Gollancz Ltd, London (1947)

Articles in the Sozialistische Warte (Pen name used is given in brackets)

[Selma Trier] Der Griff nach der Saar, Vol. 9, 1934, No. 8 (December), pp. 192–201 [H. Monte] Krise und Ausbeutung, Vol. 11, 1936, No. 1 (January), pp. 13–16 [H. Monte] Neues Labour-Programm, Vol. 12, 1937, No. 10 (15 May 1937), pp. 220–222 [H. Monte] Evolutionärer Kommunismus, Vol. 13, 1938, No. 12 (25 March 1938), pp. 267–270 [Hilde Monte] Die wirtschaftliche Unabhängigkeit der CSR, Vol. 13, 1938, No. 26 (1 July 1938), pp. 603–609 [Hilde Monte] Ungarn vor der Wahl, Vol. 13, 1938, No. 28 (15 July 1938), pp. 658–662 [Hilde Monte] Die Erschliessung Polens, Vol. 13, 1938, No. 36 (9 September 1938), pp. 845–848