Johanne Reitze

Johanne Reitze (born Johanne Leopolt: 16 January 1878 – 22 February 1949) was a German politician (SPD) and women's rights activist. She sat as a member of the national parliament (Reichstag) between 1920 and 1932.

She may be identified in English language sources as Johanna Reitze.

Life Johanne Caroline Agnes Leopolt was born into a working-class family in Hamburg; her family were not religiously affiliated. She left school in 1893 and entered into domestic service. In 1894 she took work in a book printing business: colleagues introduced her to the labour movement. She then, in 1900, married a journalist, Johannes Carl Kilian-Reitze (? –1944).

During the First World War, Johanne Reitze worked as a nurse-carer, looking after the injured and the bereaved. She was a member of the advisory council of the Hamburg war supplies office and of the nutrition committee of the war kitchens. Much later, after the Nazi take-over had put an end to her political career, little is known about her activities during the twelve Nazi years. She was one of those persecuted by the Nazis. The attempt, in 1944, to assassinate the leader, failed in its immediate objective but succeeded in badly unnerving the government, which dusted down its old records of pre-1933 political opponents and, on the night of 22/23 August, set out to arrest large numbers of them. Many had gone away or died - often of natural causes - but Johanne Reitze was one of more than four thousand arrested, all over Germany, by the Gestapo Her apartment had been destroyed by enemy bombs.

After the war, now widowed, she participated in rebuilding welfare provision.

Celebration Reitzestraße ("Reitz Street") in Hamburg's Groß Borstel quarter was named after her in 1951. More recently Johanne-Reitze-Straße in the "Klein Horst" residential development in Hamburg-Ohlsdorf was named after her in 2007. Her grave stone is in the "Garden of the women" at the vast Ohlsdorf Cemetery to the north of the city centre.