Margarete Nischwitz

Margarete Nischwitz (born Margarete Stock; 17 October 1891 – 10 December 1979) was a German political activist and politician (KPD). She sat as a member of the Saxony regional parliament (Landtag) in Dresden between 1929 and 1933.

Life Margarete "Grete" Stock was born in Chemnitz. She grew up in a one-parent family. Her mother was a textiles worker. In 1932 she resigned from the party. Her Landtag seat went to Richard Schubert. For Nischwitz the episode led to a lengthy nervous breakdown and a period in a mental institution.

After 1933 Nischwitz was taken into protective custody on several occasions during the Nazi years and placed under police surveillance. Despite her communist past she nevertheless survived, and after the regime collapsed in the wake of military defeat she rejoined the Communist Party in 1945. Based on agreements between the victorious powers the western two thirds of Germany were now to be divided into military zones of occupation. The large central chunk that included Saxony was administered as the Soviet occupation zone. As a response to the widespread belief that the Nazis had been able to take power in 1933 only because of divisions between the parties of the left, a new political party, the Socialist Unity Party ("Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" / SED), was formed in April 1946 through a contentious merger involving the Communists and Social Democrats. Although there may have been hopes that the SED would take root across Germany, in reality the effect of the exercise was restricted to the Soviet zone. Margarete Nischwitz was one of thousands of comrades who lost little time in signing their party memberships over from the Communist Party to the new SED. However, her party activities were now restricted to low level duties. In October 1949 the Soviet occupation zone was relaunched as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic (East Germany). Nischwitz was celebrated as a "party veteran", being a recipient in 1976 of the Patriotic Order of Merit in gold.

Personal life During her final years she lived in Frohnau, a historical mining village in the hills to the south of Dresden. She died in Frohnau on 10 December 1979.