Maria Backenecker

Maria Backenecker (born Maria Scharnetzki; 20 March 1893 – 24 December 1931) was a German politician (KPD ) and feminist activist. She was elected to the Reichstag (national parliament) in 1924, but was expelled from the party early in 1927 during the course of one of its periodic outbursts of internal division. However, when the Leninbund itself broke apart in a pattern that mirrored the conflict between Stalin and Trotsky that had played out in Moscow a couple of years earlier, Backenecker was one of those who followed Anton Grylewicz away from the Leninbund, and she became the leader of the Trotskyist Left wing opposition to the Communist Party in Hamborn.

While German politics became ever more extreme and polarised in the run up to the Nazi take-over in January 1933, Maria Backenecker herself died from Tuberculosis on 24 December 1931.