Maria Eckertz

Maria Eckertz (née Flerlage; 21 December 1899 – 19 December 1969) was a German activist and politician (KPD). She took part in anti-Nazi resistance and narrowly avoided death in Ravensbrück concentration camp.

She briefly sat as a member of the Prussian regional parliament ("Landtag") in 1932/33 and, again briefly, in 1946, as a Cologne city councillor.

Theodore Eckertz was re-arrested in 1939. Maria Eckertz took work as a bookkeeper. She was re-arrested in August 1944, during the course of Aktion Gitter, which targeted people recorded for left-wing political activity, which came in the wake of the failed assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler, and taken to Ravensbrück concentration camp. On 25 April 1945 she was able to join a "transport" of 4,000 Polish Ravensbrück inmates, transferred in Red Cross buses to Sweden on the basis of the larger deal struck between Count Bernadotte and the government of the crumbling Nazi state. The transfer to Sweden enabled her to survive the concentration camp.

War ended in May 1945, by which time Maria Eckert was badly ill with tuberculosis. She could be returned to Germany only in March 1946, delivered initially to Berlin and from there returning to Cologne where she was briefly installed as a city councillor (Stadtverordneterin). However, her return to politics was short lived. She died in Cologne on 17 December 1969.