Meta Preuß

Meta Preuß (born Meta Kroll; 18 January 1903 – 25 December 1981) was a German politician (KPD, SED). In November 1930 she was elected one of seven Communist Party members in the Parliament ("Volkstag") in the quasi-independent Free City of Danzig.

It is not clear from sources when her first marriage, which took place in 1924 and was to Hermann Totzki, ended, but on account of that marriage, sources relating to her career during the 1920s and 1930s sometimes identify her as Meta Totzki.

Life Meta Kroll was born into a working-class family in Danzig which at that time was the capital of the German province of West Prussia. By 1917 she was in Berlin, working as an assistant in a pharmacy. In 1927 she joined the Communist Party of Germany, and the next year she became the leader locally of the "Red Women's and Girl's League" ("Der Rote Frauen und Mädchenbund " / RFMB), established during a violent decade as the female section of the quasi-military wing of the Communist Party. In 1929, still aged only 26, she became a member of the party leadership team ("Bezirksleitung") for Danzig, with particular responsibility for women's matters.

During June 1931 she attended a training at the party's national "Rosa Luxemburg" Academy in Fichtenau on the edge of Berlin. Already, by the end of 1932, she was working illegally as a party instructor in Danzig.

Slightly more than three weeks later, on 26 May 1934, the Chief of Police Hellmut Froböß issued a decree that dissolved the Danzig Communist Party. The Nazi Senate President Hermann Rauschning endorsed this step with the assertion that in various criminal trials against leading officers of the Communist Party in Danzig, the illegal holding of guns had been established. Party members had used these weapons to fight against government orders. Another justification provided involved the production and distribution by communists of "illegal printed matter", which called for civil disobedience in the face of official orders. Later she became chair of the local party group in Sangerhausen, a small town in the southwestern part of the Soviet zone. However, in 1949 she became seriously ill, and in 1950 she went into retirement.

Meta Preuß died on Christmas Day, 1981.

Awards and honours 1968 Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze