Hilde Radusch

Hilde Radusch was a feminist, women’s rights activist, anti-Fascist resistance fighter and combative politician for the acceptance of lesbian women. She was one of the leading personalities of the lesbian-gay emancipation movements in the German-speaking countries.

Hildegard Augusta Adelaide, Marie Radusch (* 6 November 1903 in Altdamm near Stettin, Randow District; † 2 August 1994 in Berlin-Schöneberg) was a feminist, author, politician, telephone operator, lesbian pioneer, trade unionist, free spirit humanist and honorary member of the FFBIZ – Feminist Archive, Berlin. Apart from her civil name, she used the pseudonyms Gisela Baer and Sybille Rad.

In addition to her grave in the Alter-St. Matthäus Kirchhof in Berlin-Schöneberg (since 6.11.2016 Berlin grave of honour V4-008-010), a memorial site was also erected for Hilde Radusch in Schönberg (corner Winterfeldt and Eisenacher Straße).

^{“Merry greetings from the merry trip from your little chap” (spring 1941)}

Sometimes there are magic moments. To experience Hilde Radusch, as she sat on the tiny balcony of her Schöneberg flat, holding a notepad in her hand and reading from it, was one such magic moment.

Imagine, if you can today: a woman living openly as a lesbian, a Communist living illegally under-cover, writing her diary in February 1945. This is what she did until the end of the war in May ’45. Against all the rules of conspiratorial training, she made notes and reflected on the approach of the front, wrote about her struggle to survive, how she was able to experience the liberation in her summer house in Prieros (Brandenburg) without food ration cards with her loved one, describes the secret foraging tours in destroyed Berlin, outwitting the terror and the “thugs”, the hunger delirium of her girlfriend, tells of her “masking period”, her attempt to live as a ‘completely normal woman’ and during this key phase of her life, one of persecution and threats to life and limb, how she also developed a vision for a better and peaceful society after the war.

The ten months living underground at the latest made Hilde Radusch into a (self-) critical chronicler and writing into her intellectual survival training.

This magic moment can be seen in the film “Does it have to be both? The life of a rebel” from 1986. The then 83-year old related her five lives before a camera:

Hilde Radusch fought her lifelong against persecution, social repression, discrimination and the constraints she experienced as a feminist, lesbian and Communist due to the female gender role and the higher valuation of male character, action and capitalist-coded values.

At the age of 18, she escaped from the conventionally-indicated social path, that of obtaining an existentially significant, economically and socially-accepted position, courtesy of a heterosexual husband of the right class and motherhood. She sought freedom and independence. She moved to Berlin, had herself trained as a kindergarten teacher at the Pestalozzi-Fröbel Haus and sought to become independent and self-supporting through qualification and gainful employment.

She joined the Communist movement. Since the Red Front Fighters’ League did not accept any women in the paramilitary fighting force of the KPD, she along with others launched an independent women’s section of the Red Women’s and Girls’ League. As a woman who lived openly as one who loved women and known KPD party member, she for the first time experienced a “professional ban” after her state certification as kindergarten teacher – this was followed by more cases where she lost a job or got none due to a diffuse “because”.

She joined the Post Office instead of working with children. In the course of her life, she worked in a great many professions: the German National Library mentions politician, feminist, publicist, female clerk and worker.

As a telephone operator, she knew how to resist the arbitrariness of her managers, which her colleagues appreciated and elected her to the Work’s Council. In the RGO, the Revolutionary Trade Union opposition, she assumed the role of “Reichsagitprop” and the national management of the trade union newspaper “Post und Staat”. At the age of only 24 she became Work’s Council chair for about 600 employees, Work’s Council member for Berlin and Central Work’s Council member in the Reichspost.

The party recognised the potential for success of the young woman and had her run as a candidate for the City Council. From 1929 to 1932, she was the KPD representative for Berlin But as a woman who was self-assured, headstrong and living an openly lesbian lifestyle, she rubbed up the wrong way too much in the KPD for the party to renominate her for election in 1932.

With no work and no parliamentary seat, she was invited as German delegate for the post office to the Soviet Union. As an expert for the most modern news service of Europe, she travelled in 1932 without German companions to Moscow, Leningrad and Odessa. After returning to a Germany ruled by the National Socialists, she immediately left her partner Maria, moved out of the joint flat and in this way protected her apolitical girlfriend from repression. Just a few days later, Radusch was arrested on 6 April 1933 by the National Socialists. The “political one” was put into “preventive detention” immediately and was released from the women’s prison Barnimstraße directly into surveillance by the Gestapo. Nevertheless, she worked illegally for the KPD, initially at Siemens and then in Moabit.

In 1939, Hilde Radusch met her life partner Else Klopsch, called Eddy. Together with her, she opened the “Lothringer Kücher”, a private lunch facility, where she fed Jewish women and foreign women “civil workers”, on one occasion, even prisoners of war for fourteen days. She “had great difficulties with the Nazis. For one year, there was a price on our heads of 1000 marks for anyone who could prove we had committed a crime.”(quoted from the Hilde Radusch estate [FFBIZ Archive: B Rep. 500 Acc. 300-4: questionnaire filled out by hand for the magistrate of the City of Berlin, Department for Social Affairs, Main Committee, “Victims of Fascism”, no. 1938 of 8 September 1945.])

In August 1944, Radusch was to be rearrested during final raid against the politically active. She was warned, rowed to Prieros and went into hiding in her summer house. Eddy followed her into illegality after beating up an SA man in Berlin to escape his pursuit. Without food ration cards, the two women survived half-starved and marked by this for the rest of their lives.

From May 1945, Radusch developed the “Support Centre for the Victims of Fascism” in Berlin-Schöneberg and became co-initiator of the campaign “Save the Children” She ran up against the party line due to her lesbian and non-conformist life. In January 1946, after relinquishing her party membership book, she lost her work, income, political home and the vision of building up a humanitarian world.

She withdrew from party work. Her entry into the SPD in June 1948 also remained without political consequences. Nevertheless, she remained active in social policy – in non-partisan women’s networks. She helped to shape the foundation phase of the Berlin Women’s League in 1947 and the IFFF, the International League for Peace and Liberty, and corresponded with key personalities of international civil society.

This was succeeded by years of existential struggle and discrimination. Hilde Radusch tried to earn money anyhow and anywhere, tried to establish herself as journalist, reporter and author and worked with Eddy in their junk shop in central Berlin.

Her status as “victim of Fascism” was disallowed in 1948. After a hard struggle, she finally obtained a small disability pension, which was urgently needed for her own and Eddy’s medical care; Eddy died in 1960 from cancer.

Next came a period of contemplation and productivity as an author. Her works on lesbian themes and taking a critical look at the Nazi past received no attention.

Hilde Radusch saw an opportunity to get politically involved again in the New Womens’s Movement. She reacted to the television film, “And we seize our rights! Lesbians in Germany” of 1974 and offered to cooperate with the young interviewed women of the Lesbian Action Centre Berlin (LAZ). She soon became a member of the foundation team of L 74, Lesbian Group 1974 and the editorial team of the association newspaper, UKZ – Unsere kleine Zeitung, the first lesbian magazine after 1945.

As a mediator between generations, she emphasised the importance of history and the formation of female traditions. In 1978, she was one of the women who founded the FFBIZ, the current feminist archive. As a creative spirit between (sub-) cultures, she committed herself to as many widely ranging areas as her open mind was prepared to take up, such as: Astrobrief, “Furs” (meeting of lesbian artists), matriarchy research, alternative feminist academic criticism, etc.

Theoretical concepts were not enough for Hilde Radusch; she looked for practical alternatives and lived them. Courage, decisiveness, planning and strategy characterised the individual stages of her life. Her worlds were to be found beyond convention, subcultures and parties, which made her known far beyond Berlin.

In her old age she developed her “club”. This was a group of younger girlfriends, who facilitated her leading an independent life in her own four walls until her death. As a historically-conscious person, she bequeathed her estate to young and professional hands to ensure this lesbian story of persecution and self-assertion, along with her independence, was handed on.