POST 127: MY GREAT-AUNT ELSBETH BRUCK, “LA COMMUNISTE,” A DDR APPARATCHIK

 

Note: In this brief post, I present recently acquired information about my great-aunt Elsbeth Bruck derived from an entry on German Wikipedia.

Related Post:

POST 15: BERLIN & MY GREAT-AUNTS FRANZISKA & ELSBETH BRUCK

My father would refer to his aunt living in East Berlin, in the former Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) (German Democratic Republic), as “la Communiste,” the Communist, only ever using this sobriquet. She was an apparatchik, a member of the Communist Party apparat in the DDR. It was long after my father passed away in 1994 that I would learn that my great-aunt’s name was Elsbeth Bruck (1874-1970). (Figure 1)

 

Figure 1. My great-aunt Elsbeth Bruck on March 15, 1967, in Berlin

 

While I obviously never met her, she led a comfortable life as a high-ranking Communist government official living in a sprawling apartment she boasted she would never be able to afford in then-West Berlin. As a child my second cousin, however, Margarita Vilgertshofer née Bruck, once visited Elsbeth in East Berlin circa 1968 in the company of her father, one of my father’s first cousins. I have no clear sense of Elsbeth’s life in her years living in East Berlin, though letters exist written to her by her niece, Jeanne “Hansi” Goff née Löwenstein, from Nice, France. Like many people living in post-WWII Germany, both East and West, the shortage of food and other everyday necessities was a commonly discussed topic; from time-to-time Hansi would send her aunt care packages. For this reason, I find it mildly amusing that when Margarita visited Elsbeth and she was busy touting the benefits of living in East Germany and how egalitarian society was, Margarita cheekily responded, “well, then, how come there are no bananas?!”

In any case, as mentioned in Post 126, a German lady posted separate entries on two of my renowned great-aunts, including Elsbeth Bruck, on German Wikipedia. While some of the information was drawn from what I wrote, other details were new to me so as in the case of my great-aunt Franziska Bruck, I provide in amended form here some of the discoveries about Elsbeth.

Elsbeth’s parents, my great-grandparents, were Fedor Bruck (1834-1892) (Figure 2) and Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924) (Figure 3); they were the original owners of the family hotel in Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland], the Bruck’s “Prinz von Preußen” Hotel. Elsbeth was born in 1874 and was the youngest of my great-grandparents’ eight children. As in the case of her sister Franziska, I know nothing about Elsbeth’s early life in Ratibor. Her father passed away in 1892 when Elsbeth was 18 years old, so it’s likely she helped run the family hotel for a period until she left in around 1902 with her sister Franziska and her mother Friederike for Berlin.

 

Figure 2. Elsbeth’s father Fedor Bruck (1834-1892)
Figure 3. Elsbeth’s mother Friederike Bruck née Mockrauer (1836-1924)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elsbeth’s life took a decidedly different path than her sister Franziska’s. She was a pacifist and peace activist for much of her life. A 1907 photo I found on the Internet suggests that her involvement in the peace movement began almost immediately after moving to Berlin. The photo shows 31 members of the German Peace Society (Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft (DFG)) including an unidentified Elsbeth; the German Peace Society was founded in 1892 in Berlin but moved its headquarters to Stuttgart in 1900, and still exists today. In 1907, Elsbeth would have been only 33 years old; only six women appear in the group photo, so judging the age and appearance of these women I reckon the woman standing in the second row circled is likely Elsbeth. (Figure 4)

 

Figure 4. Thirty-one members of the German Peace Society shown in a photo taken in 1907 with the circled individual believed to be Elsbeth

 

Elsbeth later became a member of the Bund Neues Vaterland (New Fatherland League) and succeeded the German feminist and pacifist Lilli Jannasch as its managing director; this was the most important pacifist association during WWI from which the German League of Human Rights (German League for Human Rights – Wikipedia) (Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte) later emerged, an organization that included among its members Albert Einstein. Founded in 1914, the League moved more and more towards the left politically, exposing its members to persecution. As a result, both Elsbeth and Lilli Jannasch were taken into “protective custody,” and in February 1916 the League was banned by an organ of the police investigating political crimes. Despite her detention, Elsbeth remained politically active. Pacifists, however, continued to remain on the Berlin State Police’s radar, and a list of 30 well-known pacifists drawn up in January 1918 included Elsbeth’s name.

By 1920, Elsbeth had joined a short-lived German left-wing organization founded in 1919 for the promotion of proletarian culture, the Bund für proletarische Kultur, the League for Proletarian Culture. According to Wikipedia, this organization “. . . sought to wipe out the last traces of bourgeois culture from working class consciousness, seeing the disappearance of this pseudo-culture as no loss. They envisaged a new proletarian culture dormant within the working class which could be woken up and play a role in the revolutionary transformation of society.” Her association with this group makes it evident why Elsbeth became a DDR firebrand following WWII.

During the Nazi era, Elsbeth’s friends in the pacifist community helped her escape first to Prague, in then-Czechoslovakia, then to the United Kingdom. According to the 1939 census, she lived in the parish of Amersham (Buckinghamshire) northwest of London and earned a living as a teacher of voice training. (Figures 5-b) Following the war, she returned to Berlin, continued her campaign for freedom and human rights, and eventually became a high ranking, well-respected member of the East German government.

 

Figure 5a. Cover of the 1939 National Registration census book for the parish of Amersham in Buckinghamshire, England that includes Elsbeth’s name

 

Figure 5b. Page of the 1939 National Registration census book for the parish of Amersham in Buckinghamshire, England bearing Elsbeth’s name

 

In letters written to Elsbeth by her niece Hansi Goff, cited above, she often mentions the autobiography Elsbeth was working on. While this was never published, Elsbeth’s friend and roommate Cläre Jung (1892-1981) wrote the epilogue for this memoir entitled, Ein Leben für den Frieden (A Life for Peace); this manuscript is on file at the German Exile Archive in Frankfurt, Germany.

Elsbeth died on the 20th of February 1970 at the age of 95. She is buried at the “Pergolenweg” grave complex (Figure 6) of the Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten (Socialist Memorial) (Figure 7) at the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde (Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery) (Figure 8) in the borough of Lichtenberg in Berlin. Founded in 1881, it is the cemetery where many of Berlin’s Socialists, Communists, and anti-fascist fighters are interred.

 

Figure 6. Headstone of Elsbeth Bruck’s grave in the “Pergolenweg” grave complex at the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde (Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery)

 

Figure 7. The Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten (Socialist Memorial) at the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde (Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery)

 

Figure 8. Entrance to the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde (Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery)

 

 

REFERENCES

Bruck, Elsbeth (N.D.). Ein Leben für den Frieden [Unpublished manuscript]. Deutsche Exilarchiv, Frankfurt am Main.

“Elsbeth Bruck.” Wikipedia, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsbeth_Bruck

“League for Proletarian Culture.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_for_Proletarian_Culture

One thought on “POST 127: MY GREAT-AUNT ELSBETH BRUCK, “LA COMMUNISTE,” A DDR APPARATCHIK”

  1. Very interesting read , My father told me that for the average German Jew in the thirties, the real threat, were not the Nazis but the Comunists.

    Daniel

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