Dorothea Dressel collection

Dorothea Dressel collection 

Dorothea (Dora) Dressel (1897-1993) married Fritz Dressel in 1916, and was active politically in Munich during the years following World War I. When her husband, a leading member of the Communist Party in Bavaria, protested the violence of the SA in Munich, she was arrested and held as hostage in the weeks prior to her husband’s arrest, being detained in the Stadelheim prison in Munich. She was ultimately released and survived the war, living until the age of 96. Fritz Dressel (1896-1933) was born in Welsberg/Oberfranken, and after his schooling, apprenticed as a carpenter. During his service as a soldier in World War I, he was severely wounded, and returned to Munich. Following the war, he became a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), and was active politically, serving as a district leader for the party in southern Bavaria, and eventually serving as chair of the KPD delegation in the state parliament (Bayerischer Landtag) from 1928 until the Nazi takeover of Germany in 1933. As the Nazis began targeting political opponents in the months following their rise to power, Dressel was arrested in May 1933 and imprisoned at Dachau, where he was tortured. On 7 May 1933 he succumbed to his wounds, although his death certificate listed the cause of death as suicide, this finding was disputed by his widow. One of his fellow prisoners and KPD leaders, Hans Beimler, subsequently escaped from Dachau and reported on what had happened to Dressel, in one of the first published accounts of the treatment of prisoners in Dachau. Source: Weber, Hermann and Herbst, Andreas (editors). Deutsche Kommunisten. Biographisches Handbuch (Berlin: Karl Dietz Verlag, 2008). As found on the web site for the Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED Diktatur (http://www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de/), accessed July 2015. 

Dorothea Dressel collection