Hilde Radusch (1903-1994)

(this text can also be heard in the audio clip)

She was born in 1903 in Altdamm near Stettin and came to Berlin Schöneberg at the age of 18 to escape the socially prescribed marriage career and to be able to live an independent and self-determined life by training as a nursery teacher. However, her membership in the Communist Youth League meant that she was unable to find employment in her trained profession. So she became a telephone operator at the post office, where she quickly found a politically effective role in a works council position, standing for colleagues in the labor court. It was at the post office that she met her first girlfriend Maria, with whom she remained together until 1933. With her, she frequented Berlin’s lesbian bars, such as the Topp-Keller.

Hilde Radusch talked about her evenings in the Toppkeller at Schwerinstrasse 13 in an interview [with Claudia Schoppmann (1986)] and remembers the “underwear dance”: “The skirts back then were quite long, and underneath were petticoats with lace. So they danced, you were allowed to lift your skirt a bit, and that was terribly sexy. Then came the polonaise, where you had to climb over the chairs standing against the cellar wall to finally get that longed-for kiss. It was so exciting that women from all classes came, including actresses. It was always full, and on Fridays you could hardly get in”.

Because Hilde was not allowed to join the paramilitary Red Front Fighters’ League as a woman, she quickly founded the “Red Women’s and Girls’ League”. At the height of her political career, she was a Communist Party deputy in the Berlin City Assembly from 1929-1932, but the party did not allow her to run again, one reason being her openly lesbian orientation. She was now invited to travel to the Soviet Union as a German delegate for the postal service. She then returned to a Germany that was now under National Socialist rule. After her return in 1933, she was imprisoned by the Nazis as a “political prisoner” for six months in protective custody in the Barnimstraße women’s prison. After the communist party KPD was banned by the Nazis, she continued to work illegally for the party.

In 1939, she met her partner Else Klopsch, known as “Eddy”. Together they opened the “Lothringer Küche” lunch counter in Berlin Mitte, which later also served as a shelter for illegal immigrants such as communists and Jews.

In August 1944, she and Eddy went into hiding in an arbor near Königs Wusterhausen to escape the imminent arrest of former political prisoners. Without food stamps, this was a time characterized by hunger.

After the end of the war until February 1946, she worked as an office manager for the Schöneberg district office in the “Victims of Fascism” department. In a questionnaire from the department, she stated that the Nazis had offered 1000 marks for someone who could prove that Eddy and she had committed a criminal offense.

In 1946, Hilde Radusch came into conflict with the KPD, which she had supported at risk in the underground during the Nazi era. Her lesbianism also played a role in this. After leaving the party and being expelled, she lost her job, income and political home.

Years of discrimination and economic hardship followed, with unemployment or unsteady employment. Eddy’s junk store provided her with a small income. After Eddy’s death in 1960, things became quiet for her until she became active in the incipient lesbian movement. This was triggered by the 1974 television film ” And we take our rights! Lesbians in Germany“ about a group of Berlin women from the “Homosexual Action West Berlin”. Hilde then wrote them a letter: “I saw you on television and would like to offer you my help. I have lived with a woman for 8 years, 2 years and 21 years and consider myself competent in this area. However, I don’t know what I can do for you, because I’m 70 years old. But I care about our people.”

She then became a member of L’74, a West Berlin group of older lesbian women, and was a member of the editorial team of UKZ – Unsere kleine Zeitung / our small newspaper , the first lesbian magazine after 1945. Documentation and access to history and knowledge were important to her, so she also co-founded the Feminist Women’s Education and Information Center FFBIZ.

She lived a life away from convention and was always committed to helping other people, not just in theory but in practice. To this end, she accepted setbacks, discrimination, and renunciation in her life.

She died in Berlin-Schöneberg in 1994 at the age of 91 and was buried in the Alter St. Matthäus Kirchhof cemetery. The grave is classified as an honorary grave of the city of Berlin.

The Hilde Radusch memorial was inaugurated at her last place of residence at Eisenacher Straße 14 in 2012. It was initiated by the Miss Marple’s Sisters association and realized with the artists Roswitha Baumeister and Anita Meier. Unfortunately, the three plaques of the memorial were not rebuilt in their original form after construction work, so that the parts that were once in the ground now protrude about 30 centimeters.