Käthe Popall (born Käthe Fürst: 15 February 1907 – 23 May 1984) was a Bremen politician (KPD). She was the first female member of the Bremen senate.
Like many left wing politicians of her generation she spent most of the Nazi years in prison. During that time she was divorced by Hans Lübeck (who also spent many of those years in state detention). She had met Hans Lübeck in 1928 and ätheLümarried him shortly after that, with the result that sources covering the first part of her political career tend to identify her as Käthe Lübeck. She married Reinhold Popall in January 1946: sources covering the second half of her life therefore identify her as Käthe Popall.
Life
Provenance and early years
Käthe Fürst was born in Bremen, one of the six recorded children of a manual labourer. On leaving school she initially took unskilled work, but following a commercial apprenticeship she worked as a book keeper, employed by "Vorwärts", a consumer co-operative. However, after she married, in 1928, she was "released" from her employment with "Vorwärts", spending the next few years unemployed apart from periodic assignments as a casual worker at the jute mill in Bremen's Walle quarter.
Politics
She was not quite 12 when war ended in military defeat for Germany, followed by a wave of revolutions across the country and a new political structure which was in many ways far more democratic than the previous one. In 1922 Käthe Fürst joined the Young Socialist Workers ("Sozialistische Arbeiter-Jugend" / SAJ) and the Social Democratic Party ("Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" / SPD). Working at the jute mill she was influenced by Hannes Koschnick, at that time secretary of the Revolutionary trades union opposition ("Revolutionäre Gewerkschafts Opposition" / RGO) movement and editor of the "Workers' Newspaper" The RGO was for most purposes a communist trades union confederation, although it frequently found itself in vigorous disagreement with the (increasingly Moscow-influenced) Communist Party over practical matters. It was also during this period that, increasingly, she was influenced by Robert Stamm, district leader for Northwest Bremen of the Communist Party. In 1927 she switched her membership from the young socialist workers to the Young Communists. Both Koschnick and Stamm saw to it that she attended courses at the trades union and party training academies. In 1929 she joined the Communist Party itself and in 1930, still aged only 23, she was elected as a Communist Party member to the Bremen regional parliament ("Bremische Bürgerschaft"). By 1930 she had also become a member of the works council at the jute mill. Her membership of the "Bremische Bürgerschaft" lasted only till 20 March 1931 because, according to one source, the party instructed her to relocate away from Bremen.
In 1927 or 1928 she met a fellow member of the Young Communists, Hans Lübeck, whom she married shortly thereafter. In 1931 the two of them relocated to Düsseldorf, where she worked with the Lower Rhineland regional party leadership team ("Bezirksleitung Niederrhein") of the RGO. However, by the summer of 1931 she was in Halle, employed at the consumer-operative there. At the start of 1932 she was appointed a party leader organiser for the women's section of the Young Communists in Halle. In the autumn of 1932, she travelled with her husband to Moscow, but according to one source her wish to study at the "Lenin" Party Academy there came to nothing because she failed the entrance exam. Other sources imply strongly that she did indeed study at the party academy. Either way, when the Nazis took power in Germany, Käthe Lübeck was in Moscow.
Nazi years
The new government lost no time in transforming Germany into a one-party dictatorship. After the Reichstag fire at the end of February 1933 communists, in particular, were targets of officially sanctioned persecution. Many were arrested or fled abroad. Käthe Lübeck nevertheless returned from Moscow to Germany at the end of 1934, making her base in Berlin where she worked illegally for the Communist Party leadership, her responsibilities centred on "women's work" ("Frauenarbeit"). On 27 March 1935 she was arrested. Other party comrades arrested at the same time included Adolf Rembte, Robert Stamm and Max Maddalena. Unlike these others, Käthe Lübeck would outlive the Nazi regime. The trial process lasted two years, during which time Hans Lübeck, who was himself in prison between 1934 and 1936, divorced her, which hurt her terribly. She never saw him again. Eventually, on 4 June 1937 she was sentenced by the special People's Court to a twelve year prison term.