Ilse Stephan

Ilse Stephan
Head of the General Department Working Group of the Central Committee
In office
16 April 1981 – 19 June 1984
Secretary
Preceded byWerner Albrecht
Succeeded byPosition abolished
Personal details
Born
Ilse Korth

(1931-05-08)8 May 1931
Hamburg, Weimar Republic (now Germany)
Died25 June 1984(1984-06-25) (aged 53)
Cause of deathSuicide by hanging
Political partySocialist Unity Party
(1956–1984)
Alma mater
Occupation
  • Interpreter
  • Party Functionary

Ilse Stephan (née Korth; 8 May 1931 – 25 June 1984) was a German interpreter and party functionary of the Socialist Unity Party (SED).

Stephan, whose stepfather was a communist functionary, emigrated to the Soviet Union after Adolf Hitler's rise to power. Her stepfather became a victim of the Great Purge and she was deported to the Kazakh SSR.

She returned to East Germany in 1955, where she became an interpreter and party functionary for the Central Committee of the SED. One of only a handful of women in the SED's nomenklatura, Stephan rose to head the Central Committee's General Department Working Group in 1981.

Stephan was fired in 1984 after making critical remarks regarding tensions between the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the SED and committed suicide shortly thereafter.

Life and career

Early life

Stephan was born in Hamburg in 1931.[1] Her stepfather was Heinrich "Heino" Meyer, a teacher and local functionary of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in Hamburg,[1][2][3] serving as party secretary and later as member of the Hamburg Parliament.[2] In the waning days of the Weimar Republic, Meyer moved to the central party headquarters in Berlin, becoming a close confidant of Ernst Thälmann.[2]

After Hitler came to power, Meyer was arrested in December 1932 and Stephan emigrated with her mother to the Soviet Union in December 1933.[1][2][3] Meyer was released from a concentration camp in 1934, after which he too emigrated to the Soviet Union.[2]

Meyer, who was a member of the exiled KPD leadership in Moscow, became a victim of the Great Purge.[1][2][3] He was arrested in August 1937 by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs of the USSR (NKVD), sentenced to death on 3 September 1938 and shot immediately.[1][2]

Stephan was deported from Moscow to Pachtaaral near Atakent in the south of the Kazakh SSR in 1941. After attending school, she worked as an electrical mechanic.[1][2][3]

Career in East Germany

In October 1955, Stephan moved to the German Democratic Republic (GDR), where she initially worked as an Russian interpreter.[1] A year later, her membership application for the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) was accepted by the Secretariat of the Central Committee.[4] Shortly afterward, the SED's Central Party Control Commission posthumously rehabilitated her stepfather.[2]

Later, she became an employee of the General Department of the Central Committee of the SED,[1] among other things translating CPSU publications.[5] From 1971 to 1972, she attended a one-year course at the CPSU Higher Party School "W. I. Lenin" in Moscow.[2]

Stephan, who was as fluent in Russian as in German,[3] eventually rose to become Honecker's chief interpreter.[2]

When fellow Soviet emigrant Werner Albrecht retired in 1981, Stephan succeeded him after the X. Party Congress in April.[1][6] She only held the rank of a deputy department head as the General Department was simultaneously demoted to the General Department Working Group.[1][6][7]

Downfall and death

In June 1984, during a visit by Honecker to CPSU General Secretary Chernenko, she, as Honecker's chief interpreter, was caught "between the fronts" of the increasing tensions between the CPSU and the SED, allegedly translating wrongly.[2][3]

In the weeks prior, Stephan had already voiced her frustrations about these tensions privately to Manfred Uschner, personal assistant to Hermann Axen, the Central Committee Secretary responsible for her Working Group,[7] saying she would tell the Soviets if things went on as they were. Uschner has since alleged that these conversations were secretly recorded by the Stasi. Uschner has also called her a great admirer of Mikhail Gorbachev.[3]

Honecker immediately ordered Axen to dismiss her.[3] She was dismissed as Working Group head on 19 June 1984 following a decision by the Central Committee.[1][2]

A week later, on 25 June 1984, she committed suicide by hanging.[1][2][3] In her suicide note, immediately confiscated by the Stasi, she attacked both Honecker and Axen.[3]

After her death, the General Working Group was abolished and integrated into the Department of International Relations as interpreter/translator sector.[7][8]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l "Stephan, Ilse". www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de. Wer war wer in der DDR? (in German). Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship. 2009. Retrieved 2025-01-04.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n "Meyer, Heinrich (Heino)". www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de. Handbuch der Deutschen Kommunisten (in German). Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship. 2008. Retrieved 2025-01-04.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Uschner, Manfred (1993). Die zweite Etage: Funktionsweise eines Machtapparates. Zeitthemen (in German). Berlin: Dietz. pp. 89 f. ISBN 978-3-320-01792-7.
  4. ^ Räuber, Ute, ed. (2007). "Protokoll Nr. 35/56 Sitzung am 31. Oktober 1956". www.argus.bstu.bundesarchiv.de. Protokolle des Sekretariats des ZK der SED (in German). Berlin: German Federal Archives. Retrieved 2025-01-04.
  5. ^ "Neu bei Dietz" (PDF). Neuer Weg (in German) (1/1973): 883. 1973.
  6. ^ a b Malycha, Andreas (2014-09-11). Die SED in der Ära Honecker: Machtstrukturen, Entscheidungsmechanismen und Konfliktfelder in der Staatspartei 1971 bis 1989 (in German). De Gruyter Oldenbourg. p. 84. doi:10.1524/9783110347852. ISBN 978-3-11-034785-2.
  7. ^ a b c Gräfe, Sylvia, ed. (2006). "Büro Hermann Axen im ZK der SED". www.argus.bstu.bundesarchiv.de (in German). Berlin: German Federal Archives. Retrieved 2025-01-04.
  8. ^ Räuber, Ute, ed. (2007). "Protokoll Nr. 70/84 Umlauf am 19. Juni 1984". www.argus.bstu.bundesarchiv.de. Protokolle des Sekretariats des ZK der SED (in German). Berlin: German Federal Archives. Retrieved 2025-01-04.