Eva Rittmeister
German resistance fighter
Eva Rittmeister (born 5 July 1913 in Zeitz, died 19 July 2004 in Remchingen) was a German paediatric nurse, later office worker who became a resistance fighter against the Nazis. During World War II, Rittmeister became involved a Berlin-based resistance group that later became known as the Red Orchestra ("Rote Kapelle").
Life
Eve Rittmeister née Knieper was the daughter of a merchant. After school, Rittmeister initially trained as a paediatric nurse, then worked as an office worker. Several sources indicate, however, that she was an actress.
In 1939, Rittmeister married John Rittmeister who was a neurologist and psychoanalyst and fifteen years older than her, aged 40. John Rittmeister considered her "life-affirming", who often enriched his life by relieving his chronic depression.
Education
To prepare for her Abitur in 1940, Rittmeister attended the Heil'schen Abendschule Abendgymnasium ("Berliner Städtische Abendgymnasium für Erwachsene") (BAG) at Berlin W 50, Augsburger Straße 60 in Schöneberg. While there she met a number of people that would eventually become close friends including Ursula Goetze, Liane Berkowitz, Fritz Thiel and Friedrich Rehmer. They gradually formed a group of young people that met to discuss ideological, humanist and political views that gradually led to their opposition to Nazis.
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This entry incorporates text from “Eva Rittmeister” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.