The Reich in Photos – The Women of the Reich in Colour – Part I

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Die Deutsche Wochenschau – Newsreel No. 607, 22 April 1942

1. Germany.

 

Solemn rally NSDAP, organised by Radio Great Germany on the occasion of the birthday of the Führer.

 

– Announcer about the programme of the evening: speech by Dr. Goebbels and a concert of the symphony orchestra. NDP auditorium.

 

– Dr. Goebbels Goebbels comes off the podium.

 

– Orchestra conducted by Furtwängler, performs Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.

 

– Listeners in the box, among them Joseph Goebbels, Robert Ley, Japanese Ambassador Oshima.

 

– Violin group.

 

– Cello.

 

– Wind band.

 

– Ovation from the audience.

 

– Dr. Goebbels shakes hands with the conductor.

 

2. The Führer in his headquarters.

 

– Wilhelm Keitel and other generals.

 

– Hermann Göring.

 

– Heinrich Himmler.

 

– They are on a walk in the park.

 

– Joachim von Ribbentrop.

 

– Erich Raeder with Adolf Hitler.

 

– Delegation ‘Hitler Youth’ performs a song in honour of the Führer's birthday.

 

– Adolf Hitler and children.

 

3. Sicily.

 

German military airfield.

 

– Loading bombs in the aircraft.

 

– The plane takes off into the air.

 

– He is heading towards Malta.

 

– View of Malta from the air.

 

– Planes are bombing an English aerodrome.

 

4. Germany.

 

Italian submarines are returning from the Atlantic Ocean.

 

– Sailors with flowers.

 

– German U-boats are returning from the raid to the coast of North America.

 

– In the harbour enters the boat of Oberleutnant Otto Ites, girls offer him flowers.

 

– To date, he became the youngest Knight's Cross recipient among submariners.

 

– Mail distribution.

 

– Sailor with a hand white mouse.

 

– A boat in the harbour.

 

– The boats go into the protective bunkers that were built according to Dr Todt's plan.

 

– They protect against any air attack.

 

– The shipyard workers immediately start preparing the boat for the next voyage against the enemy.

 

– Diesel fuel is poured into the tanks, food supplies are replenished and the boat is ready to sail again.

 

– The course is west to North America.

 

5. USSR. Eastern Front.

 

German troops are preparing to land on the island of Suursaari (Gogland) in the Gulf of Finland, an important strategic point in the eastern part of the Gulf.

 

– The assault units have just driven the Soviet troops off the coast of the island and cut off their escape route.

 

– Soldiers are carrying a gun on a dragger, mechanised artillery is on its way.

 

– Now the rest of the troops are pulling up here, they have to completely clear the enemy and occupy the island.

 

– Snowploughs are clearing the way.

 

– Parts go on the frozen sea.

 

– The sun has melted in some places a layer of snow, cars are driving on the thawed snow of the bay.

 

– Liaison platoon lay a line of communication, he rides on the car, unwinding the cable behind him.

 

– The connection between the land and the island is established.

 

– Abandoned Soviet boat in the snow.

 

– Artillerymen take up positions.

 

– The beginning of the shelling of Soviet troops.

 

– Stormtroopers have to make their way through the wire barriers.

 

– Infantry burst into the dense forest Suursaari.

 

– Meanwhile, Finnish troops attacked from the other side of the island and drove back the enemy.

 

– Another part of Finnish land is reclaimed back.

 

6. USSR. Military operations in the area of Leningrad.

 

Destroyed ‘Soviets’ railway bridge over the Narva River.

 

– Repair crews during its restoration, severe frost complicates the already difficult work.

 

– Soldiers are hammering in supports, installing parts.

 

– In the neighbourhood of Leningrad a few days ago thaw prevailed.

 

– Vehicles sneak through the muddy roads.

 

– Delivery of ammunition and war materials.

 

– There are horse carts, soldiers lead horses under the reins, drowning in mud.

 

– Stuck in the mud cars, soldiers pull cars out of the mud.

 

– The lorry is skidding sideways.

 

– The chauffeur repairs the car on a country road.

 

– On the streets of the village water and mud.

 

– Soldiers clean the streets, cut thawed ice.

 

– Artillerymen at the gun, bringing shells.

 

7. USSR. The central section.

 

Here still prevails frost.

 

– Soldiers clearing positions with shovels.

 

– Clearing roads from snow.

 

– On the road bring ammunition.

 

– Cars in the snow.

 

8. USSR. Central Precinct.

 

Police team and SD detachment pursue Bolsheviks through the snow in the forest.

 

– Discovery of a partisan hideout - an abandoned bunker.

 

– The Germans pelt the bunker with grenades.

 

– Partisans surrender, here were hidden explosives and weapons, camouflage cloth, radio.

 

– The GPU agent and his henchmen are arrested by the SD. They confessed that they wanted to kill a severely wounded German pilot who had thrown himself out by parachute.

 

– A woman, the agent’s wife, they are searched.

 

Harvesting timber for making planking during the thaw.

 

– Making planking.

 

– Destroyed bridge.

 

– Aerial ropeway, built by the Germans.

 

On the front line.

 

– The Germans in the trenches.

 

– Skirmish with the Soviet side.

 

– The attack is repulsed.

 

– The corpses of Soviet soldiers.

 

9. USSR. Military operations in the Donets area.

 

Explosion of ice jams on the Donets to protect from ice drift railway bridges over the river.

 

– View of the Dneproges.

 

– During the retreat the Bolsheviks wanted to completely destroy the power plant.

 

– However, they managed to undermine only a small part of the dam.

 

– Organisation Todt at work on the restoration of the dam.

 

– Divers remove debris from under water.

 

– Construction and restoration work at the hydroelectric power station. panorama of the restored hydroelectric power station, its engine room.

 

– At the front in the Donetsk region.

 

– German infantry at rest.

 

– This time in the vanguard are tanks.

 

– A firefight with Soviet troops.

 

– German infantry in camouflage goes forward.

 

– On the snow are the corpses of Soviet soldiers.

 

– German gun fires on the Soviet positions.

 

– Squad at the gun.

 

– ‘Junkers’ in the air.

 

– Infantry in the battle for the village.

 

– A sniper with a telescopic rifle in a snow-covered trench.

 

– The panorama of the battlefield.

 

– Destroyed Soviet tanks, the corpses of Soviet soldiers.

 

– German tanks on the march. 

The Last Will of an SS Man

 

SS Corporal Leo R., in civilian life, an assistant teacher in a large Silesian city, died in a military hospital as a result of wounds suffered on the Eastern Front. He left behind a kind of “last testament”, a letter to his family, which he had written on the day he joined the Waffen-SS. This letter shows a deep insight into the view of life of an exemplary National Socialist, educator and soldier. It belongs to the eternal testaments of faith of our time, which will have an exemplary effect on future generations and show and explain to them the deeds of their fathers.

 

If I should remain on the field of battle or return in a condition where I am incapable of reason, then may this last testament serve as a summary for my family and clan.

 

I do not want conflict to arise because of material things. Later there will be a Germanic right, in which the heart also does the right thing. That is already a guideline. I want, regarding all questions of world view or ideology, for things to go as my wife and I agreed. I especially wish no interference in the ideological education of the children. We all stand in the great hand of faith we have and will continue to try to form. The life of our people is holy to us. We want to follow the wonderful rule, to be one people, that is the religion of our time.

 

I want my relatives to have some token to remember me by. In our clan, the heart is so strong, so that a just measure will naturally be found.

 

I wish from my entire heart for my wife to remarry, if she believes she has found a new life-comrade. Knowing her, I know that the children will also find a good fate.

 

I request of the friends of our clan, be godparents of the children and the friends of the family… that they fulfil the law of true friendship, which makes one happy and giving.

 

I wish that my children recognize their mother as their most precious treasure, who gave them life. Aside from that, the folk should be law and guideline. They should always be simple, loyal and true.

 

I thank my wife. Words are too small. She may know that my heart is moved when I think of the wonderful depth she has given to my life. I also hope that fate will allow her to have that which has been denied me. May concern and pain quickly go away. May she think of me with a joyous pride. She gave more.

 

Dear wife! Ponder our time together and go with full strength into the future. If there is holy salvation, then it is provided with my heart’s blood.

 

Hold the ancestors in reverence. Be true to the folk. May our people find a happy future.

 

I also thank my parents, who often had to suffer because of me. May they know all this happened while I was struggling to clarify the deeper aspects of my existence. My love will always belong to them.

 

May you all feel how I give you my hand, so that your strength will grow and you will be happy. Believe me, my heart’s desire is always to see you happy, so be it.

 

On the eve of the journey on which I’m allowed to join the long columns of those for whom only the deed counts. 

Leo R.

Narrative of a National Socialist

 

ENTRY INTO WRITING CONTEST FOR NSDAP PARTY MEMBERS

 

August 12, 1934

Hermeskeil, Trier

 

by Ms. R Eiden

 

I heard the name Hitler for the first time shortly after Christmas 1923 at a Zentrumspartei training meeting to which the non-voting members of the Catholic associations were also invited. A party secretary grumbled terribly about the putsch guy in Munich, whose coup d’état would have brought our folk back into disrepute. I talked about it with my brother, who was eighteen at the time, and was amazed and indignant that he firmly believed that Hitler was the man whose idea alone could save our folk and fatherland. Growing up in a Catholic area, raised strictly Catholic by my parents, it was a matter of course for me to swear by the Zentrumspartei politically.

 

During the many elections in the post-war years, the thinking of the youth was drawn to party squabbles, and without thinking too deeply, I declared my support for the party my parents voted for. At that time I was not yet eligible to vote, but I attended every Zentrumspartei meeting. Thanks to its spiritual leadership, it alone claimed to represent Christian principles, to ensure human and economic wellbeing, and to represent the only viable path of fulfilment in foreign policy, so that the slow but certain recovery of the folk in all situations was entirely due to its account. Now my brother suddenly moved away from the old course, which was a tradition in the family. When he brought me the newspaper with the court hearing that sentenced Hitler to years in prison, I said that’s wrong, they should have put him against the wall.

 

I laughed at the fact that this time would also pass and Hitler would begin his work anew. Hitler’s defence speech shook me. I had the impression that a man was speaking who was ready to give his all for a stricken folk, a man who embodied a tremendous longing for liberation and expressed his urge through action. In those days I often read newspapers that claimed that Hitler’s mission was not over, it was just beginning. If the German spirit was still slumbering in the German folk, then this Führer would hear and acknowledge it. For the next two years, distracted by life in the city, I didn’t care about politics. While I was in Saarbrücken, the Saar region celebrated the millennium of Saarland’s affiliation with Germany, which I will never forget as a fanatical declaration of loyalty to Germany. In November 1926, my brother wore a swastika pin and, when questioned, explained that it was the sign of the struggle for the victory of the Hitler movement, to which he was committed. The swastika is the old Germanic symbol of the victory of good over evil; the red colour symbolized the commitment to socialism, and the white honour and purity of intention.

 

I saw the eternal race sign and the heroic German honour colours in a new and yet ancient form. From then on I couldn’t get rid of the idea of movement even if I wanted to. My brother’s circle of friends, who were very much involved in the movement, often met for discussions at my parents’ house. I believed, stimulated by the hustle and bustle about the Zentrumspartei that sometimes happened during the first National Assembly, in our place to fulfill a sacred duty, even if I also braced myself against the teaching of National Socialism with all my might. The racial question, and above all the Jewish question, struck me as unchristian and unjust. I only saw Judaism as a form of religion. In arguments that were often endless, I recognized that one of the greatest historical errors is the confusion between religion and race. I understood point 4) of the program: „You can only be a German national comrade if you have German blood.“ This knowledge gave us the belief that no Volk will perish if they recognize the task given them by the Creator to keep themselves racially pure and thereby reach the height of their culture. I learned to negate the sentence: „Everything is the same that has a human face.“ If I believe in a meaningful order of all created things, then it follows that there is an unconditional distinction of the races.

 

In the small but close-knit community of members of the local movement, I got to know the program of the movement, which impressed me, and I attended a meeting for the first time. Today’s leader of the German labour front, Ley, spoke about the aim and will of the movement. There was something irresistibly revolutionary about what he said and I knew when I went home that I would publicly declare my allegiance to the movement.

 

I should have the opportunity to do that soon. The followers, as we were now recognized, were attacked from all sides. Mocked and laughed at by some, despised by others, called pagans and antichrists by certain quarters, challenged on the open street. In order to be able to defend myself, I took a closer look at the attitude of the parties and those in power. While Marxism preached the socialist idea of equality between nations, it demanded a battle to the knife between layers of the same folk. The Marxists pretended to fight capital, and yet worked hand in hand with big banks and stock exchanges, who knew how to dazzle the masses with slogans. They founded trade union and workers’ newspapers, incited the workers against the employers, the citizens against the peasants, denomination after denomination, in order to rule through fragmentation.

 

Hitler denied the value of personality and put the crowd in its place. He taught that genuine socialism is based on the notion that the common good comes before self-interest. But the community in which this principle takes place is the nation embodied in the state. National Socialism is permeated by the spirit of the national community. National Socialism is service to the folk, devotion to the folk, struggle for the folk, and not for a class or an estate. I saw at once the falsity of the Marxist doctrine. I also recognized the contradictions in the Zentrumspartei. Their motto, which was repeatedly appealed to, especially by the chancellors of the Catholic Church, was that social democracy and the centre are opposed to each other like fire and water and after every election, for better or for worse, the Church allied itself with this party. The betrayal of Erzberger was the beginning of the terrible policy of subjugation, which was The Church’s main policy and now, together with the party on whose affiliation its clergymen applied the punishments of hell, it exerted all its strength to suppress the German freedom movement.

 

I didn’t care about the other party entities because they had no representatives in our area. As a result, I attended all National Socialist meetings and saw that we were all to blame for Germany’s misfortune, that one must feel that we must become a united folk in order to free ourselves internally from everything foreign, and externally from unjust gagging. Gradually, more and more awakening people joined the German uprising for freedom. We felt like relatives among ourselves, imbued with a faith, a sense of sacrifice, and an irrepressible will to fight for a great idea. The campaign of slander of the opponents became more and more determined. Some claimed we were worse than communists, others said reactionary, monarchist, big capitalist – but Hitler went his way without regard to right and left. We knew that we belonged to him. We didn’t know what the future would bring for each individual. It was unclear to us what form our longing would take. We found the struggle beautiful and life without it worthless. The 1927 Party Congress was followed with great interest.

 

The party members drove or went to the neighbouring towns two or three times a week to recruit new community members for the idea. New local groups gradually formed, but adherents everywhere remained small minorities. The call kept ringing out: „Great Germany awakens.“ In June- July 1929 preparations for the Party Congress in Nuremberg began. Every penny kept together to buy new uniforms, there was endless drilling and training. How we women wish we were men back then, so that we could ride along and see the Führer. With enthusiastic cries of salvation, the participants at the Party Congress in our and neighbouring towns rolled off in the truck, which took them to the nearest town, whence they took the train to Nuremberg. We waited impatiently for the mail. On the second day, my brother wrote „One lives in a new world, the whole town a brown army camp.“ The next day: „Today, marching here, the coming Germany“ and then they all wrote, „Now we will no longer give way, victory will be ours, there is no turning back.”

 

Back then, the brown columns marched past the Führer for hours, swearing loyalty and allegiance. It was a confession of unprecedented urgency of the awakening Germany’s desire for freedom. For the system parties, who believed they could render the movement harmless through ridiculousness and slander, there was no longer any evasion. They had to accept that the men who had placed Nuremberg under the sign of the swastika for 3 days had dedicated their hearts and hands to the movement. And those days were the sign for thousands to take the national front and let it grow into the greatest popular uprising. At the beginning of March 1930, the great hero of the movement, Horst Wessel, died as a result of a communist attack. He gives us the immortal storm song of the movement: „Clear the road for the brown battalions, clear the road for the stormtroopers.” With blood and life, he sealed the brotherhood between student and worker. For us he was not dead. His glowing will for the fatherland spread to us, his comrades-in-arms and those who came.

 

Reichstag elections in 1930. The movement fought with tremendous tenacity and effort, but with a clear aim and as hard as steel. The SA saw it as a matter of course to stand guard in meetings night after night, often at risk of life, since the minds, especially of the Marxist opponents, were extremely agitated. They saw it as a matter of course to make the most sensitive sacrifices in money, since the election campaign was funded entirely by voluntary donations from members. The agitation, especially from the Zentrum side, took on the cruellest forms. No lie was too incredible to be used as a means to an end. But as we sat on the radio that evening, we felt proud that no sacrifice was made in vain. From not quite 900,000 people in 1928, the number of confessors rose to 6 1/2 million on September 14. The number of Reichstag representatives grew from 12 to 107. The movement was given the right to say to the world: „We have the Germany of the future. Make room, for we survived.”

 

For the heads of the local groups, there was now a huge amount of work to expand organizationally. We walked the street proudly and with our heads held high, and I was delighted at the amazement and the anger of the opponents, who were almost unbelievable. We had the feeling of a newly won community, the awareness of a great mission in the service of the German folk.

 

The entire opposing press now indulged in the assertion that the party’s participation in the government was neither desirable nor possible. The economic misery grew daily, and the mood among the folk grew more bitter. Being an SA man meant being ready at any hour to risk your life for the movement. The Red Murder kept claiming new victims from the movement. Chancellor Brüning believed that drastic measures could save the situation and imposed a uniform ban on all parties. But this prohibition could not paralyze the aggressive rage of the communists. In a period of a few weeks, the movement had to mourn 50 dead as victims of the red terror.

 

Our SA wore white shirts instead of brown, and a white carnation instead of the swastika. During this time we also had a deployment in Hermeskeil. A Trier band also wore the white shirt, while the other participants were not uniformly dressed. The white shirts were regarded as dangerous to the state and our responsible local group leader was sentenced to 3 months in prison in summary proceedings. None of this could harm our holy conviction that one day, victory would be ours, the Third Reich would become a reality. The brown uniforms were hidden in safe places, because Brüning might one day have had the idea of destroying them root and branch, in order to finally put an end to National Socialism. I still remember all the glee from the little system followers, who took every opportunity to tell us what we had now gambled away. These runts, who thought they could strip hearts and minds by stripping us of uniforms, did not consider that the continuation of system politics would have ended in Bolshevism and brought chaos not only to Germany, but to the whole of Europe.

 

I myself was depressed at this time and dejected, believing we had many, many years of fighting ahead of us. In those days, SA squads ran bare-chested everywhere in the cities because the police had stripped off their shirts, which were dangerous to the state. From October 1931 to January 1932, the correspondence between Brüning and Hitler was followed with interest in the press, i.e. Hitler replied to Brüning on his speeches in the Reichstag and on the radio.

 

The explanations of the leader were so clear, purposeful, and unequivocal that from then on I could not understand why the bearers of reason and the ability to think consciously refrained from his influence, while more and more simple people, with unchanging loyalty, swore in love and reverence to that singular man, he who only knew one thing – his German fatherland, his folk, and their freedom.

 

Then came the mightiest election campaign that the party conducted for Hitler’s Reich presidency. The guidelines were published uniformly for the whole empire. Our SA was on the move day and night. Early in the morning we packed the banned newspapers in backpacks, then the boys went from place to place, from door to door, to do educational work. In the evening they were brought home by the police, asked where they got the newspapers from, and the next day they were taken from a safe hiding place and redistributed. Once the truck that brought the new material stopped in the middle of town, in 3 minutes the supply was distributed and stowed away and the police, despite countless house searches, were unable to get hold of the posters and newspapers, which were then shoved under each door again the next night, while an SA man kept the police officer walking up and down the streets company, and balanced him in such a way that the comrades could work the other streets during the time. A wave of gatherings spilled over into the smallest town.

 

With all due respect to the aged Field Marshal, we believed the moment was right to bring Hitler to power through this election. I myself did not doubt for a moment that he would win the election. To the innumerable questions that one asked the other – „how do you think things will go?” – I had only one answer: I said with unshakable conviction that Hitler would become President of the Reich. When I went to visit a neighbouring town during these days, I kept writing in the snow on the way: „Hitler becomes President of the Reich.“ The united systemlings pandered for Hindenburg – Hindenburg whom they had scorned, slandered, trampled on, called a murderer, war profiteer, and all sorts of things when he was the first candidate for Reich President. They all had hated Hindenburg and really showed their whole depravity. Just to keep Hitler from coming to power, they, who had been quarrelling and fighting for 14 years, suddenly all agreed.

 

Our newspapers were repeatedly banned, our nerves were on edge. The harassment and rushing became unbearable. In anonymous letters, I too was implored, praying to God and all saints, to vote for Hindenburg. Hitler was portrayed as a bloodthirsty murderer who had a number of newborns killed in the Third Reich in order to accelerate racial selection and had the old people and cripples put against the wall to make room for the young and healthy. The result of the election was devastating for me on the first evening. We had all believed too much in victory and did not reckon with the fact that the blindness of the folk was so great that the spirits could only separate slowly. I will never forget the morning of the next day. Center supporters, social democrats, and communists stood at every corner, discussing the tremendous victory with unanimous joy.

 

In those days, it was felt, against all odds, that our faith, spirit of sacrifice and unity had to triumph over this smallness and wretchedness.

 

At a meeting a few days after the election, the SA belted out their old battle songs with unbroken courage. The preparations for the second ballot were made with the usual tenacity and perseverance. Hindenburg got confirmation, but Hitler got 2 million more votes. 14 million were now in the front. As a result, one election campaign replaced the other. The red murder took such forms that every follower felt threatened in his life. We greeted Brüning’s resignation with jubilation and we understood the Führer completely, even if we perhaps did not see the right context clearly when he turned down the Vice-Chancellor’s post under the Chancellorship of Papen. The nervous incompetence of the government was becoming more and more noticeable. In the elections, the number of votes for the movement fell again somewhat. The business people fell away, the real ones stayed.

 

Fight became spasm. The financial side was beginning to get extremely tight. The movement’s election propaganda was only possible through the heaviest monetary sacrifices, which were made to the point of selflessness. Now the last pennies of those who were driven to guard the meeting were put together to pay for fuel for the truck. Chancellor Schleicher, von Papen’s successor, lifted the uniform ban. The first time there was a hint of this news in the papers, the uniforms were brought out, washed and ironed. Not the hour the ban was lifted, the SA of our region stood there in uniform, as if by order. That was a jubilation, a joy, and a satisfaction. Our neighbouring country Oldenburg elected its state parliament at this time, and was the first to receive a fully National Socialist government. Other country elections also turned out well. A joyful confidence embraced us all. When the movement propagated an enlightenment campaign after the Christmas Peace in 1932, everyone got back into action with the old fanaticism and enthusiasm. The mood was better than ever, and one felt the coming crowning of the struggle.

 

From January 5th to 30th, the SA of our town stood guard in more than 20 meetings. On January 30, Reich President von Hindenburg entrusted Adolf Hitler with the position of Reich Chancellor. The long-awaited day was here. In the evening, hundreds of thousands spontaneously cheered the Führer and the Reich President with tremendous love and enthusiasm. It was an hour of the most sacred experience for us who sat on the radio. We cried with happiness and joy and could hardly believe that the beloved Führer was at the head of the Reich and that the Third Reich was a fact. And on the evenings of the next few days, torchlight processions moved through the entire German fatherland as a tribute to the Führer. It was a wedding of the highest enthusiasm, which had gripped the whole folk. We were ready to forget all the suffering of the years of struggle for the sake of final victory. There was a magnetic force in everything, which also had to sweep away those who still offered internal resistance. The result of the referendum of the Führer showed that a new will to live will determine German fate and that resisting is pointless.

 

It was an unspeakably blissful feeling of exhilaration for us when our frowned upon and reviled flag waved from all public buildings for the first time. Awakened German workers publicly burned their red flags in the marketplaces on March 21. This day was a day of honour and dedication that united the nation to the leader. At the grave of the great Prussian king, the commitment to the eternity of the German folk was made. On the afternoon of March 23rd, when the chancellor made his government statement, the world had to recognize that the born leader was speaking, who was unflinchingly determined to destroy what hindered him, but is also prepared to reconcile what is of good will. Man no longer felt his irrepressible will soften, but rather fulfilled his mission for the German folk. The parties recognized their nullity and smallness and agreed to the Enabling Act. With that, all resistance was broken, the external struggle of the movement was over, and we are put into a new struggle - for the attainment of the German folk, the awakening of character values and the restoration of the German era.

 

Above all, we want to give the young folk the world view that is deeply rooted in the German character. Teach these youth that all political power grows from knowing the greatness of our folk. Understanding the past life of our folk

 

means feeling one’s own life as an obligation to walk the path to the future with certainty, reaching out to those who come after us so that they continue the struggle. And so, from generation to generation, the National Socialist will is more perfectly embodied in an eternal Germany, for the blessing of the world.

 

Heil Hitler!

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Ms. R. Eiden Biography

 

I was born on November 25, 1905 as the eldest of 4 children to the small farmer Johann Eiden and his wife Katharina née Jakobs in Hermeskeil, district of Trier. From age 6 to 14 I attended the elementary school in my hometown. After being released from the school, I worked at my parents’ doing housekeeping and farming. As the financial circumstances of my parents’ house did not allow paid training in housekeeping, I worked as a housemaid in Saarbrücken from October 1924 to July 1925, and worked from November 1925 to October 1926 in the same job in Cologne. Then I was again needed in my parents’ house until today. From July to December 1932 I was an enlisted member of the N.S.D.A.P. Since we were struggling economically due to a sudden transfer of my brother and another brother belonged to the movement, I left the party and joined the NS Women’s Association. In May 1933 I became the leader of the newly founded local group of the B.D.M. and in September of the same year the leader of the Ring Trier-Land-Ost, which today has 34 local groups.