Louise Schroeder

Louise Dorothea Schroeder (2 April 1887 in Altona (Elbe) – 4 June 1957 in Berlin) was a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) party. She was the first female member of the Weimar National Assembly during the Weimar Republic. An educator and activist central in the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (Workers Welfare Institution) movement, and she was under scrutiny of the Nazi Party during the 1930s and 1940s for her socialist positions. After the division of Germany following World War II, she served as deputy mayor of West Berlin from 1948–1951.

Life and work

Louise Schroeder was born a short distance to the west of Hamburg, the youngest of four children. Her father, an early participant in Socialist politics, was a building worker: her mother worked in a vegetable shop.

Schroeder had a significant part in the establishment of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt and from 1925 worked as a lecturer in its school in Berlin. She also held a teaching position at the German University of Politics, now the Otto-Suhr-Institut für Politikwissenschaft (Otto-Suhr Institute for Political Studies) until she was disqualified by the Nazis. Up to the end of the Second World War, she spent time in Hamburg, Berlin and Denmark, even though repeatedly summoned to interrogations.