Ilse Stephan
{{Short description|German politician (1931–1984)}}
{{Infobox officeholder
| honorific_prefix =
| name = Ilse Stephan
| honorific_suffix =
| image =
| image_size =
| caption =
| order =
|office = Head of the General Department Working Group of the Central Committee
|1blankname = {{nowrap|Secretary}}
|1namedata = {{ubl|Hermann Axen}}
| term_start = 16 April 1981
| term_end = 19 June 1984
| predecessor = Werner Albrecht
| successor = Position abolished
| birth_name = Ilse Korth
| birth_date = {{birth date|1931|05|08|df=y}}
| birth_place = Hamburg, Weimar Republic {{small|(now Germany)}}
| residence =
| occupation = {{hlist|Interpreter|Party Functionary}}
| death_date = {{death date and age|df=yes|1984|06|25|1931|05|08}}
| death_place =
| death_cause = Suicide by hanging
| spouse =
| children =
| party = Socialist Unity Party
{{small|(1956–1984)}}
| alma_mater = {{Plainlist|
}}
| website =
}}
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.{{Cite web |year=2009 |title=Stephan, Ilse |url=https://www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de/de/recherche/kataloge-datenbanken/biographische-datenbanken/ilse-stephan |access-date=2025-01-04 |website=www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de |series=Wer war wer in der DDR? |publisher=Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship |language=de}} Her stepfather was Heinrich "Heino" Meyer, a teacher and local functionary of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in Hamburg,{{Cite web |year=2008 |title=Meyer, Heinrich (Heino) |url=https://www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de/de/recherche/kataloge-datenbanken/biographische-datenbanken/heinrich-heino-meyer |access-date=2025-01-04 |website=www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de |series=Handbuch der Deutschen Kommunisten |publisher=Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship |language=de}}{{Cite book |last=Uschner |first=Manfred |author-link=Manfred Uschner |title=Die zweite Etage: Funktionsweise eines Machtapparates |date=1993 |publisher=Dietz |isbn=978-3-320-01792-7 |series=Zeitthemen |location=Berlin |pages=89 f. |language=de}} serving as party secretary and later as member of the Hamburg Parliament. In the waning days of the Weimar Republic, Meyer moved to the central party headquarters in Berlin, becoming a close confidant of Ernst Thälmann.
After Hitler came to power, Meyer was arrested in December 1932 and Stephan emigrated with her mother to the Soviet Union in December 1933. Meyer was released from a concentration camp in 1934, after which he too emigrated to the Soviet Union.
Meyer, who was a member of the exiled KPD leadership in Moscow, became a victim of the Great Purge. 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.
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.
=Career in East Germany=
In October 1955, Stephan moved to the German Democratic Republic (GDR), where she initially worked as a Russian interpreter. A year later, her membership application for the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) was accepted by the Secretariat of the Central Committee.{{Cite web |year=2007 |editor-last=Räuber |editor-first=Ute |title=Protokoll Nr. 35/56 Sitzung am 31. Oktober 1956 |url=http://www.argus.bstu.bundesarchiv.de/dy30sekp/index.htm?kid=0edfffdf-b371-46ec-bc15-5b7ec94c1004 |access-date=2025-01-04 |website=www.argus.bstu.bundesarchiv.de |series=Protokolle des Sekretariats des ZK der SED |publisher=German Federal Archives |language=de |publication-place=Berlin |quote=8. Aufnahme der Politemigrantin Ilse Stephan als Kandidat in die SED}} Shortly afterward, the SED's Central Party Control Commission posthumously rehabilitated her stepfather.
Later, she became an employee of the General Department of the Central Committee of the SED, among other things translating CPSU publications.{{Cite journal |year=1973 |title=Neu bei Dietz |url=https://www.gvoon.de/art/dokumente/1973/neuer-weg-zk-sed-ddr-1973/pdf/neuer-weg-zk-sed-ddr-1973-seite_0883.pdf |journal=Neuer Weg |language=de |issue=1/1973 |pages=883 |quote=Aus dem Russischen von Ilse Stephan.}} From 1971 to 1972, she attended a one-year course at the CPSU Higher Party School "W. I. Lenin" in Moscow.
Stephan, who was as fluent in Russian as in German, eventually rose to become Erich Honecker's chief interpreter.
When fellow Soviet emigrant Werner Albrecht retired in 1981, Stephan succeeded him after the X. Party Congress in April.{{Cite book |last=Malycha |first=Andreas |url=https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1524/9783110347852/html |title=Die SED in der Ära Honecker: Machtstrukturen, Entscheidungsmechanismen und Konfliktfelder in der Staatspartei 1971 bis 1989 |date=2014-09-11 |publisher=De Gruyter Oldenbourg |isbn=978-3-11-034785-2 |pages=84 |language=de |doi=10.1524/9783110347852}} She only held the rank of a deputy department head as the General Department was simultaneously demoted to the "General Department Working Group".{{Cite web |year=2006 |editor-last=Gräfe |editor-first=Sylvia |title=Büro Hermann Axen im ZK der SED |url=http://www.argus.bstu.bundesarchiv.de/dy30bax/index.htm?kid=c5946f73-fff8-4075-9835-9a2f8e1d8eb0 |access-date=2025-01-04 |website=www.argus.bstu.bundesarchiv.de |publisher=German Federal Archives |language=de |publication-place=Berlin}}
=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.
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, 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".
Honecker immediately ordered Axen to dismiss her. She was dismissed as working group head on 19 June 1984 following a decision by the Central Committee.
A week later, on 25 June 1984, she committed suicide by hanging. In her suicide note, immediately confiscated by the Stasi, she attacked both Honecker and Axen.
After her death, the General Department Working Group was abolished and integrated into the Department of International Relations as interpreter/translator sector.{{Cite web |year=2007 |editor-last=Räuber |editor-first=Ute |title=Protokoll Nr. 70/84 Umlauf am 19. Juni 1984 |url=http://www.argus.bstu.bundesarchiv.de/dy30sekp/index.htm?kid=48f7415f-e411-4a8b-b9a8-c4b62137141c |access-date=2025-01-04 |website=www.argus.bstu.bundesarchiv.de |series=Protokolle des Sekretariats des ZK der SED |publisher=German Federal Archives |language=de |publication-place=Berlin |quote=9. Umwandlung der Arbeitsgruppe Allgemeine Abteilung in den Sektor Dolmetscher/Übersetzer der Abteilung Internationale Verbindungen des ZK der SED (Stephan)}}{{Cite web |year=2007 |editor-last=Gräfe |editor-first=Sylvia |title=Abteilung Internationale Verbindungen im ZK der SED |url=http://www.argus.bstu.bundesarchiv.de/dy30aiv/index.htm?kid=621e9bff-571a-43af-8d47-0fc4de1fc262 |access-date=2025-01-15 |website=www.argus.bstu.bundesarchiv.de |publisher=German Federal Archives |language=de |publication-place=Berlin |quote=Das Schriftgut der Allgemeinen Abteilung ging nach Bildung des Sektors Dolmetscher und Übersetzer im Jahre 1984 in die Abteilung Internationale Verbindungen über.}}
References
{{Reflist}}
Category:20th-century German women politicians
Category:East German women in politics
Category:Politicians from Hamburg
Category:Socialist Unity Party of Germany politicians
Category:Emigrants from Nazi Germany
Category:Great Purge victims from Germany
Category:German emigrants to the Soviet Union
Category:Suicides by hanging in Germany
Category:Suicides in East Germany