German opponent of the Nazi régime, nicknamed Hanna. Since 1990, the city of Frankfurt am Main, Kirchner’s birthplace, has yearly awarded the Johanna Kirchner Medal to those who fight against oppression, and stand up against terror, torture, and murder.
When the Second World War broke out in 1939, Kirchner fled to Forbach, Metz (both in Alsace-Lorraine, France), and then finally Paris. Even while abroad, she helped the resistance movement in Germany: she led the Saar Refugees’ Committee (Saarflüchtlingskommitee), drew up plans and reports for the SPD’s executive in exile, and produced and distributed illegal leaflets.
Even though Kirchner belonged to the SPD and her collaborator Eleonore Wolf did illegal work for the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), they worked quite closely together in the Saar region as they organized the emigration of many officials of the workers’ movement out of the Reich. From this they also published, under Wolfgang Abendroth’s editorship “die Einheit der Arbeiterbewegung in der antifaschistischen Arbeit” (The Unity of the Workers’ Movement in Anti-Fascist Work).
In 1942, Kirchner was arrested by the Vichy Régime and handed over to the Gestapo. She was sentenced to ten years’ hard labour (“Zuchthaus”) for treason, the first year of which she spent in a prison in Cottbus, which she shared with several female members of the Red Orchestra resistance group, whose goal was to hasten the Nazi régime’s collapse. These women’s solidarity greatly helped Kirchner overcome the ordeal of being thrown in prison. However, Kirchner’s case was brought back before the Volksgerichtshof in 1944. This time, Roland Freisler, the Chief Justice at the Volksgerichtshof, sentenced her to death, and she was beheaded at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin on 9 June 1944, aged 55.
Link to Wikipedia biography