Grete Keilson
| Grete Keilson | |
|---|---|
| Native name | Margarete (Grete) Fuchs-Keilson |
| Born |
Margarete Schnate 21 December 1905 Berlin, Germany |
| Died | 4 January 1999 (aged 93) Dresden, Germany |
| Nationality | German |
| Occupation | Politician |
| Years active | 1922 - 1970 |
| Organization | Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) |
| Political party | Young Communist League of Germany (KJD), Communist Party of Germany (KPD), Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) |
| Movement | Social democracy, communism |
| Spouse(s) | Max Keilson Klaus Fuchs |
Margarete (Grete) Fuchs-Keilson (21 December 1905 – 4 January 1999) was a German politician and official in the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED).
Margarete (Grete) Schnate was born in Berlin on 21 December 1905, the daughter of a labourer. She attended Volksschule (elementary school) and Handelsschule (trade school) there. She joined the Young Communist League of Germany (KJD) in 1922, and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1925. She went to work as an assistant to Ernst Thälmann, the General Secretary of the KPD. In 1927 she married the graphic artist and journalist Max Keilson, who accompanied her as part of the 1928 delegation of the Central Committee of the Communist Party to the 6th World Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow in 1928. The following year she became assistant to Georgi Dimitrov, the manager of Western European offices of Comintern, who was living in Berlin under the pseudonym of Rudolf Hediger, having fled his native Bulgaria and been sentenced to death in 1924. Working under the codename of Marianne, she helped prepare and assemble forged visas and travel documents that were produced by a counterfeiting group in the Berlin suburb of Wilmersdorf.
After Dimitrov was arrested on 9 March 1933 for alleged complicity in starting the Reichstag fire, for which he was later acquitted, Keilson used forged documents herself to flee to Copenhagen. She then relocated to Paris, where she worked for the Congress against Fascism and War under the codename Agnes. While there, she met the physicist Klaus Fuchs, whom she helped to escape to Britain. She then worked for the Central Committee of the KPD, coordinating KPD cells operating outside Germany under the code names Agnes, first in Prague in 1935 and 1936, and then back in Paris. She travelled to the Soviet Union under the name of Anni Grob, her Russian visa endorsed by Wilhelm Pieck and Walter Ulbricht.
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