Liesel Carritt

Liesel Carritt
Born
Liesel Mottek

1914
Germany
Died
East Germany
NationalityGerman
Occupation(s)Teacher, translator, soldier
OrganizationInternational brigades
Known forAnti-fascist, communist revolutionary
Political partyCommunist Party of Great Britain
Spouse(s)Noel Carritt (1933-1941)
FatherHeinrik (Heinz) Mottek
FamilyCarritt family

Liesel Carritt (née Mottek; 1914 – ) was a German teacher, translator, refugee, and later a communist revolutionary who fought against fascism alongside the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.[1] As a teenager, Liesel and her German-Jewish family fled the Nazis and came to Oxford, England, where local people rescued them by providing them with the necessary financial security to ensure that the British government would not deport them back into the hands of the Nazis.[1] Her father was the former senior editor of Weimar Germany's main liberal newspaper, the Frankfurter Zeitung.[2]

In 1933 Liesel entered into a marriage of convenience with a fellow communist activist called Noel Carritt.[3] Noel was the son of the Oxford University professor Edgar Carritt and a member of the famous Oxford based Carritt family, notable for its Marxist and anti-fascist politics.[3] Come the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, Liesel, her husband Noel, and her brother in-law Anthony Carritt, all joined the International Brigades and fought against fascist forces led by Francisco Franco and backed by Hitler and Mussolini. At first she fought as a soldier on the frontlines before the government decided to bar women from being frontline soldiers, so she instead became a language translator.[1]

She spent her remaining years in East Germany as a teacher and an interpreter.[3] Historians have suggested that throughout her life she suffered multiple episodes of mental illness.[2] The exact details of her life are still the subject of inquiry by historians, with most details on her life only being discovered in the late 2010s and early 2020s.

  1. ^ a b c "Brief biographies of each of the known volunteers with significant connections to Oxfordshire" (PDF). Oxford International Brigades Memorial Committee. Retrieved 14 November 2022.
  2. ^ a b Meddick, Simon; Payne, Liz; Katz, Phil (2020). Red Lives: Communists and the Struggle for Socialism. United Kingdom: Manifesto Press Cooperative Limited. p. 28. ISBN 978-1-907464-45-4.
  3. ^ a b c Meddick, Simon; Payne, Liz; Katz, Phil (2020). Red Lives: Communists and the Struggle for Socialism. United Kingdom: Manifesto Press Cooperative Limited. p. 30. ISBN 978-1-907464-45-4.