Käthe Dahlem (born Käthe Weber: 20 March 1899 - 25 December 1974) was a German political activist (USPD, KPD) who, after being forced into exile, became an anti-fascist Resistance activist, participating in the Spanish Civil War and, subsequently, again based in France. After 1945 she became a public official in the Soviet occupation zone (relaunched in October 1949 as the German Democratic Republic (East Germany)). She was retired on health grounds in July 1949 and was subsequently caught up in her husband's difficulties with the ruling party, the party first secretary, Walter Ulbricht and other leading party comrades who had spent the war years in Moscow. By the 1960s, however, the authorities were happy to honour her pre-war and wartime contribution. Life Käthe Weber was born in Berlin. Her father was a shoe maker and trades union official. Her mother worked in clothes making. She attended school in Cologne between 1905 and 1913 and then, between 1913 and 1919, worked as a sales assistant. She was only 14 when she joined the Young Socialists ("Sozialistische Arbeiter-Jugend"). In 1917 she joined the newly formed Independent Social Democratic Party ("Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" / USPD) which had broken away from the mainstream Social Democratic Party (SPD) after more than two years of increasingly fevered dissent within the SPD over the party leadership decision to implement what amounted to a parliamentary truce over funding for the war. When the USPD itself split apart, in 1920 she was part of the left wing majority that moved across to join the recently launched Communist Party of Germany. On 20 March 1919 Käthe Weber married Franz Dahlem. Their daughter, Luise, was born in Cologne on 18 October 1919. Their son, Robert, was born in Cologne on 11 March 1922. After the change of government in January 1933 the government lost no time in transforming Germany into a one-party dictatorship. Directly after the Reichstag fire at the end of February 1933 the conflagration was blamed on communists, and communists with a history of political activism either fled or were arrested. The Dahlems fled to Paris where they were both part of the leadership team of the exiled Communist Party, Käthe Dahlem working at this stage, primarily, as husband to her secretary. In 1935 she transferred to Prague working for the party central committee's operational leadership there: later that year she spent time working in Moscow. During 1936