1946 from internment. They took refuge for a time with the Bethel Institution of Bielefeld. Margarete's stay there was expressly endorsed by the Executive Board of the Bethel Institution, but this was not without controversy. On 4 June 1947, in the European edition of the New-York Tribune, an article appeared entitled, "Widow of Heinrich Himmler Lives Like a Gentlewoman". Margarete was categorized in 1948 at Bielefeld as a lesser offender (Category III) and was to be denazified accordingly. In 1950, Margarete retained a lawyer to challenge this classification, since she claimed that her early Nazi Party membership was no more than "nominal" and that her high rank resulted from her early service with the German Red Cross, in which she had served since 1914. Margarete maintained that while she had been the wife of the Reichsführer-SS, she remained far from the spotlight. Nevertheless, the denazification committee in Detmold revised her classification, and contended that she likely supported the goals of the Nazi Party and endorsed the actions of her husband. Her lawyer insisted during the follow-on appeals process that Margarete could not be held responsible for the actions of her husband, and countered that the official decision was guided by the idea of Sippenhaft, which meant she was responsible by familial connections. On 19 March 1951, she was finally classified as Mitläufer (Category IV). According to this judgment, she was not to be held accountable for the crimes of her husband, despite that she had not been distant from them. Additional arguments were presented that she and her daughter had benefited from the rise of her husband. Because of this, another denazification proceeding, started by the Bavarian Prime Minister Hans Ehard, resumed in the British occupation zone. These proceedings focused on the unresolved question of ownership of Margarete and Heinrich’s home in Gmund. On 15 January 1953, at the final hearing against Margarete in Munich, she was classified as a beneficiary of the Nazi regime and thus placed in Category II (Activists, Militants, and Profiteers, or Incriminated Persons/German: Belastete), and sentenced to 30 days' special/punitive work. She also lost her pension rights and the right to vote. Gudrun left Bethel in 1952. From the autumn of 1955, Margarete lived with her sister Lydia in Heepen. Her adopted son Gerhard also lived with them in her apartment. Margarete’s final years were spent with her daughter in Munich. Gudrun emerged from the