Ella Schimpf had grown up in a heavily politicised family, and she now participated energetically with her husband in the increasingly polarised politics of the time.
[1] In 1945 she rejoined the (no longer illegal) Communist Party, but switched the next year to the SPD and built a new political career in Bremen, at times working closely with her husband who became a senator and later, between 1959 and 1963, mayor of the city.
[3] At the age of eight Ella would join her brother to deliver the pro-SPD Leipziger Volkszeitung (Newspaper), in order to be able to contribute to the family housekeeping budget.
Following qualification, Schimpf worked between 1924 and 1928 at the Barkenhoff in Worpswede, a small town set in the flat marshlands to the north of Bremen that had become home to a lively artistic community since the end of the 19th century.
Red Aid reconfigured the house for use as a rehabilitation home for the children of killed Communist activists and those who had been arrested and detained in the aftermath of the uprisings in the ports and industrial cities during 1918/19.
[2][3][4] In 1929 Ella Ehlers took over the direction of a MOPR ("International Red Aid") children's home in Elgersburg, in the countryside south of Erfurt in Thuringia, from where every two months she visited her husband who had remained in Berlin.
Sources are not entirely clear about the chronology of the next couple of years, but during or before 1930 Adolf Ehlers lost his job as head of the propaganda with "Red Aid".
Ella Ehlers was having her own problems at Elgersburg with the Comintern "permanent representative" to Germany, Elena Stasova and with Erna Halbe who had been parachuted in by the party leadership to join her as co-leader at the MOPR children's home.
[3][4] The Ehlers now moved back to Bremen where in the immediate term they now lived with Ella's older sister Grete Deisen and her husband Wilhelm, who had their home in the Osternburger Street near the city centre.
[4] During 1932 the couple joined the Socialist Workers' Party ("Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands" / SAPD), which had been formed the previous year by break-away former members of the SPD.
The new government lost no time in transforming Germany into a one-party dictatorship Political activity (unless on behalf of the ruling National Socialists) was outlawed.
[1][4] Resistance activism under a dictatorship tends to go unreported unless those who engage in it end up in court, in which case records of statements used for the trial often provide a relatively detailed version of what was done or at least alleged.
There was a regular exchange of documents involving the SAPD leader August Enderle who was based in Stockholm from 1934 and who evidently had access to a printing press.
A communication channel was set up involving members of the International Transport Workers' Federation, working on the ships sailing between the Swedish parts and Bremen.
In addition it is recorded that on at least two occasions Ella Ehlers herself made the trip from Berlin to Hamburg in order to meet a woman in a café who gave her printed pamphlets for onward distribution in Germany.
[4] It is impossible to know how far the security services were aware of the extent of the illegal contacts that Adolf and Elly Ehlers sustained on behalf of the SAPD.
In the immediate post war period those with access to transport were able to move relatively freely between the four occupation zones, and in May 1946 Adolf Ehlers and Hermann Wolters together attended the Leipzig Trade Fair.
During their visit they clashed bitterly with comrade Walter Ulbricht, who was emerging as the Soviet-backed leader of a new kind of German one-party dictatorship in the central region of Germany which between 1945 and 1949 was administered under Soviet military control.
[1] When local elections were held in October 1946 Adolf Ehlers won his seat as an SPD member of the "Bremen Bürgerschaft" (state parliament).
In August 1945 she co-founded and became deputy chair ("... zweite Vorsitzende") of the "Bremer Arbeiterhilfswerk" (AHW), a workers' welfare provider in which, at least in these early days, Communists and Social Democrats worked closely together.
[8] In the austerity of the immediate postwar years there were major programmes for distributing food, clothes, heating fuel and so-called "CARE-packages" to be planned and implemented.
Through these contacts Ella Ehlers took the initiative on behalf of the AHW of launching an international aid and welfare donations campaign in support of the many needy citizens of Bremen.
Other politically engaged Bremen citizens participating with particular energy in the poverty relief efforts of the AHW included Clara Jungmittag, Charlotte Niehaus, Helene Kaisen and Anna Stiegler.
[9][10] By 1947 much of the rubble had been cleared from the city, and following the departure of its communist members the "Bremer Arbeiterhilfswerk" decided to subsume itself into the national Workers' Welfare organisation ("Arbeiterwohlfahrt" / AWO.
The choice of Bremen for the generous donation from North America is attributed to the excellent US contacts that Adolf and Ella Ehlers had established and cultivated.
[12] It was a major project, on which Ella Ehlers worked closely with Helene Kaisen, wife of Bremen's first post-war mayor, and chairwoman of the association committee that was set up to administer the funding.
[4] It would appear that none of these later projects quite matched the Gröpelingen Community Center in terms of the sheer scale of the ambition and vision involved, but they continue, in most cases, to flourish, providing a lasting tribute to a woman whose name will always be associated with implementing practical solutions to identified welfare needs in Bremen.
There can be no certainty as to her motivation, but friends believe that the continuing grief over her husband's death seven years earlier and the knowledge that her eyesight was failing were both important factors.