Hanna Sandtner (born Johanna Ritter: 26 August 1900 - 26 February 1958) was a German politician (KPD).
[1] Two years later, following participation in the Central German Insurrection, she received an eighteen-month sentence,[3] convicted of "Offences against the Explosives Law" (Vergehen gegen das Sprengstoffgesetz).
[1] In July 1931 Hanna Sandtner became a member of the national parliament ("Reichstag"),[4] taking over the seat made available by the mid-term resignation of her party comrade, Ernst Reinke.
[1] The political backdrop changed decisively in January 1933 when the Nazi Party took power and lost little time in transforming Germany into a one-party dictatorship.
[1] In July 1933 a report on (communist) "party cadres" noted that "in any case, Hanna Sandtner seems always to have been involved in unclear associations during the course of her political life.
In December 1934 she was ready to return to the west: travelling under a false name she moved to Austria which at this stage was still a separate state, albeit one where the new government was in many ways closely aligned, philosophically, with Nazi Germany.
It was probably in Norway that she first met another high-profile Communist exile from Germany, Paul Jahnke, with whom, around this time, she entered into what turned out to be a long-term partnership.
By this time there was a substantial group of exiled German communists in Sweden, and initially Jahnke and Sandtner found themselves shunned by the others.
[6] War ended in May 1945: in March 1945 Jahnke and Sandtner returned to Berlin, which now lay at the heart of a large Soviet occupation zone.
[11] In September 1948 Hanna Sandtner fell seriously ill. She went to Switzerland for several months in order to recover her health and, it has been suggested, mandated by the party hierarchy to keep an eye on the prominent communist novelist Erich Weinert, who was also, accompanied by his wife, visiting Switzerland in the hope of a cure.
At the top of the ruling party there were no dramatic personnel changes, but a year later, with international political tensions high and the East German government increasingly nervous, Hanna Sandtner was relieved of her senior police job and switched to the debt recovery service.
In October 1953 she approached Hermann Matern, a powerful member of the Party Central Committee, with her concerns about the "mysterious circumstances" surrounding the death of Paul Jahnke.