She spent most of the twelve Nazi years in state detention, during which time she was badly tortured and made at least one suicide attempt.
[1][2] Hertha Sturm is the name by which she is identified in most sources referring to her political actions and to her experiences under the Nazis.
[2] She then passed the necessary exams to gain admittance to the University of Königsberg where for five semesters (probably two and a half years) she studied Medicine.
[2] She was still based in Munich in January 1919 when she joined the newly formed Communist Party of Germany (KPD),[1] as a result of which she was dismissed from her wartime work.
After the Bavarian Soviet was crushed by a combination of still loyal government forces and "Freikorps" anti-communist volunteer units she fled from Munich after a warrant for her arrest, invoking the usual charge of "assisting high treason", had been issued.
In 1921 Sturm participated as a member of the German delegation in the Second World Congress of the Comintern, held under the chairmanship of Grigory Zinoviev in Moscow during late July and early August.
On 10 March 1933 Hertha Sturm was arrested in Berlin by members of the ruling party's quasi-military wing (SA): she was held in "protective custody" until 17 January 1934.
[2] In the summer of 1934 she made contact with Neu Beginnen ("New Start") and, using the cover names Gerda Stein and Ellen Croner, she worked with this left wing socialist group.
The letter is dated 27 November 1948, and in it Togler states in a passing comment, and without further elaboration, that Hertha Sturm lost her life in an air raid.