[1][2][3][4] Ingeborg Mathilde Dolores Picker was born in Hamburg-Neu-Rahlstedt [de] a couple of years before the First World War broke out.

His work in the research and development department of the electronics company Loewe-Radio-AG gave him opportunities, which between 1933 and 1941 he took, to commit acts of sabotage against the German armaments industry.

This made him a member of the so-called "Rote Kapelle" (loosely, "Red Orchestra") a term devised by the security services to group together anti-government activists believed to be working for Soviet intelligence.

The term implies a degree of coherence and central control (implicitly from Moscow) that never corresponded to the reality of the various disparate antifascist pro-communist groupings that gathered support in Germany during the war, but it has nevertheless endured, and was highly effective during and directly after the war in persuading many in Germany that being anti-Hitler meant being both unpatriotic and pro-Moscow.

The security services arrested Hansheinrich Kummerow in November 1942 in the context of a massive manhunt targeting those identified as "Rote Kapelle" ("Red Orchestra") members.

(Hans-Heinrich Kummerow was "terribly mistreated by the Gestapo" during his own interrogation sessions, and attempted suicide three times as a result, possibly in order to avoid being forced to implicate his wife.)

The report of testimony given by Struebing also states that, after her own arrest, Ingeborg Kummerow admitted that she knew of her husband's contacts with Soviet agents and was aware of the "true aims of his activities".