[1] She set up a socialist student group at the university and joined, in November 1918, the Spartacus League, staying with it when it relaunched itself as the German Communist Party.
[3] By the mid 1920s Irmgard Rasch had become a member of the (relatively) right-wing grouping in the party leadership, along with comrades such as August Thalheimer and Heinrich Brandler.
As a more hardline group struggled successfully to strengthen their hold at the top, Rasch lost her trades union department position to Ruth Fischer who was, at this time, considered more in tune with the left-wing leadership.
Rasch now took a post as trades union editor of the Communist Party daily newspaper "Klassenkampf" ("Class Sruggle") based in Halle.
At the start of 1929 Irmgard Rasch, as a member of the faction around Brandler and Thalheimer, was among those excluded from the party by the Stalinist leadership under Ernst Thälmann.
Other Communists who moved over to the SAPD at this time included Paul Frölich, Jacob Walcher[4] and August Enderle,[5] whom Irmgard Rasch had married in 1929.
[1] In January 1933 the political context changed dramatically when the Nazi Party took power and converted Germany into a one-party dictatorship.
[2] In Stockholm August and Irmgard Enderle, together with Stefan Szende and, from Summer 1940, Willy Brandt, comprised the leadership team of the Sweden-based SAPD (party) in exile.
[2] Around 1937/1938 Irmgard Enderle - unlike her husband - came politically close to the breakaway "Neuer Weg" ("New Path") movement centred on Peter Blachstein and Walter Fabian.