Ursula Goetze (29 March 1916 – 5 August 1943) was a Berlin student and resistance fighter, who participated in political opposition to the Nazi government in Germany.

Helped by like minded school friends and by her elder brother, Eberhard, she made contact with the Young Communists in Neukölln, and during 1932 was participating in anti-Nazi activities.

During this time she was also in touch with anti-fascist groups, providing welfare support to persecuted Jewish citizens and other families of imprisoned opponents to the Nazi regime.

[citation needed] In 1938 Goetze resumed the formal education that she had abandoned in 1935, attending evening classes at the "Heilsche Abendgymnasium" a private college in Schöneberg, in order to prepare for the "Abitur" (school finals).

During the late summer of 1939, a few weeks before war resumed, she was visiting Jewish friends in London and made contact with members of the British Labour Party.

[citation needed] The German Invasion of Poland at the start of September 1939 triggered the declaration of World War II, which ushered in fresh challenges for government opponents in Berlin.

[3] Goetze eventually passed her Abitur (school finals) which opened the way for her to embark on a course at Berlin University, where she enrolled on 9 April 1940 to study Philology (English and French) at the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik (as it was then known).

Ursula stayed on in the former family home at Hornstraße 3 (3 Horn Street) in Berlin-Kreuzberg, which was becoming a meeting point where friends gathered together to listen illicitly to "enemy radio propaganda programmes": these became important as sources of information.

[citation needed] In defiance of the urgings their more cautious fellow activists, Fritz Thiele and Harro Schulze-Boysen, on 17 May 1942, Goetze and Krauss, undertook a "sticker campaign" targeting a high-profile exhibition being held in the Lustgarten park in May/June 1942 which carried the ironic title "The Soviet Paradise".

"[5] It is not clear how much the Gestapo had been aware of Goetze's resistance activities up to this point, but if it had not happened before, by the end of August 1942 she and Krauss had been identified as members of the "Red Orchestra".