ON her seventieth birthday last week a frail woman left her hospital bed to receive the freedom of Berlin, and thus became the first woman to be so honoured since the distinction was inaugurated 150 years ago.
Frau Louise Schroeder has been well known throughout Germany for many years, much of her adult life having been devoted to public service, but it was not until the stormy days of 1947 and 1948 that she became an international figure. Then, as Burgomaster of Berlin at the time of the split between Russia and the other three occupying powers, her quiet steadfastness in the face of grave and urgent problems, and of considerable personal danger, was not only an inspiration to her fellow Berliners, but to the British, American and French authorities also.
She has achieved the status of a mother-figure in the eyes of west Berliners, but like a number of the city's present leaders is not a native of the capital. She was born of a poor, farming family near Hamburg, and her father was a spare-time Social Democratic Party official. He gave her a commercial education and she became an insurance company secretary, but joining her father's party at the age of 23 she threw herself wholeheartedly into social and political work, especially on behalf of socialism and women's suffrage. Her outstanding ability brought increasing national recognition and she became one of the most sought-after speakers.
NAZI PERSECUTION
With the granting of women's suffrage Frau Schroeder was one of the few women to be elected to the National Assembly in 1919. Later she was also elected to the Reichstag, where she remained until Hitler came to power in 1933. Under the Nazi regime she found herself first kept under police observation, then dismissed from her work and barred from public life including activity in the workers' welfare organization she had helped to found. Refusing to pay lip service to the new order, and unable on this account to find another secretarial post, she set up a small pastry-cook's shop in Hamburg. But even this modest affair incurred official displeasure and she was forced to close down. Returning to Berlin she worked for the next 12 years the long hours of a shop assistant.
After the war Frau Schroeder took up her political life again and was at once admitted to the Berlin district committee of the re-created Social Democrats. In October, 1946, she was appointed deputy Burgomaster. Then began the chain of events that brought her to the city's highest office at one of its most difficult periods-that of the blockade.
In April, 1947, the Burgomaster, Dr. Otto Ostrowski, resigned as a result of political differences and Dr. Ernst Reuter was nominated to succeed him. The assent of the four-Power control was necessary, and the Soviet member vetoed the appointment of the man who, having once been a member of the Communist Party, later became one of its most outspoken opponents. Frau Schroeder was, however, accepted, and took office as Berlin's chief citizen. The Soviet authorities were already making the transport of goods to Berlin more and more difficult and in the summer of 1948 the climax was reached.
Frau Schroeder left her two-roomed flat in the suburb of Tempelhof one morning in June of that year to find that west Berlin's supplies of food, power, and fuel had been stopped. The city government which she led became, overnight, the chief target of this cold war. Pressure was put on members to acknowledge Communist supremacy and to demand the departure of western troops.
The airlift began, and on June 30 Frau Schroeder appealed to the United Nations to consider a situation that threatened "to jeopardize the preservation of international peace and security." Demanding new elections Communists stormed the city hall while the council was in session, and a woman member, mistaken for Frau Schroeder, was severely injured. But Frau Schroeder herself, by this time 61 years old, and frail, mounted the rostrum and called above the uproar for peace to enable councillors to carry out the work they had been elected to do. Order was eventually restored but it was impossible to govern the city in such circumstances, and the municipal headquarters were moved to the western side of the city.
It was at this time that Frau Schroeder became known to most Berliners as "our Louise," a tribute to her warm kindliness as much as to political acumen and staunch courage. She has never married, but is addressed formally as Frau in accordance with German custom.
STILL A POWER
When Professor Reuter at last took office at the end of 1948 she remained one of Berlin's leading figures, speaking out more than once against occasional signs of a drift back from western Germany's post-war democracy to the nationalism which has cost so much. On one occasion she told the Bundestag in Bonn: "if you bring to mind how totalitarian tendencies appear again and again in the Federal Republic, then you will agree with me when I say that Berlin's fight is Germany's fight. It is a fight for Germany's democracy and the peace of Europe."
Interest in the development of a European attitude has played an increasing part in Frau Schroeder's later life, and eight years ago she became a member of the European Assembly at Strasbourg.
During years of persecution and tension she has always drawn spiritual support from her life-long friend Paul Loebe, now 82, and also a veteran of the Social Democrat Party. And though, indeed, her spirit remains undaunted, and mentally she is still the fiery fighter of political battles, her trials have affected her health. Early this year Frau Schroeder suffered a heart attack, and it was while convalescing from this that last week she was paid the greatest tribute west Berlin can bestow.
