Monte, Hilda (1914–1945)

German-Jewish journalist and anti-Nazi activist. Name variations: Eva Schneider; Hilde Meisel-Olday. Born Hilde Meisel in Vienna, Austria, on July 31, 1914; shot in Feldkirch while trying to escape on April 18, 1945; marriage of convenience with John Olday (a British anarchist writer and artist).

Born Hilde Meisel in Vienna in 1914 into an assimilated Jewish family, Hilde Monte grew up in a turbulent Berlin. The most formative event of her youth was meeting Hans Litten, a lawyer who defended Leftist radicals in the biased courts of the Weimar Republic. Attracted to revolutionary Marxism but critical of the near-paralysis of the Social Democrats and of the uncritically pro-Soviet line taken by the Communists, she was drawn to a small purist group, the Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund (ISK), but was fortunately in London at the time of the Nazi takeover. She returned briefly to Germany before settling abroad permanently. Using the cover name "Hilda Monte," she traveled to Germany numerous times in the 1930s on secret ISK missions. British authorities discovered her clandestine work and were in the process of expelling her from the country when she entered into a marriage of convenience with the British anarchist writer and artist John Olday, which provided her with citizenship. Fiercely independent, in 1939 she broke with her former ISK comrades. During these years, she supported herself as a journalist, contributing articles to The Vanguard, Tribune, Left News and other radical journals.

During World War II, Monte published several well-received books. One of these, Help Germany to Revolt! (1942), written with fellow refugee Hellmut von Rauschenplat, was published under the auspices of the Fabian Society in the form of a "Letter to a Comrade in the Labour Party." She called on the Allies to foster the cause of a purging of German society of reactionary social elements and ideas that had made Hitlerism possible in the first place. In her 1943 book, The Unity of Europe, she proposed a Pan-European plan for the postwar world that would improve the standard of living of Europe's poorest nations, and in so doing strengthen democratic forces and prevent future instability and causes of war. Monte argued that reconstruction would have to go beyond capitalistic economic and social structures, culminating in a planned economy run by a European Central Authority. She argued that "victory cannot be won by the armed forces on land and sea, and in the air, alone. It has to be won in the political field as well." Her ideas in many ways mirror the concepts of European unity that began to form in Western Europe in the late 1940s.

By 1944, Monte was growing restless. Despite her successful teaching of British combat forces as well as her classes at London's Morley College for Working Men and Women, she desired a more active role in the liberation of Nazi Germany. Forgetting her earlier clashes over ideology, she once again took part in discussions of the ISK circle in London. She then joined a group that included Josef Kappius and others who trained for OSS secret missions on the Continent. In 1944, Monte went to Switzerland in order to enter Nazi Germany, establishing contacts in the Swiss Tessin region with members of the Austrian Resistance. It was on such an intelligence mission, using the alias of "Eva Schneider," that she was captured in Feldkirch (Austrian Vorarlberg) on the Austro-German border by frontier guards on April 18, 1945, during the final weeks of the war. Attempting to escape, she was fatally shot.

sources:

Ginzel, Günther B. Jüdischer Alltag in Deutschland 1933–1945. Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1984.

Leber, Annedore. Das Gewissen steht auf: 64 Lebensbilder aus dem deutschen Widerstand. Berlin: Mosaik Verlag, 1957.

Monte, Hilda. The Unity of Europe. London: Victor Gollancz, 1943.

——. Where Freedom Perished. London: Victor Gollancz, 1947.

Röder, Werner, and Herbert A. Strauss, eds. Biographisches Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration nach 1933. 4 vols. Munich: K.G. Saur, 1980.

John Haag , Associate Professor of History, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia