Marie-Luise "Malu" Seegers was a German law student and communist activist.
Biography[]
Marie-Luise Seegers was the daughter of Major-General Wilhelm Seegers, a Great War veteran, leader of the Black Reichswehr, and head of the Reichswehr under President Paul von Hindenburg. While her father was a conservative monarchist who surrounded himself with fellow nationalist veterans and politicians, Marie-Luise became a communist while attending law school and predicted that the Great Depression would discredit the capitalist system and lead to a global revolution. Her father had her betrothed to Colonel Gottfried Wendt, chief of Berlin's political police, in spite of their differing political views, and she engaged in a love triangle with Wendt and her Russian lover Oskar Kulanin, a Soviet spy. In 1929, she secretly photographed evidence that the Reichswehr was rearming and forwarded it to the journalist Samuel Katelbach through his landlady Elisabeth Behnke, a leftist sympathizer. In 1931, Seegers, Behnke, and Hans Litten obtained a first-hand document proving that the Black Reichswehr was rearming, but she refused to hand it over to Kulanin, knowing that it would condemn Katelbach and his boss Gustav Heymann. Kulanin took it by force, and, shortly after, KPD doctor Jördis Völcker ordered Seegers to lure Wendt to her father's hunting cabin, where he would be assassinated. However, Seegers stepped in front of Volcker's bullet at the last second, and Wendt carried her to safety. Seegers misinformed Wendt that Kulanin was responsible, but she secretly continued to help Volcker. Seegers stowed away on a ship bound for New York after dropping the Reichswehr documents to Volcker by parachute; Volcker brought the documents to Moscow to warn the Soviets of the Germans' plans.