Else Himmelheber

Else Himmelheber (30 January 1905 - 30 November 1944) was a German resistance activist during the Nazi years. She was executed (shot) at the Dachau concentration camp on 30 November 1944.

She came from a working-class family. She was born in , an inner city quarter on the eastern side of Stuttgart. In 1911 the family of six moved into a two-room apartment at Adlerstr. 24 in , another inner city quarter of Stuttgart. Left wing politics were a feature of Heslach: in the 1912 general election 74% of the votes cast were for the Social Democratic Party, although the outbreak of war in 1914 diverted the focus of the political left away from domestic issues. Else's father, Philipp Himmelheber, was conscripted into the army: although he survived the fighting he suffered a lung wound from the effects of which he died during the march home. His widow was left to support her four children by working as a seamstress.

Else Himmelheber spent seven years at the local school and then took an office job. When war ended, in 1918, she was aged 13: she joined local communist youth organisations, playing a leading role in the Stuttgart branch of the Young Spartacus League. Sources identify a stubborn streak as a result of which she refused to be confirmed as a member of the church on reaching the age at reach, conventionally in this region of Germany, confirmation took place. In the end she submitted to the combined pressure from the local priest and her mother and agreed to the confirmation. However, in the listing of 64 young people confirmed into the church at that time, her inclusion as one of those confirmed represents both her first and her last appearance in the local church records. Meanwhile, at work, despite the basic level of her schooling, she became an accountant-book-keeper.

From 1921 she was a member of the . In or before 1924 she was a member of the Young Communists and in 1926, the year of her twenty-first birthday, she joined the Communist Party (KPD). She had already, the previous year, delivered a lecture on women's work to the national party conference. In 1928 and/or 1931 she relocated to Berlin. Around this time she was also a member of a delegation sent by the newly established on an extended visit to Moscow where she took a job working as a saleswoman in a German-language book distributor.

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