Women - men - gender. - Bibliothek der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung

16
REMEMBERING SUSANNE MILLER
“If I had to live my life over again, there is nothing I would change”
Remembering Susanne Miller
Till the time of her death, at 93, Susanne Miller
retained her girlishness. The fragile old lady, with a
touch of a Viennese accent, was loved by all, who
knew her. She combined keen intelligence with an
enormous amount of human warmth. She lived
unpretentiously, in her small Bonn fl at, surrounded
by books – which, in the last years of her life,
she could no longer read, even with the help of
powerful magnifying glasses. Can one imagine a
fate worse than this for a person, for whom reading
was but another word for life itself? Yet she never
appeared to be bitter, she never complained. When
Antje Dertinger was recording the memoirs of the
90 year old lady, she remarked, “If I had to live my
life over again, there is nothing I would change”.
The title of the book was culled from this remark.
The history of the 20th century made Susanne
Miller into a world citizen: born in Sofi a, the capital
city of Bulgaria, she grew up in Vienna, passed
her high school once again from Sofi a, pursued
university studies in Vienna and worked in London
– and then a return to her roots was no longer
possible. Her Jewish descent and her involvement
with the Militant Socialist International forced her
to become an immigrant. How precarious her situation
was, even in exile, in Britain is illustrated
through an anecdote. Susanne Miller, born Susanne
Strasser, entered into a marriage of convenience
with a British offi cer. Just like other refugees, she
feared a German invasion and sought security
through a change of name and the acquisition of
British citizenship.
While in exile in London, she got to know Willi
Eichler, whom she later married. After the Second
World War, Eichler became the Chairman of the
SPD Programme Commission, which was responsible
for drawing up a new party manifesto. Susanne
Miller was employed by the SPD and worked very
closely with Willi Eichler. She took the minutes of
the meetings, summing up discussions that were
often very passionately conducted. In 1959, the
“Godesberg Programme”, that radically transformed
the SPD, was fi nalized. Susanne Miller, who
was a gifted writer, later very briefl y summed up
the main points of these radical changes:
“1. In Godesberg, the SPD abandoned the original
perception of itself as a workers’ party even
from a programmatic point of view. In the
course of its history, the SPD transformed itself
into a mass party of the Left.