Margarete Reich, the daughter of Jewish parents, was baptized and raised as a Protestant. From 1908 to 1912, she was a teacher in Berlin-Schmargendorf. In 1921 she divorced the non-Jewish virtuoso violinist Adrian Lieffering. She and her two children moved in with her mother and she found employment with Dresdner Bank, until she was dismissed in 1933.
Denounced by her building’s superintendent, she was temporarily arrested by the Gestapo in September 1938 for her activities as a parish worker in the Confessional Church and for making statements critical of the regime. After her release, her assets were confiscated.
Due to her long-past marriage to a non-Jewish partner, Margarete Lieffering did not have to wear a yellow star. She was arrested in the large-scale raid at the end of February 1943. After her release in March, she had to perform forced labor in a factory. Fearing deportation, she eventually went into hiding in friends’ homes in Brandenburg, East Prussia, Bavaria, and Saxony. Her children were repeatedly interrogated by the Gestapo but did not reveal their mother’s location. After the war Margarete Lieffering returned to Berlin.
