The pastor’s daughter Dorothee Ziegele was active in the youth movement from an early age. In 1921 she began studying German literature in Leipzig, at the same time as training as a librarian. She worked at the Tübingen University library from 1923. It was during this time that she met Harald Poelchau. Ziegele took a job at the library of the Reich Statistics Office in 1926. She and Harald Poelchau married on April 12, 1928. Like her husband, Dorothee Poelchau was against the Nazi regime from the beginning. The couple’s son Harald Stephan was born in 1938.
Along with her husband, Dorothee Poelchau supported Jews in hiding and political prisoners and their relatives. The Poelchaus repeatedly hid Jews in their home for some time. Dorothee Poelchau took care of them and obtained food. She also found new hiding places for them.
She left Berlin with her son during the last few weeks of the war, but returned in the spring of 1946. She and her husband were honored by the Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations in 1971.