The actress Margarete Gahrmann met the Jewish dancer Ellen Rathé in 1929. The couple lived together in Berlin-Schöneberg from 1931 and had close professional links.
After 1933 Gahrmann was prevented from working as an actress by the Reich Theater Chamber, since she refused to leave her Jewish girlfriend. In 1937 their passports were confiscated after a failed attempt to emigrate to Denmark. When Rathé came under ever greater threat at the end of March 1942, she went underground. Despite the extreme risk, she spent some time living with her partner. Gahrmann was interrogated by the Gestapo several times but never revealed her girlfriend’s hiding place. She also took the Jewish Grünnes in for a time, a couple she knew from the stage in Vienna.
From the end of 1943, Gahrmann and Rathé spent most of their time outside Berlin. Gahrmann not only found places for them to stay, but also obtained a forged postal identity card for her partner, and paid for her keep.
They experienced the end of the war in Thuringia, and Margarete Gahrmann went on to work as an artiste. She lived with Ellen Rathé until her death in 1978.