Lotte Moos
Encyclopedia
Margarete Charlotte Moos (née Jacoby) (born Berlin 9 December 1909, died London 3 January 2008) was politically active poet and playwright.

Early life

Margarete Charlotte Jacoby, daughter of Samuel and Luise Jacoby, was born in Berlin on 9th December 1909. She soon showed her talent as a writer, when, in 1919, her essay on eastern European refugees was published in the Berliner Tageblatt
Berliner Tageblatt
The Berliner Tageblatt or BT was a German language newspaper published in Berlin from 1872-1939. Along with the Frankfurter Zeitung, it became one of the most important liberal German newspapers of its time.-History:...

 and she was thanked personally by the editor, Theodor Wolff. After a brief period at the school of the Berlin State Theatre she worked as assistant to a photographer and then in the Workers' Theatre. Here she met left-wing economist Siegfried Moos, "Siege", whom she married in 1932.

Emigration and travels

After Hitler's rise to power in 1933 it was necessary for Lotte and Siege to leave Germany, and initially they settled in Paris, but soon moved to London. Lotte's ambition to study at LSE
London School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...

 was frustrated by the fact that her German qualificaitions were not recognised. In 1936 the British government refused to renew her visa, and she departed to the Soviet Union with her friend Brian Goold-Verschoyle
Brian Goold-Verschoyle
Brian Goold-Verschoyle was a member of the Communist Party of Ireland and a victim of Joseph Stalin's "Great Purge".-Early life:...

, her motive being "to see what it was like". She soon became disillusioned with the Soviet system and returned to Britain. The British authorities received information from the Soviet defector Walter Krivitsky
Walter Krivitsky
Walter Germanovich Krivitsky was a Soviet intelligence officer who revealed plans of signing Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact before defecting weeks before the outbreak of World War II....

 that she was a spy, and she was arrested and interrogated by MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...

 in Holloway Prison. She was able to convince the authoriies of her innocence, and then spent some time interned in the Isle of Man.

Oxford and Durham

On release from internment she rejoined her husband in Oxford, where he was working at the Institute of Statistics under William Beveridge
William Beveridge
William Henry Beveridge, 1st Baron Beveridge KCB was a British economist and social reformer. He is best known for his 1942 report Social Insurance and Allied Services which served as the basis for the post-World War II welfare state put in place by the Labour government elected in 1945.Lord...

. Lotte worked as a nursemaid, translator, typist and teacher, and under the pseudonym "Maria Lehmann", she wrote a column for the British German-language newspaper, Die Zeitung
Die Zeitung
Die Zeitung was a German language newspaper in London published during World War II. It had an average circulation of 15.000 to 20.000 from March 1941 to June 1945 and was mainly read by Germans in exile...

.

Shortly after the war ended Siege was appointed as a lecturer at Durham University
Durham University
The University of Durham, commonly known as Durham University, is a university in Durham, England. It was founded by Act of Parliament in 1832 and granted a Royal Charter in 1837...

, and the family, now with a baby daughter, moved to Durham. There Lotte took part in amateur dramatics and also wrote plays, still using the "Maria Lehmann" name. In May 1964 her play Come Back With Diamonds, a comedy about a released political prisoner returning to Moscow, was performed at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith.

London

In 1966, Siegfried became an adviser to the Board of Trade, and he and Lotte moved to Hackney
London Borough of Hackney
The London Borough of Hackney is a London borough of North/North East London, and forms part of inner London. The local authority is Hackney London Borough Council....

 in London. Both of them wrote poetry at this time, and Lotte had three collections published. Some of her work also appeared in the anthology The New British Poetry
The New British Poetry
The New British Poetry was a poetry anthology from 1988, jointly edited by Gillian Allnutt, Fred D'Aguiar, Ken Edwards and Eric Mottram, respectively concerned with feminist, Black British, younger experimental and British poetry revival poets. The time frame involved was 1968-1988...

(1988).

Siegfried died in 1988; Lotte died 3 January 2008. Their daughter Merilyn has written a thinly-disguised autobiographical account of her search for the fate of her mother's Jewish parents in Germany under the Nazis.
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