Katharina von Kardorff (née v. Endert) with Her Fourth Husband and Family (1929)

Katharina von Kardorff-Oheimb (1879-1962) was one of the first women elected to the Reichstag. From 1920 to 1924, she represented the German People’s Party [Deutsche Volkspartei or DVP] in the first Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. She was also a celebrated Berlin hostess, whose Kurfürstendamm home was the venue for influential and popular salons the 1920s. Her fourth husband, Siegfried von Kardorff (1873-1945), whom she married in 1927, was a fellow member of the conservative DVP. He served in the Prussian Parliament [Landtag] and later as vice president of the Reichstag (1928-32). Their story is interesting – not least because it illustrates that, within certain upper-class circles, liberal views of marriage and family sometimes mixed with political conservatism.

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