Dorothee Poelchau

After marrying Harald Poelchau, she was opposed to the Nazi regime from the beginning, just like her husband. After her husband took up a position as a prison chaplain in Berlin on 1 April 1933 and began to look after inmates of the German and foreign resistance as well as Jews threatened with deportation, Dorothee Poelchau became "her husband's secret help". When it came to helping Jews in hiding and relatives of political prisoners, she was actively involved by procuring food and looking after the persecutees taken into her own home. Furthermore, she established contacts for the persons designated for accommodation and prepared meals which she gave to her husband for the prisoners in the various prisons. Towards the end of the Second World War, she left Berlin with her son Harald Stephan, but returned there in the summer of 1945.

Poelchau was the second daughter of the pastor Paul Eugen Ziegele and his wife Berta from Steinkirchen. After the end of her school education and the first impressions she had received from the German Youth Movement, she began studying German at Leipzig University in the winter semester of 1921/22. Parallel to her studies, she trained at the library school in Leipzig, which she completed in 1923, thereby qualifying her to work for the middle library service. After obtaining employment at the University Library of the University of Tübingen in 1923, she met Harald Poelchau in the same year, who at the time was secretary of the German youth organisation, the Köngener Bund [de] in Tübingen. In 1926, she moved from Tübingen to Berlin, where she accepted a position in the library of the Statistisches Reichamt [de] (StRA).

Dorothee Poelchau (born Dorothee Ziegele; 6 June 1902 in Steinkirchen, 4 November 1977) was a German librarian and, together with her husband Harald Poelchau, were resistance fighters against the Nazis. The couple were named Righteous Among the Nations in 1971.