Maria Weiterer (born Maria Tebbe: 18 February 1899 - 1 December 1976) was a German political activist, increasingly prominent in the Communist Party during the 1920s and 1930s. She survived the twelve Nazi years, living in exile from 1934. She returned to Germany after the war, settling in the Soviet occupation zone and building a career in what became the East German political establishment. In 1950, however, she was stripped of her offices and party membership and given a low grade clerical post in the south of the country, far from the centres of power. Much was made, at the time, of her sometimes close (it was asserted) association, as a political exile during the early 1940s, with the US diplomat-spy Noel Field. She was subsequently rehabilitated in 1956, but her political career neve