Margaret Mynatt
Mynatt was born Bianca Margaret in Vienna in 1907, the daughter of a British musician, John Charles Mynatt, (who was known professionally as Giovanni Carlo Minotti). She moved to Berlin in 1929, and joined the Communist Party, becoming involved with Bertolt Brecht and his circle. She assisted in the creation of `St Joan of the Stockyards’ and other plays. In 1933, Mynatt left Germany, in the wake of the anti-Communist repression following the Reichstag fire, and settled in London.
It has been suggested that she worked as an underground courier for the Comintern before coming to
She was Head of Tribunals for the Czech Refugee Trust Fund, 1938-1941, and was dismissed (along with Yvonne Kapp – see her entry) by the Foreign Office in 1941. They subsequently jointly published `British Policy and the Refugees’, not published for decades afterwards.
She worked for the Soviet Tass Agency radio-monitoring station in Whetstone,North London in 1951 before becoming Head of Reuters Soviet Monitor, 1951-1951; Manager of Central Books, 1951-1966 and a director of the publishers Lawrence and Wishart, 1966-1977. At the time of her death in February 1977, she was editor-in-chief of the `Collected Works of Marx and Engels’.
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