A Jewish Communist In Weimar Germany

Walter Benjamin derided Werner Scholem as a ‘rogue’ in 1924. Josef Stalin referred him as a ‘splendid man’, but soon backtracked and labeled him an ‘imbecile’, while Ernst Thälmann, chairman of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), warned his followers against the dangers of ‘Scholemism’. For the philosopher and historian Gershom Scholem, however, Werner was first and foremost his older brother. The life of German-Jewish Communist Werner Scholem (1895–1940) had many facets. Werner and Gerhard, later Gershom, rebelled together against their authoritarian father and the atmosphere of national chauvinism engulfing Germany during World War I. After inspiring his younger brother to take up the Zionist cause, Werner himself underwent a long personal journey before deciding to join the Communist struggle. Scholem climbed the party ladder and orchestrated the KPD's ‘Bolshevisation’ campaign, only to be expelled as one of Stalin's opponents in 1926. He was arrested in 1933, and ultimately murdered in the Buchenwald concentration camp seven years later. This first biography of Werner Scholem tells his life story by drawing on a wide range of original sources and archive material long hidden beyond the Iron Curtain of the Cold War era. First published in German by UVK Verlagsgesellschaft as Werner Scholem - eine politische Biographie (1895-1940), Konstanz, 2014.

This biography of Werner Scholem (1895-1940), former Zionist activist and later chief organiser of the German Communist Party, sheds new light on German-Jewish relations in the Weimar Republic, focussing on a revolutionary's lifelong struggle against Anti-Semitism.

Jewish Domination of Weimar Germany was the National Socialist government's first English-language attempt to explain the rationale behind their legislative moves to restrict Jewish influence in Germany after 1933. Using official pre-Nazi-era demographics, this work showed that Jews were massively over-represented in all fields of German social and economic life-except that of farming and creative work. It lists the ownership of mass media in Weimar Germany, the astonishing financial scandals, Communism and political subversion, degenerate theater, sexual psychology, Communist indoctrination in educational institutions and the media-all of which was predominantly Jewish in origin. This new edition contains the entire original text and illustrations, and benefits from a series of appendixes which reveal: - The measures taken by the Nazi state against Jews; - Details of the Havaara transfer Agreement whereby the Nazi government and the World Zionist movement worked together to help create the state of Israel; - The World Jewish declaration of war against Germany in 1933; and - A series of eye-opening parallels between Weimar Germany and the present-day United States of America, showing exactly the same trends of Jewish domination of educational institutions, the mass media, and financial scandals-proof that history does repeat itself.

The National Socialist government's first English-language attempt to explain the rationale behind their legislative moves to restrict Jewish influence in Germany after 1933. Using official pre-Nazi-era demographics, this work showed that Jews were massively over-represented in all fields of German social and economic life-except that of farming and creative work. It lists the ownership of mass media in Weimar Germany, the astonishing financial scandals, Communism and political subversion, degenerate theater, sexual psychology, Communist indoctrination in educational institutions and the media-all of which was predominantly Jewish in origin. This new edition contains the entire original text and illustrations, and benefits from a series of appendixes by Francis Dupont which reveal: - The measures taken by the Nazi state against Jews; - Details of the Havaara transfer Agreement whereby the Nazi government and the World Zionist movement worked together to help create the state of Israel; - The World Jewish declaration of war against Germany in 1933; and - A series of eye-opening parallels between Weimar Germany and the present-day United States of America, showing exactly the same trends of Jewish domination of educational institutions, the mass media, and financial scandals-proof that history does repeat itself.

Exploring the gray zone of infiltration and subversion in which the Nazi and Communist parties sought to influence and undermine each other, this book offers a fresh perspective on the relationship between two defining ideologies of the twentieth century. The struggle between Fascism and Communism is situated within a broader conversation among right- and left-wing publicists, across the Youth Movement and in the “National Bolshevik” scene, thus revealing the existence of a discourse on revolutionary legitimacy fought according to a set of common assumptions about the qualities of the ideal revolutionary. Highlighting the importance of a masculine-militarist politics of youth revolt operative in both Marxist and anti-Marxist guises, Weimar Radicals forces us to re-think the fateful relationship between the two great ideological competitors of the Weimar Republic, while offering a challenging new interpretation of the distinctive radicalism of the interwar era.

"The Last Revolutionaries" tells a story of unwavering political devotion: it follows the lives of German communists across the tumultuous twentieth century. Before 1945, German communists were political outcasts in the Weimar Republic and courageous resisters in Nazi Germany; they also suffered Stalin's Great Purges and struggled through emigration in countries hostile to communism. After World War II, they became leaders of East Germany, where they ran a dictatorial regime until they were swept out of power by the people's revolution of 1989. In a compelling collective biography, Catherine Epstein conveys the hopes, fears, dreams, and disappointments of a generation that lived their political commitment. Focusing on eight individuals, "The Last Revolutionaries" shows how political ideology drove people's lives. Some of these communists, including the East German leaders Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker, enjoyed great personal success. But others, including the purge victims Franz Dahlem and Karl Schirdewan, experienced devastating losses. And, as the book demonstrates, female and Jewish communists faced their own sets of difficulties in the movement to which they had given their all. Drawing on previously inaccessible sources as well as extensive personal interviews, Epstein offers an unparalleled portrait of the most enduring and influential generation of Central European communists. In the service of their party, these communists experienced solidarity and betrayal, power and persecution, sacrifice and reward, triumph and defeat. At once sordid and poignant, theirs is the story of European communism--from the heroic excitement of its youth, to the bureaucratic authoritarianism of its middle age, to the sorry debacle of its death.

Richard Müller, a leading figure of the German Revolution in 1918, is unknown today. As the operator and unionist who represented Berlin’s metalworkers, he was main organiser of the ‘Revolutionary Stewards’, a clandestine network that organised a series of mass strikes between 1916 and 1918. With strong support in the factories, the Revolutionary Stewards were the driving force of the Revolution. By telling Müller's story, this study gives a very different account of the revolutionary birth of the Weimar Republic. Using new archival sources and abandoning the traditional focus on the history of political parties, Ralf Hoffrogge zooms in on working class politics on the shop floor and its contribution to social change. First published in German by Karl Dietz Verlag as Richard Müller - Der Mann hinter der November Revolution, Berlin, 2008, this english edition was completerly revised for the english speaking audience and contains new sources and recent literature.

How did the revolutionary Left view cultural modernists? Their uneasy relationship is illustrated in this book with quotations ranging from Alexander’s ‘Dada is merely an impertinence’ through Trotsky’s ‘There cannot be a proletarian culture’ to Averbakh’s ‘Tear off the masks!’ and Becher’s ‘There can only be one kind of genuine art: fighting art.’