Agence Espagne

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Agence Espagne was a press agency of the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War , supported by the Comintern .

history

The Agence Espagne was founded in Paris in October 1936 by Jaume Miravitlles, a member of the republican government, the German Willi Munzenberg and the republican Spanish foreign minister Julio Alvarez del Vayo . It was supposed to distribute texts and photos of the International Brigades in the French press . The official purpose was to create such a picture of the Spanish Civil War that would influence public opinion in Britain, France and the USA. Their boss was the Czech Otto Katz , a brilliant propagandist for the Comintern, who signed his articles in the daily Ce Soir with André Simone . The activities of the Agence Espagne also included attacks on the POUM - Katz had contact with André Marty .

It was issued in Paris with money from the Spanish Republican Government. In 1941, Katz / Simone found refuge in Mexico. Paris was the headquarters for Europe of the Agence Espagne. The London office was headed by Geoffrey Bing. Her reporters included the Italian anti-fascist Ferdinando Bosso, William Forrest, the Spanish poet Juan Larrera, Rubio Hidalgo, Louis Fischer , Claud Cockburn, and the writer and philosopher Arthur Koestler , who was also a war correspondent for the News Chronicle . Koestler left the USSR in compliance with the Comintern directive to join Paris and worked on the development of the agency with a budget of 2.5 million francs, 60 percent of which was ultimately earmarked for the Agence Espagne. He was sent to the southern front to report on the event in Spain and saw how Malaga was taken by the Francoists . Recognized by a Franco officer, he was arrested, sentenced to death and eventually exchanged for another prisoner.

literature

  • Jonathan Miles: The Nine Lives of Otto Katz. The remarkable story of a communist super-spy Bantam Books, London 2010, ISBN 978-0-553-82018-8 . Pp. 236-272.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Anson Rabinbach : Otto Katz. Man on Ice . In: Raphael Gross / Yfaat Weiss (eds.): Jewish history as general history , Verlag Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2006, p. 337.
  2. ^ A b Román Gebern, Paul Hammond: Luis Buñuel. The Red Years, 1929-1939 . University of Wisconsin, 2012, p. 297.
  3. ↑ Jonathan Miles 2010: p. 256.