Bernhard Reichenbach

Bernhard Reichenbach (born December 12, 1888 in Berlin , † February 19, 1975 in London ) was a communist politician and journalist.

Life

Growing up in Hamburg, Reichenbach first worked as an actor and then studied literature, art history and sociology in Berlin from 1912 to 1914; During this time he was also active in the youth movement and on the board of the Free Student Union and was co-editor of the magazine Der Aufbruch . Soldier from 1915 to 1917, he then worked in the press office of the Foreign Office until 1919 .

In 1917 Reichenbach was a founding member of the USPD and in 1920, without having previously been a member of the KPD , founded the Communist Workers 'Party of Germany (KAPD), whose organ, the Communist Workers' Newspaper, he temporarily headed. In 1921 he represented the KAPD in the Executive Committee of the Communist International and at the Third Comintern Congress in Moscow in the same year; there he negotiated with Lenin about the admission of the KAPD as a full member. Excluded from the KAPD in 1922 together with Karl Schröder as part of the Essen direction , Reichenbach joined the SPD in 1925 - without giving up his previous political convictions - and worked as an event speaker for the Young Socialists and the SAJ . Professionally, he worked as an authorized signatory in a chemical company in Krefeld.

In 1930/31 Reichenbach played a central role in the founding process of the council communist Red Fighters by establishing contacts between left-opposition SAJ groups and the circle around Karl Schröder , Alexander Schwab and Arthur Goldstein in Berlin. From 1931 until his expulsion in August 1932 he worked entristically within the SAPD , where he was also able to win members for the Red Fighters. In 1932/33 he was responsible for the conversion of organizational work to conditions of illegality .

After he had been banned from working as a journalist in 1934 and suffered two house searches by the Gestapo , Reichenbach emigrated in 1935 via the Netherlands to Great Britain, where he settled in London. Here he joined the Labor Party and worked with exiled Social Democrats . Interned from 1940 to 1941, Reichenbach initially worked as an editor for the prisoner-of-war newspaper Die Wochenpost published by the Foreign Office .

After the war, Reichenbach worked as a London correspondent a. a. active for the Süddeutscher Rundfunk and the Westfälische Rundschau . In 1958 he received the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class.

Works

• Planning and freedom. The lessons of the English experiment . Frankfurt / Main 1954
• England at the crossroads of its history . Dortmund 1961

literature

• Reichenbach, Bernhard . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02295-2 .
• Reichenbach, Bernhard , in: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 307
• Reichenbach, Bernhard , in: Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of German-speaking emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Politics, economy, public life . Munich: Saur, 1980, p. 591

Web links

• The Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD) in Retrospect an interview Rudi Dutschke with Bernhard Reichenbach (engl.)
• Meetings in the Kremlin in Moscow 1921 - interview with Bernhard Reichenbach (1964, engl.)