Eduard Fuchs (cultural scientist)

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Eduard Fuchs (born January 31, 1870 in Göppingen , † January 26, 1940 in Paris ) was a German cultural scientist , historian , Marxist writer and art collector .

Journalistic career

journalism

He grew up as the son of a small businessman, joined the Socialist Workers' Party (the predecessor organization of the SPD ), which was banned at the time, in 1886 and was a leading member of the radical socialist song association Carmina .

He was sentenced to five months in prison for a leaflet that he published in January 1888, in which he described Kaiser Wilhelm as a “Prussian mass murderer”. E. Fuchs was a founding member of the Association of Handlers in Stuttgart in 1888 . He was denounced by an informer for his political activities, which resulted in five months imprisonment for distributing banned socialist writings. Fuchs found employment in August 1890, first as an advertising manager and then as an editor at the social democratic Munich Post . In April 1892 he designed the May 1st issue of the satirical magazine Süddeutscher Postillon . His political statements as editor brought a number of charges: 1894 for “inciting violence”, 1897 for the poem Revelations (six months in prison), 1898 for libel in Nuremberg (ten months in prison). E. Fuchs wrote his book Caricature of the European Peoples during this time . He received five days in prison for slapping a landlord who was tearing down social democratic posters. In 1901 he moved to Berlin, where he continued his work as an editor for the newspaper Vorwärts . For the publishing house he published several illustrated festival issues for May 1st, Socialist Law, March 8th and Easter. In internal party satirical magazines, he criticized the revisionism of Bernstein and David .

Books on cultural history

Ernst Kreowski and Eduard Fuchs published a volume with caricatures about Richard Wagner in 1907 , including this caricature with Wagner and Daniel Spitzer in the Viennese magazine “Der Floh” from 1877.

From 1904 to 1923 he wrote several works on cultural history:

  • The caricature of the European peoples. Munich 1904.
  • The Woman in the Caricature (1905).
  • History of erotic art (3 volumes, 1908 to 1923)
  • Moral history (6 volumes, 1902 to 1912; this earned him the nickname Sittenfuchs )
  • The world war in caricature (1916).
  • The Jews in the cartoon (1921).

In several art volumes he published works by the graphic artists Honoré Daumier and Paul Gavarni and other “great masters of eroticism”.

Political career

From the SPD to the KPD

In 1913 he became a board member of the German Aid Association for Political Prisoners and Exiles of Russia , in which Karl Liebknecht also worked. From February 11 to May 3, 1914, he traveled to Egypt with the artist Max Slevogt . As an opponent of the social democratic civil peace policy , he broke with the SPD. In the summer of 1917 he negotiated with the Bolsheviks in Stockholm . In 1918 he was a founding member of the Spartakusbund . Legitimated by a letter from Rosa Luxemburg , he held talks with Lenin about the establishment of the Third International . In 1919 Fuchs was a founding member of the KPD . He was close friends with Franz Mehring (after Mehring's death he was his administrator) and August Thalheimer . In June 1923 Fuchs was a founding member of the Society of Friends of the New Russia and on May 15, 1924 participated in the re-establishment of the Western European Secretariat of the III. Internationale (WES), where he took on the role of financial administrator. In August 1925 he took part in the "Hands Off China" campaign of the International Workers Aid . In March 1926 he took part in a call by intellectuals for the expropriation of the princes . In 1927 he was on the board of trustees for the children's homes of the Red Aid and protested against the destruction of the Heinrich Vogeler frescoes in the Barkenhoff .

Break with the KPD

In 1927/28, Fuchs advocated that Heinrich Brandler and other KPD functionaries who were KPD internally as "rights" should be reinstated in the party leadership. When that failed, his friendship with Wilhelm Pieck broke . On May 22, 1928, in a letter to the Comintern leader Bukharin , he demanded that he exercise his influence against the harmful policies of the KPD and warned: “As soon as errors no longer remain purely theoretical, but have an effect in immediate practice, it always takes months, sometimes even years, until the workers have regained new confidence ... ”and stood up for Jacob Walcher :“ As a unionist, Walcher towers over everyone by more than a head ”. In 1928 he left the KPD and in 1929 joined the Communist Party Opposition (KPO), which he supported with a regular monthly contribution of 250 to 500 Reichsmarks. In 1929 he published the collected works of Franz Mehring. He won Leo Borochowicz and August Thalheimer as co-workers , of whom he was convinced "that they have every degree of independence in thinking ... in relation to the great idea of ​​socialism, as Franz Mehring demanded of himself".

exile

In 1933 after the National Socialist " seizure of power ", Fuchs fled to France. His art collection, which mainly contained many Impressionist works ( Max Liebermann , Max Slevogt) as well as paintings, drawings and almost all lithographs by Honoré Daumier, his villa and his unique collection of graphics were confiscated by the National Socialists and sold in three auctions at Rudolph Lepke in Berlin and another auctioned at CG Boerner in Leipzig. In exile in Paris he supported his friends of the KPO; there Fuchs was friends with Walter Benjamin , among others . In the summer of 1939 he oriented himself towards the KPO minority group. Fuchs died of angina pectoris on January 26, 1940 and was buried on January 29, 1940 in the Père Lachaise cemetery, where the fighters of the Paris Commune and the revolutionary artist Honoré Daumier also rest. Fuchs' health had already deteriorated beforehand. A planned and organizationally prepared trip to the United States did not materialize.

Fuchs was survived by his second wife Margarete - called Grete, also Margret Fuchs. She died in exile in New York City on June 7, 1953. His daughter Gertraud from his first marriage to Frida Fuchs (1876–1956) died on May 19, 1960.

Fonts

  • 1848 in the Caricatur. Ernst, Munich [1898]
  • The caricature of the European peoples from ancient times to modern times. Hofmann, Berlin 1901.
  • The caricature of the European peoples from 1848 to the present. Hofmann, Berlin 1903.
  • The erotic element in the cartoon. Hofmann, Berlin 1904.
  • The woman in the cartoon. Langen , Munich 1906.
  • History of erotic art. Volume 1: The problem of contemporary history. Langen, Munich 1908.
  • Illustrated moral history:
    • Illustrated moral history from the Middle Ages to the present. Volume 1: Renaissance. Langen, Munich 1909.
    • Illustrated moral history from the Middle Ages to the present. Volume 2: The gallant time. Langen, Munich 1910.
    • Illustrated moral history from the Middle Ages to the present. Volume 3: The Bourgeois Age. Langen, Munich 1912.
  • Illustrated moral history. Reprint, Frankfurt am Main 1985:
    • Volumes 1-2: Renaissance.
    • Volume 3–4: The gallant time.
    • Volumes 5-6: The Bourgeois Age.
  • with A. Kind: The rule of women in the history of mankind. 2 volumes and 1 supplementary volume. Langen, Munich 1913.
  • The world war in the cartoon. Volume 1: Until the Eve of War. Langen, Munich 1916, (Lf 1-3 as digitized version )
  • The Jews in the cartoon. Langen, Munich 1921.
  • History of erotic art. Volume 2: The individual problem. First part. Langen, Munich 1923.
  • History of erotic art. Volume 3: The individual problem. Second part. Langen, Munich 1926.
  • The great masters of eroticism. A contribution to the problem of creativity in art. Langen, Munich 1930.

literature

  • Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 . Volume 2.1. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 348
  • Ulrich E. Bach: Eduard Fuchs between Elite and Mass Culture. academia.edu In: Lynne Tatlock (Ed.): Publishing Culture and the “Reading Nation”. Camden House, Rochester (NY) 2010, ISBN 978-1-57113-402-8 , pp. 294-312.
  • Walter Benjamin : Eduard Fuchs, the collector and the historian. In: Journal for Social Research . Vol. 6, 1937, pp. 346-381.
  • Theodor Bergmann : “Against the current.” The history of the KPD (opposition). Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-87975-836-0 .
  • Micha Brumlik : Internally circumcised Jews. To Eduard Fuchs' "The Jews in Caricature". KVV concrete, Hamburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-930786-65-7 .
  • Thomas Huonker : Revolution, Morality & Art. Eduard Fuchs: Life and Work. Limmat-Verlag, Zurich 1985, ISBN 3-85791-088-7 ( digitized version ; PDF; 864 kB) (dissertation University of Zurich, Philosophical Faculty, 1983)
  • Peter Gorsen : Who was Eduard Fuchs? In: Journal of Sexology. 19/3 2006, pp. 215-233.
  • Barbara Kontny: Eduard Fuchs (1870-1940). In: Günter Benser , Michael Schneider (Eds.): “Bewahren, Spread Enlightenment”: archivists, librarians and collectors of the sources of the German-speaking labor movement. Bonn-Bad Godesberg 2009, ISBN 978-3-86872-105-8 , pp. 77-83. ( Digitized ; PDF; 283 kB)
  • Barbara Leven: True collectors. The practice of a passion from the end of the 19th century to National Socialism , Baden-Baden: Tectum 2020 (Scientific contributions to art history; 14), ISBN 978-3-8288-4355-4
  • (Cillie) Cäcilia Rentmeister : Honoré Daumier and the Ugly Sex. Women's movement in 19th century caricature . In: Honoré Daumier and the unsolved problems of civil society. Berlin 1974; Stuttgart 1975; Graz 1977. (full texts at www.cillie-rentmeister.de ). For Fuchs / Child "The rule of women ..." and Fuchs "Social history of women" see p. 73 ff.
  • Ulrich Weitz: Salon culture and the proletariat. Eduard Fuchs: collector, moral historian, socialist. Stöffler & Schütz, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-926712-04-X .
  • Ulrich Weitz: The man in the shadow - Eduard Fuchs: Moral fox, socialist, conspirator, collector, patron. Dietz, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-320-02299-0 .
  • Luciana Zingarelli: Eduard Fuchs, from militant journalism to cultural history. In: Aesthetics and Communication. 7/25, 1976, pp. 32-53.
  • Luciana Zingarelli: Eduard Fuchs: Draft of an oeuvre catalog. In: Aesthetics and Communication. 7/25, 1976, pp. 54-56 (bibliography).
  • Fuchs, Eduard In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
  • Heiner Jestrabek : Eduard Fuchs: art collector and time critic. A biographical-political sketch. Freedom tree edition Spinoza, Reutlingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-922589-53-2 .

Web links

Commons : Eduard Fuchs  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Eduard Fuchs  - Sources and full texts
  • Literature by and about Eduard Fuchs in the catalog of the German National Library
  • rgaspi-458-9.germandocsinrussia.org/de/nodes/4-akte-nr-3-dossier-des-reichskommissariats-fr-die-unterst-tzung-der-public-ordnung-westeuropisches-sekretariat-1924- proof-of-the-situation-in-the-western-european-secretariat-of-september-1922-report-of-a-v-man-from-may-20-1924-ber-neu zoom / 6

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Letter from E. Fuchs to Bukharin, May 22, 1928, Institute for Marxism-Leninism / Central Party Archives / Neue Liste / 5/73
  2. ↑ Auction catalogs at Wikisource
  3. ↑ Ulricht Weitz: The man in the shadow. Eduard Fuchs. Berlin 2014, p. 360.
  4. ↑ Ulricht Weitz: The man in the shadow. 2014 p. 359.
  5. ↑ Ulricht Weitz: The man in the shadow. 2014, p. 358.
personal data
SURNAME Fuchs, Eduard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German cultural scientist, historian, writer and art collector
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Goeppingen
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 1940
Place of death Paris