Erich Irmer

Erich Irmer (pseudonym: Erich Sommer; born March 26, 1908 in Berlin ; † 1985 ) was a German-British publisher .

Life and activity

During the Weimar Republic, Irmer began to be active in the International Socialist Combat League (ISK).

In the wake of the power of commencement of the Nazis Irmer was taken in May 1933 in custody. He then became a private owner of the publisher Public Life, which previously belonged to the ISK . Secretly, however, Irmer continued to orientate himself towards the interests of the ISK in managing the publishing house and was one of the most important leaders in the ISK's illegal activities in Germany in the early years of the Nazi dictatorship. Klotz even describes him as "determining" for the association's policy.

In 1937 Irmer fled to Paris due to the increasing reduction in the activities of his publishing house and the risk of being arrested again, where from May 1937 he and Hanna Fortmüller set up the Editions Nouvelles Internationales publishing house, in which works by authors who had fled Germany after 1933, appeared, so z. B. by Alfred Kerr , Kurt Hiller and Anna Siemens .

In 1940 Irmer fled to Great Britain. While in exile in Britain, he was one of the leading members of the ISK group in London. He was temporarily interned - according to some sources, transferred to Australia.

In 1945, Irmer, now a British citizen, returned to Germany with the British Army, where he subsequently worked on carrying out denazification .

Then Irmer went to Australia, where he changed his name to Innis (or expanded to Irmer-Innis) and worked as a social worker.

literature

• Ulrich Borsdorf, Lutz Niethammer : Between Liberation and Occupation: Analyzes by the US Secret Service on the positions and structures of German politics in 1945. P. 323.
• Judith Claudia Joos: Trustees for the Public? , 2008, p. 147.
• Johannes Klotz: The "Coming Germany". Ideas and Concepts of the Social Democratic Party Executive in Exile 1933-1945 on State and Economy , p. 161.
• Werner Röder (Ed.): Biographical Handbook of German-Speaking Emigration after 1933 , Munich 1980, Vol. 1, p. 321.