Ernst Niekisch

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Ernst Niekisch (born May 23, 1889 in Trebnitz , † May 23, 1967 in West Berlin ) was a German politician ( USPD , SPD , SED , most recently non-party) and political writer . He was one of the leading figures in national Bolshevism , which influenced the Strasser wing of the NSDAP . Niekisch turned against Adolf Hitler publicly and organized resistance against National Socialism as a “ national revolutionary ” . He was arrested in 1937 and sentenced to life imprisonment by the People's Court in 1939 for high treason and for working for a banned party . After the end of the war he joined the SED , which he increasingly criticized after the uprising of June 17, 1953 in the GDR , until he left it in 1955 and moved to West Berlin in 1963.

Life

Empire

Ernst Niekisch was the first of six children of the master file cutter August Niekisch (1858–1934) and his wife Maria, b. Schnell (1867–1937). The family, which had five daughters over the next few years, moved from Silesia to Nördlingen in Bavaria in 1891 . The father had bought the small workshop of his former teacher there and started his own business. In Nördlingen, the family encountered an anti-Prussian mood, and Niekisch suffered throughout his school days under this and under the bourgeois narrow-mindedness of the neighboring children and classmates.

He attended elementary school and then secondary school and then switched to the Nördlinger preparatory institute . He then completed the teachers' seminar in Altdorf near Nuremberg and in 1907 worked as a primary school teacher in various villages in the Nördlinger area. In 1908 he did military service as a one-year volunteer , after which he moved to Augsburg , where he worked as a teacher. During the First World War he did his military service behind the front lines in the training of recruits. During the war, in 1917, he became a member of the SPD .

Weimar Republic

In 1918/19 he was chairman of the Central Workers 'and Soldiers' Council in Munich . From 1919 to 1922 he was a member of the USPD and a member of the Bavarian state parliament ; he was also a city councilor for Augsburg. For his part in the Munich soviet republic he was aiding and abetting treason to two years imprisonment convicted, he of 10 February 1920 to 29 August 1921 in the detention center Niederschönenfeld together with Ernst Toller and Erich difficulty was serving.

After the USPD merged with the SPD in the Bavarian state parliament in 1922, he was deputy chairman of the parliamentary group. In 1923 Niekisch resigned his mandate, went to Berlin and was elected secretary of the German Textile Workers' Association.

He came in the spring of 1923, along with nationally minded Young Socialists in Hofgeismarer circle that against the internationalism of Marx turned and socialism in the national framework based on a strong state sought. He distinguished himself from Marxism as follows:

“Marxism is the pointed formulation of the fact of class antagonism; Through the theoretical intensification brought about with the refined means of a keen understanding, the class antagonism is literally increased to the absolute, it is interpreted as the ultimate fact of all social and historical events. He makes the rival, more or less unpeaceful relations between the classes of the people, the ' class struggle ', the content of an ingenious scientific system, within which the class struggle is granted the role of the sole meaningful explanation of all existence. From the Marxist point of view, the alienation of the state of the working class gains profound importance; it is immune from being branded as a mere accidental, arbitrary, or even unnatural behavior; Rather, it presents itself as the necessary result of the rule of an inescapable factual legality. [...] By teaching the state to be seen as a mere class-political fact, it became a theory of harsh state negation, a revolutionary doctrine in the sense of a radical overthrow that destroys traditions . "

In order to forestall a party expulsion, Niekisch resigned from the SPD on July 22, 1926 and became a member of the Old Social Democratic Party of Germany (ASP). From 1926 until it was banned during the Nazi era (December 1934), Niekisch gave the magazine resistance, partly illustrated by the graphic artist and painter A. Paul Weber . Journal for national revolutionary politics in which, among others, Ernst Jünger and his brother Friedrich Georg Jünger as well as Gustav Sondermann published. The magazine was published by the resistance publishing house, headed by his wife Anna, which also published the pro-Soviet periodical Decision , not to be confused with the book of the same name. He was also temporarily editor of the daily Volksstaat of the ASPD. In 1928 he started working with A. Paul Weber.

With his "ideology of resistance" he wanted to build a bridge between the labor movement and the thinking of right-wing conservative , anti-democratic and anti- liberal sections of the rest of the population, similar to Spengler with his " Prussian Socialism ". During this time, Niekisch was financially supported by the Hamburg businessman Alfred Toepfer .

Niekisch was influenced, among other things, by the thought leader of the young conservatives Arthur Moeller van den Bruck , who in his work The Third Reich in 1923 propagated a future combination of socialism and nationalism and strived for an authoritarian German Reich without parties that opposed the liberal western states - in particular against the United States - should turn towards the Soviet Union . Niekisch also developed the program of a “national rebirth of Germany” and advocated a Europe under German leadership with strong connections to the east as far as China . He described his demarcation from Western parliamentary democracy in 1926 with the words:

"To be western means: to cheat with the phrase of freedom, to initiate crimes with the commitment to humanity , to destroy peoples with the call for the reconciliation of nations."

Niekisch chose the formulation for his East Option in 1929:

"Either to become Asian or African, to cuddle up against negated France or against Tatar Russia."

Even anti-Semitic argumentation can be found in his writings. So he wrote:

“The Jew could afford to bring the anti-state principle into the world; [...] The secret of his strength lay precisely in the fact that he renounced his ambition to shape the state and played together with his peers in the form of a 'supranational Freemasonry ' in order to immediately restore every state, wherever it had emerged as a natural creation of a people gifted by the state undercut. "

"The Jew sits at the lever and regulates the speed and number of tours in consideration of the nature of the biological material, whose own growth is Jewish to straighten."

“Where there is business, the Jew is on top; [...] The Jew loves to disguise his existential ties to the economic ratio ; he would like to blame the good relationship he maintains with her on chance. "

Even after 1945 he wrote in The Realm of the Lesser Demons :

“When the Third Reich began to measure itself against world Jewry , it only raised it to the height of a world power [...] It did the Jew perhaps the highest honor that he had ever been given by organizing as the state There was opposition to him. "

With his national Bolshevik , anti-democratic and anti-western politics, he in turn influenced the left wing of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) around Gregor Strasser .

Third Reich

In 1932 he published the book Hitler - a German Doom , in which he warned against a takeover by Adolf Hitler , whom he considered "too legalistic". From 1933 he tried to bring together socialist groups and national-conservative resistance groups. After the transfer of power , he continued to maintain contacts and a. with Ernst Jünger, which he was accused of during a house search by the Secret State Police (Gestapo). In 1934 the magazine The Resistance was banned. But Niekisch continued his activity against the National Socialists. At the beginning of 1937 he met conspiratorially in Paris with the national Bolshevik Karl Otto Paetel , who had emigrated from Germany, and with Harro Schulze-Boysen , who was then employed in the communications department of the Reich Aviation Ministry , who had been involved in pro-Soviet organizations after a national revolutionary phase before 1933.

On March 22, 1937, Ernst Niekisch was arrested by the Gestapo for conspiratorial activity and sentenced to life in prison by the People's Court on January 10, 1939 for high treason and continuation of a political party. He was imprisoned in Brandenburg prison, where he suffered severe physical damage. He almost went blind.

After 1945 (East Berlin / West Berlin)

After his liberation by the Red Army, Niekisch went back to Berlin. He joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and later became a member of the SED and the VVN . He was a member of the cultural association for the democratic renewal of Germany and was actively involved in its founding phase. At the First German Writers' Congress in Berlin in October 1947, Niekisch spoke to a critical audience. His assessments of the “elites”, the freedom and plan idea, however, met his speech with great applause: “Everyone has freedom for that which increases humanity.” In 1947/48 he took part in interzonal debates of the Imshausen Society on the reorganization of Germany. In 1948 he became professor of sociology at the Humboldt University in East Berlin , where Heinz Maus and Werner Maser were his assistants. An admirer of Niekisch was the right-wing intellectual journalist Wolfgang Venohr .

In 1949, as a member of the People's Congress, Niekisch became a member of the first People's Chamber in the GDR. After the violent suppression of the uprising on June 17, 1953 , he resigned from all political offices. In February 1955 he resigned from the SED. In 1963 he finally moved to West Berlin , where he had not given up his old residence in the Wilmersdorf district .

Niekisch's 1953 application for compensation in West Germany was rejected several times. It failed in the eight-year trial before the Federal Court of Justice , the Federal Constitutional Court and the European Commission for Human Rights.

The President of the Federal Constitutional Court Gebhard Müller proposed a settlement to the Governing Mayor of Berlin, Willy Brandt , which was initially rejected. Finally, the settlement came about on June 21, 1966. Niekisch received a pension of 1,500 DM retroactively from January 1, 1966. The Senate took over his health costs and finally he received a one-off allowance of 35,000 DM.

Niekisch found his final resting place in the Wilmersdorf cemetery .

reception

Up to the present day the " National Socialists " (also " Autonomous Nationalists ") use quotations from national revolutionary documents by Ernst Niekisch in their texts and on banners. But he was also positively received by leftists, who joined the SDS in 1962 : Wolfgang Abendroth called him a “fearless fighter against barbarism”, Jürgen Seifert characterized the Niekisch way of thinking as the “spirit that made the Red Orchestra possible ".

Sebastian Haffner described Niekisch in 1980 as the “last great Prussia” and the “real opponent of Hitler” and came to the conclusion: “The true theoretician of the world revolution that is taking place today is not Marx and not even Lenin. It's Niekisch. "

Even in the early days of Niekisch's political career, Michael Pittwald (2002) found "some of the most important elements of Niekisch's national-revolutionary ideology: völkisch thinking, which is manifested in Niekisch's conceptions of state and socialism, and which he uses terms such as 'Volkstum', 'Volkischer Staat' , 'Community of fate', 'war socialism' or 'workers' is described ”. Pittwald also mentions the "war as the father of German statehood or mediator as well as founding unity between state, rule and population", an "exaggeration of the state", the "preference for Prussia, which Niekisch always equates with Germany" and "the attribution" as central elements and formulation of a future role for Germany as the ( hegemonic ) power ”. Niekisch's goal was - after settling the accounts with internal enemies, successfully fighting “French Europe” (with Russia's help), establishing a “German-ruled Central Europe” and reorganizing the Eastern region - an “end empire” against “Americanization” and “Asian chaos”. The enemy images of Niekisch's "resistance movement" were the "Roman" Occident, the principle of equality , liberalism , feminism , urban instead of rural life and the Jews. Pittwald also describes Ferdinand Lassalle and Johann Gottlieb Fichte with their combination of the national and the social as Niekisch's intellectual masterminds.

Because of his geopolitical orientation towards the East, Alexander Geljewitsch Dugin puts Niekisch close to Eurasism .

Fonts

  • The way of the German workers to the state. New Society publishing house, Berlin 1925.
  • Basic questions of German foreign policy. New Society publishing house, Berlin 1925.
  • Thoughts on German politics. Resistance Publishing House, Dresden 1929.
  • Politics and idea. [Extension of a lecture]. Resistance publishing house Anna Niekisch, Dresden 1929 (writings of the "Resistance", Volume 2).
  • Decision. Resistance Publishing House, Berlin 1930.
  • The political area of ​​German resistance. Resistance Publishing House, Berlin 1931.
  • Hitler - a German fate. Drawings by A. Paul Weber. Resistance Publishing House, Berlin 1932.
  • In the thicket of pacts. Resistance Publishing House, Berlin 1935.
  • The third imperial figure. Resistance Publishing House 1935.
  • German failure to exist. Aufbau-Verlag Berlin 1946, 3rd edition Fölbach Verlag, Koblenz 1990, ISBN 3-923532-05-9 .
  • European balance sheet. Rütten & Loening, Potsdam 1951.
  • The realm of the lower demons. [An Analysis of National Socialism]. Rowohlt, Hamburg 1953.
  • Daring life. Encounters and events. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne and Berlin 1958 (first edition of the autobiography of the “National Bolshevik” Ernst Niekisch).
  • The friends and the friend. Joseph E. Drexel on his 70th birthday, June 6, 1966. [By Ernst Niekisch u. a.]. Verlag Nürnberger Presse, Nuremberg 1966.
  • Memories of a German revolutionary. Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne.
    • Volume 1: Daring Life 1889–1945. 1974, ISBN 3-8046-8485-8 (first published in 1958 by Kiepenheuer & Witsch).
    • Volume 2: Against the Current 1945–1967. 1974, ISBN 3-8046-8486-6 .
  • Resistance. Selected essays from the “Papers for Socialist and National Revolutionary Politics”. Edited by Uwe Sauermann , Sinus-Verlag, Krefeld 1982, new edition: Verlag der Deutschen Demokratie, Riesa approx. 2002.

Editions

  • Ernst Niekisch and A. Paul Weber (eds.): Resistance - magazine for national revolutionary politics. Resistance Verlag, Berlin (banned in December 1934).
  • Ernst Niekisch (ed.): Decision. The weekly newspaper for national revolutionary politics. Resistance-Verlag, Berlin (date of publication: No. 1: October 9, 1932 to No. 11: March 26, 1933; publication therefore discontinued).

literature

  • Wilhelm Raimund Beyer (Ed.): Return undesirable. Joseph Drexel's “Journey to Mauthausen” and the Ernst Niekisch resistance group. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-423-02924-2 .
  • Joseph E. Drexel : The Niekisch case. A documentation. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne and Berlin 1964, (Information, Volume 11) With bibliography E. Niekisch (pp. 12-14).
  • Joseph E. Drexel: Obituary for Ernst Niekisch. † May 23, 1967. In: Joseph E. Drexel: Responsibility in front of history. Articles, comments, glosses from the years 1929 to 1970. Verlag Nürnberger Presse, Nuremberg 1971, ISBN 3-920701-33-X , pp. 308-311.
  • Friedrich Kabermann: Resistance and decision of a German revolutionary. Life and thinking of Ernst Niekisch. Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1973, ISBN 3-8046-8458-0 .
  • Sebastian Haffner : Ernst Niekisch. In: Sebastian Haffner: Prussian profiles. Athenäum-Verlag, Königstein 1980, ISBN 3-7610-8096-4 .
  • Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk:  Niekisch, Ernst . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Siegfried Mielke (Ed.) With the collaboration of Marion Goers, Stefan Heinz , Matthias Oden, Sebastian Bödecker: Unique - Lecturers, students and representatives of the German University of Politics (1920-1933) in the resistance against National Socialism. Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86732-032-0 , pp. 58-61.
  • Reinhard Opitz : Ernst Niekisch's “resistance movement” - or what does “national revolutionary” mean? In: Reinhard Opitz: Fascism and Neofascism. Volume 1: German fascism up to 1945. Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-89144-209-2 , pp. 141-182.
  • Michael Pittwald: Ernst Niekisch. Völkisch socialism, national revolution , German final empire. (= PapyRossa-Hochschulschriften, Volume 37). PapyRossa Verlag , Cologne 2002 (dissertation), ISBN 3-89438-231-7 .
  • Birgit Rätsch-Langejürgen: The principle of resistance. Life and work of Ernst Niekisch. (= Series of publications Extremism & Democracy , edited by Uwe Backes and Eckhard Jesse, Volume 9). Bouvier Verlag, Bonn 1997, ISBN 3-416-02608-X .
  • Niekisch, Ernst (Karl August), pseud. Nikolaus Götz. In: Walther Killy , Rudolf Vierhaus (Hrsg.): Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie. Munich 1998, TB edition 2001, vol. 7, p. 407.
  • Thomas BrechenmacherNiekisch, Ernst. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , pp. 227-229 ( digitized version ).
  • Sylvia Taschka: Ernst Niekisch's picture of Russia. Palm & Enke, Erlangen Studies in History, Erlangen and Jena 1999, ISBN 3-7896-0355-4 .

Web links

Commons : Ernst Niekisch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Unless otherwise stated, biographical information is based on: Birgit Rätsch-Langejürgen, The Principle of Resistance. Life and work of Ernst Niekisch. Bouvier Verlag, Bonn 1997.
  2. ^ Ernst Niekisch in the parliamentary database at the House of Bavarian History
  3. Ernst Niekisch: The way of the German workers to the state. Berlin 1925, p. 8f.
  4. library.fes.de
  5. ^ From: Revolutionary Politics 1926. Reprinted in: Ernst Niekisch: Resistance . 1982 u. ö.
  6. Ernst Niekisch: Thoughts on German Politics . Resistance Verlag, Leipzig 1929, p. 255
  7. from Ernst Niekisch: The Third Imperial Figure , quoted in. at www.politische-bildung-brandenburg.de (“Focus on Democracy and Extremism”), November 10, 2012
  8. The Third Imperial Figure , p. 14
  9. The Third Imperial Figure , p. 23
  10. Michael Pittwald: Ernst Niekisch: Völkischer Sozialismus, national revolution, German end empire. PapyRossa-Verlag, Cologne 2002, p. 300
  11. Arno Klönne: Right-wing extremism in “civil” society: “No yesterday's ghost” ; LIT-Verlag, Münster 200, p. 92
  12. ^ Ernst Niekisch: Founding of the Kulturbund , In: Ilse Spittmann, Gisela Helwig (Ed.): GDR reading book. From the Soviet occupation zone to the GDR 1945–1949. Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik Berend von Nottbeck, Cologne 1989, pp. 214-217, ISBN 3-8046-8742-3 .
  13. Ursula Reinhold, Dieter Schlenstedt, Horst Tanneberger (eds.): First German Writers' Congress October 4 - 8, 1947. Protocol and documents , Aufbau Verlag, Berlin 1997, p. 229. ISBN 978-3-351-01883-2
  14. Dietmar Gottfried: "For the nation's sake, capable of communism". The National Bolshevism of Ernst Niekisch , Telepolis , January 28, 2012, accessed February 6, 2016.
  15. Lemma: Ernst Niekisch , Online-Lexikon: Netz-gegen-Nazis.de, entry from March 31, 2008, accessed February 6, 2016.
  16. ^ A b Herbert Ammon : Before and after »1968«: The national undercurrents in the West German New Left , Section II, GlobKult magazine, June 16, 2014, accessed February 6, 2016.
  17. Sebastian Haffner , Ernst Niekisch . In: ders. And Wolfgang Venohr : Prussian profiles . Ullstein, Berlin 1998, pp. 287-298. here p. 287 (the book was first published in 1980 by Athenäum-Verlag, Königstein / Taunus).
  18. Sebastian Haffner, Ernst Niekisch . In: ders. And Wolfgang Venohr : Prussian profiles . Ullstein, Berlin 1998, pp. 287-298. here p. 297.
  19. Pittwald, pp. 108 f., 157, 161, 176, 182 ff.
  20. Alexander Geljewitsch Dugin : The fourth political theory. Arktos, London 2013, p. 150.