Erwin Scharf (politician)

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Erwin Scharf (born August 29, 1914 in Wittingau , Bohemia; † September 6, 1994 in Vienna ) was a resistance fighter , political journalist , author and Marxist politician of the SPÖ , the SAP and later the KPÖ .

Life

Erwin Scharf, a journalist by profession, was a functionary of the illegal Revolutionary Socialists from 1934 to 1938 . Scharf was imprisoned from 1938 to 1940 and joined the Slovenian partisans during World War II .

From 1945 to 1948 Scharf was SPÖ central secretary. In 1948, at the beginning of the Cold War , tensions arose in the SPÖ because of his advocacy for closer cooperation with the KPÖ, and the party executive imposed a ban on him from speaking. During this time his first and probably best-known publication falls under the title "I must not be silent: three years of politics of the party executive of the SPÖ - seen from the inside" . This brochure, with Scharf's criticism of the legal development and the coalition spirit of the post-war SPÖ, his conviction that overcoming capitalism requires a community of action with the communists, led to his expulsion from the party by an arbitration tribunal, which was confirmed by the party executive on October 30, 1948 .

As a result, Scharf founded the Left Socialist Party , which in 1949 ran on a joint list with the Communists, the KPÖ. In 1956 the Left Socialists joined the KPÖ as a whole and subsequently disbanded as an independent party organization. From 1945 to 1953 Erwin Scharf was a member of the National Council . From 1957 to 1965 Scharf was Erwin Zucker-Schilling's successor in the function of editor-in-chief of Volksstimme , the daily central body of the KPÖ. Erwin Scharf was a member of the Central Committee of the KPÖ from 1957 to 1990 and thus for more than 10 party convention periods . From 1957 to 1987 (until the 26th party congress) he was also a member of the Politburo .

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In the so-called party crisis from 1968 to 1970, Erwin Scharf wrote, among other things, in the party-internal pamphlet Neue Politik .

After the 28th party congress of the KPÖ (1991 in Graz), Erwin Scharf and Ernst Wimmer , leading theoretician of the KPÖ, vehemently opposed the revisionist course of the new party leadership. From October 1992 until shortly before his death, Erwin Scharf was probably the most well-known proponent as well as an active author of numerous articles and political advisor for the party-internal publication Neue Volksstimme . The Neue Volksstimme was a polemic and the ultimately failed attempt to organize the communist forces in the KPÖ against the existing party leadership after the 28th party congress in order to enforce a political-ideological change of course based on scientific socialism . With his openly declared support for this attempt, Erwin Scharf repeatedly positioned himself in the last years of his life and for the third time in his life (SPÖ, KPÖ party crisis 1968–1970) as a consistent Marxist for high-profile class politics.

He was buried in the cemetery of the Simmering fire hall (section E19, number 548).

Works

  • I must not be silent: three years of politics by the SPÖ party executive - seen from the inside , self-published in 1948
  • For a socialist policy, For the first congress of the Socialist Workers' Party (Left Socialists) , Vienna 1950
  • Praise to ideology: Don't adapt Marxism but develop it further , Berlin 1968
  • I dared with my senses: Decisions in the anti-fascist resistance, experiences in the political confrontation , Vienna 1988

literature

  • Maria Sporrer (Ed.): Erwin Scharf: Zeitzeuge , Vienna 1984
  • Fritz Weber: The Cold War in the SPÖ. Coalition guard, pragmatist and revolutionary socialists 1945–1950 , Vienna 1986.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Sharp, Erwin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian politician (SPÖ, KPÖ), member of the National Council
DATE OF BIRTH August 29, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Wittingau
DATE OF DEATH September 6, 1994
Place of death Vienna