Eugene Prager

Eugen Prager (born May 31, 1876 in Bosatz , Ratibor district , Silesia province ; † January 1942 in the Riga ghetto ) was a social democratic journalist. He worked for numerous newspapers and wrote a first history of the USPD .

Stumbling stone in memory of the Prager couple at Riemeisterstr 78 in Berlin-Zehlendorf

Early years

Prager grew up in Wroclaw , where his family ran a men's clothing store. The parental home was Jewish-liberal. He attended middle school and learned the trade of clerk . In addition to his job, he continued to educate himself self-taught. After his military service, he joined the free trade unions and the SPD . He belonged to the Central Association of Clerks in Germany and soon appeared frequently as a speaker and became chairman of the local group in Breslau. He also took an active part in discussions and party life in the local party. Among other things, he criticized the management of the local party newspaper Volkswacht . In doing so he supported Karl Kautsky's Marxist course .

He himself was now a freelancer for the paper and wrote mainly on cultural topics. In particular, he wrote numerous theater reviews. In 1905 he married Frieda Orcudesch from a wealthy religiously minded Jewish family in Hamburg. She advocated women's rights early on , asserted the family's ability to become a teacher, was close to Zionism and joined the SPD in Hamburg .

From Offenburg to Erfurt

In 1906 he moved to Offenburg as a full-time editor for the social democratic newspaper Abendblatt . His wife in particular was very politically active at the time and got to know Clara Zetkin and August Bebel personally. In 1907 he switched to the social democratic Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne . He took over the trade union, social affairs and court newspaper departments. In Cologne he was a member of the local party executive and the education committee. He worked closely with the unions in organizing cultural events. In 1911 he was sentenced to one month in prison for a press misdemeanor.

In the same year he became editor-in-chief of the tribune in Erfurt . His wife divorced him and during this time she lived in Berlin and graduated from high school. After that, he began to study medicine without graduating. For the separation from her husband, she indicated political differences of opinion. In Erfurt, Prager modernized the layout of the newspaper and increased the number of leading articles, most of which he wrote himself. Kautzky, who was highly valued by Prager, made contributions as well as the party links Rosa Luxemburg , Franz Mehring , Alexander Parvus , Paul Lensch and Julian Borchardt . The paper was relatively left-wing in the internal party disputes, criticized the centrist executive board and reform approaches in the party.

In the Erfurt SPD, Prager did not hold office as a board member, but took part in internal party discussions. He was much more involved in educational work. In 1911 he was elected chairman of the district education committee for Thuringia. Last but not least, he took care of educational work for women. He himself gave numerous lectures about party history, the press and other topics. Beyond the district, he sought further training for the editors of the party press. It did not have a great response.

Leipziger Volkszeitung

In April 1914, Prager moved to the Leipziger Volkszeitung as the second political editor and deputy editor-in-chief . This was one of the most important and largest party publications. It was the most important organ of the party left among the social democratic daily newspapers. Most of the leading articles were written by the editor-in-chief, Hans Block. Prager contributed about two editorials a week.

From the beginning the paper was hostile to the First World War . The Prager and Block were completely surprised by the approval of the war credits by the SPD parliamentary group. As a result, the newspaper advocated an annexless peace and relatively soon supported the inner-party opposition. As early as June 1914, Prager himself signed an appeal by Karl Liebknecht to the party executive and the Reichstag parliamentary group, in which protests were made against the truce policy . Prager and the editorial team largely followed Hugo Haase's opposition course .

In May 1915 he married Gertrud Friedländer. She came from a liberal Jewish family. The marriage had three children.

Because of its political orientation, the paper was banned several times. When the USPD was founded in 1917, Prager, like the entire Leipzig Social Democrats, converted to the new party. This made the People's Newspaper the unofficial party organ of the USPD. In order to get rid of an unpleasant critic, the authorities arranged for Prager to be drafted into the military. That time did not last long and by April 1918 he was again an editor. How he experienced the immediate revolution in November 1918 is unknown. In February 1919 he advocated the socialization of industry. During this time he was critical of the KPD.

The freedom

After the November Revolution, the USPD founded an official party organ called Freedom in Berlin. Prager became a member of the editorial team on May 1, 1919. During this time he was in close contact with the leading figures of the party and also participated in the formation of opinion through his articles. He was optimistic that there would soon be revolutionary developments in Western Europe as well and warned against joining the communist international unilaterally , since the conditions in agrarian Russia could not be a model for western countries. Alignment with Moscow would mean a split in the party. Since the party's press commission was dominated by supporters of affiliation with the Communist International, it ultimately tried in vain to remove Prager from his post.

After the split in the party, he was opposed to a possible collaboration with the KPD. In view of the referendum in Upper Silesia , his advocacy for German-Polish reconciliation was remarkable . After the communist-oriented wing split off, the editorial staff became increasingly convinced that the USPD no longer had a future as an independent force. At the beginning of 1922 she was largely alone in the party and the editors had to vacate their posts. Only a few months later, the position corresponded to the opinion of the whole party.

History of the USPD

As early as 1921 Prager had presented his book The History of the USPD . This work was published several times and reprinted in the early Federal Republic of Germany . Under the title The commandment of the hour. The history of the USPD was re-edited in 1980 and reissued with an introduction by Ossip K. Flechtheim . The work, actually a polemical pamphlet, plays an important role in research on the USPD. Much of the text deals with the internal party conflicts in the SPD before and after 1914. The debates after the outbreak of war are particularly detailed. The printing of documents that have not yet been compiled and printed in this way is what makes the book sustainable.

Forward and Parliamentary Rapporteur

After the USPD merged with the SPD, Prager worked for the forward . He was probably initially a freelancer from 1922. He also worked as a sales representative for a time. Dissatisfied with the leadership of Vorwärts by Friedrich Stampfer , Prager became secretary of the SPD parliamentary group in 1924. There he was also active as a journalist. In the beginning he was roughly the function of today's press officer. From 1925 he was editor of the parliamentary group and as such was responsible for the parliamentary reporting of the social democratic press service . The social democratic daily newspapers then printed Prager's reports from parliament.

In 1928 the previous late edition of Vorwärts was redesigned. Under the title The evening. The late edition of Vorwärts was supposed to be a modern newspaper especially for Berlin, which met the needs of the readers and was provided with numerous illustrations. It was an ambitious goal to be able to compete with other newspapers in street sales. Prager became the editor in charge, who also remained parliamentary rapporteur. One means of increasing sales was by reprinting serial novels. Prager started with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre by B. Traven . Significantly more reports on technology, sensations, everyday stories, criminal cases, films or sports were printed than in the usual party papers. The paper looked like a tabloid . Although the newspaper was ultimately unable to compete with other press products in street sales, the number of subscribers grew. During the Great Depression, however, the scope had to be restricted.

In addition to his professional activity, Prager has been involved in the Workers Press Association since 1912. In this he was secretary for a long time after the First World War. In 1929 he also became editor of the organ of the association. During this time the paper became more political and Prager initiated a debate on reforming the party press. He himself made various suggestions. Among other things, he pleaded for a quick topicality, for more pictures and the expansion of the more entertaining part including radio, film and sport.

Der Abend was heavily involved in the fight against National Socialism . Like the tabloid press, there were “revelations” about the donors of the NSDAP or about moral deficits of NS giants. Prager turned against National Socialism not only in Der Abend , but also in other ways. He published the pamphlet in 1932 Who Has Betrayed Us ? The KPD and DNVP were also criticized . Above all, however, it was directed against the NSDAP. He contrasted their empty promises with the achievements of the Weimar Republic . The NSDAP appeared as the vicarious agent of big business. The outward appearance of the brochure with a red cover, short texts and large headlines already differed from the usual party reports. It was printed and distributed in large numbers.

First years during the National Socialist rule

Eugen Prager was attending a meeting of the SPD parliamentary group in the Reichstag on January 30, 1933, when the news broke that Hitler had been appointed Chancellor. He may have acted as mediator in discussions between Friedrich Stampfer and representatives of the communists in the days that followed. After the fire in the Reichstag, it was clear to him that the government would use it to expand power. After the fire, his apartment was ransacked by the SA . As a result, Prager lost his professional existence. He also experienced firsthand the increasing exclusion of Jews from society. Despite his anti-Nazi brochure, he was spared direct political persecution in the years that followed. To survive he set up a press clipping office.

For foreign countries he published an intelligence service called the Blue Press . From a telephone booth he informed the social democratic exile press about what was going on in Germany at night. He also published his own articles under a pseudonym . These were possibly printed by the newspaper of the German Social Democratic Workers' Party of the Czechoslovak Republic in Karlsbad .

He also kept in contact with former party friends. There were relationships with Otto Brass and the German Popular Front . The Prager couple started emigrating their children early on. These came to Palestine in the mid-1930s . Prager himself turned more to Judaism, wrote for Jewish newspapers until it was banned, and was involved in Jewish welfare organizations. Jewish festivals and rituals such as visiting the synagogue also became more important to him.

Unsuccessful emigration efforts and murder

In 1937 he traveled to Palestine with the children. He was very impressed by life in the kibbutz . He also explored possibilities for his own emigration. After returning to Berlin, living conditions for Prague citizens deteriorated significantly. For lack of money, the couple had to make do with a furnished room in 1938. In the following years he probably had to rely on support from Jewish aid organizations. An emigration led by the children failed due to mistakes made by the mandate authorities in Palestine. With the beginning of the Second World War , emigration was hardly possible. Friends tried to make emigration possible in 1940 and 1941. In January 1942 he was deported to the Riga ghetto. Immediately after their arrival, they were murdered in a forest near Riga .

literature

• Ilse Fischer, Rüdiger Zimmermann : “Dressing our longing in words”. Eugen Prager (1876–1942). The life path of a social democratic journalist. Historical research center of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Bonn 2005, ISBN 3-89892-417-3 online version (PDF; 5.1 MB).

Web links

• Collection of Prager's contributions in the digital library of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung
• Literature by and about Eugen Prager in the catalog of the German National Library