Fritz Groß (journalist)

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Fritz Groß (pseudonyms: FG ; Peter Michael ; John Sorg ; born March 20, 1897 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary , † October 7, 1946 in London ) was an Austro-German editor and writer.

Life

Big was the son of a jeweler. In 1914 he joined the socialist youth workers. Great was a soldier in the First World War. In 1918 he joined the Red Guard in Vienna. In the same year he moved to Berlin, where he became a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1919 .

In 1919, Groß began studying economics in Heidelberg . Due to his political activities, he was expelled the following year. He then worked as an editor for the magazines Freiheit und Republik in Berlin, before settling as a bookseller in Frankfurt in 1921 . In the following years he made his way through different professions in Remscheid , Düsseldorf and Vienna before moving back to Berlin in 1925, where he worked as an editor for the communist newspaper Welt am Abend . In 1928 he moved to Hamburg , where he lived in Magda Hoppstock-Huth's house.

Groß began his writing career in 1917 with the publication of the cycle of poems Recitations . In 1926 the font Lenin, Liebknecht, Luxemburg followed and in 1932 the collection of poems Funksprüche .

In 1932, Groß was expelled from the KPD.

After the handover of power to the National Socialists in the spring of 1933, Groß went to Great Britain , where he worked for various newspapers such as the Spectator . He also ran a lending library for refugees in London.

After his emigration, Gross was classified as an enemy of the state by the National Socialist police forces: In the spring of 1940, the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a directory of people whom the Nazi surveillance apparatus regarded as particularly dangerous or important, which is why they should be successful if they were successful Invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht should be located and arrested by the occupying troops following SS special commandos with special priority.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, Groß was interned as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man in 1940, as he was still formally a German citizen and thus a member of an enemy power .

Since 1941, Groß worked on the magazine Contemporary Review and on the BBC's Austria program. Politically, he belonged to the club in 1943 .

family

From 1921 to 1925, Groß was married to Babette Gross, the future wife of Willi Münzenberg . Their son Peter Gross (1923–2016) grew up with their grandparents in Potsdam and got to England on a children's transport .

Fonts

  • Georg Buechner. Stations in a Life , 1919.
  • Brothers 1919.
  • Lenin, Liebknecht, Luxembourg , 1926.
  • Radio messages 1932.

literature

  • German Biographical Encyclopedia , Vol. 4: Görres-Hittorp . Munich 2006, p. 175.
  • Jan Zimmermann: Hope despite skepticism. On the life and work of the writer Fritz Gross (1897–1946) . In: Archive for the history of resistance and work , vol. 15 (1998), pp. 233-256.
  • Charmian Brinson , Marian Malet: Fritz Gross: An Exile in England . In: German Life and Letters. July 1996, Blackwell

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry for large on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London) .
  2. ^ Catherine Gross: In Memoriam Peter Gross [1923-2016] . In: New newsletter from the Society for Exile Research, No. 48, December 2016
personal data
SURNAME Great, Fritz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES FG; Peter Michael (pseudonym); John Sorg (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German editor and writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH October 7, 1946
Place of death London