Günter Reimann

This article deals with the economist and journalist Günter Reimann, on the politician see Günther Reimann .

Günter Reimann (born November 13, 1904 in Angermünde as Hans Steinicke , † February 5, 2005 in New York ) was a German , Marxist- oriented economist and journalist .

Life

Steinicke was born as the son of a Jewish merchant family in the Uckermark . In Berlin he enthusiastically followed the November Revolution . He joined the Communist Youth Association , studied economics from 1923 and joined the KPD that year for conspiratorial reasons under the name Günter Reimann . He was one of the supporters of Rosa Luxemburg . From 1925 he held a leading position in the " Revolutionary Student Union ".

He became a graduate economist and businessman and wrote as an editor for (world) economic issues for the KPD central organ Rote Fahne . In 1930 he was replaced by Jürgen Kuczynski and traveled to the Soviet Union as a freelance writer, where he came to the conclusion that the Stalinist state socialism with recuperated industrialization based on the western model was not practicable.

When the Gestapo tried to arrest him in the summer of 1933, he fled to London via Prague , Vienna , Paris and Amsterdam (1937) . In 1936 he broke with the KPD and went to the USA in 1938. In 1939, Vanguard Press in New York published his book “The Vampire Economy”, written in Amsterdam, about the Nazi economy in Germany. From 1940 he worked at the International Statistical Bureau and wrote other books. His sister Margot died in Auschwitz concentration camp .

After the end of the war, he campaigned against the Morgenthau plan to de-industrialize Germany and for aid deliveries. He also kept in touch with his friend Herbert Wehner , who was stuck in Sweden. The letters appeared in 1998 under the title Between Two Epochs .

After the Second World War , he founded an agency in 1947 that published weekly International Reports on Finance and Currencies . The agency became an institution in the financial world that received its information from 50 offices and contributors around the world. It provided business owners, banks, and tax officials in the United States with statistics on financial markets. He sold the paper to the Financial Times publisher in 1981 .

On his 90th birthday, Reimann was the founder of the science award , which was awarded by the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Sachsen e. V. is awarded to students and young scientists every two years. On December 11, 2003, he was awarded the Cross of Merit, First Class . On February 19, 2004, this honor was presented to him by the German Consul General in New York, Uwe-Karsten Heye (SPD). With his life's work he has made a contribution to German-Jewish reconciliation.

He last lived in Manhasset , Long Island , New York State .

Works

• Günter Reimann, The Vampire Economy: Doing Business Under Fascism , Vanguard Press, New York City 1939
• Günter Reimann, The Myth of the Total State. Europe's Last Bid for World Rule , William Morrow, New York City 1941.
• Günter Reimann, Patents for Hitler , London 1943
• Günter Reimann, The Red Profit: Prices, Markets, Loans in the East. A report and critical examination of the revision of state socialism , F. Knapp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1968
• Günter Reimann, The Powerlessness of the Powerful: Capital and the World Crisis , Kiepenheuer, Leipzig 1993, ISBN 3-378-00528-9
• Günter Reimann, Berlin-Moscow 1932. The year of the decision , Edition Nautilus, Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-89401-222-6
• Günter Reimann, Herbert Wehner, Between Two Epochs. Letters 1946. Edited by Claus Baumgart and Manfred Neuhaus , Kiepenheuer, Leipzig 1998, ISBN 3-378-01029-0
• Günter Reimann, interim balance: a witness of the century is on record. Edited by Klaus Kinner and Manfred Neuhaus, Frankfurter Oder-Ed., 1994, ISBN 3-930842-04-1
• Günter Reimann, On political "purges" and "Stalinization". Michael Rudloff in conversation with Günter Reimann, in: Leipziger Hefte 1 / 95. Study series of the Leipzig Society for Politics and Contemporary History eV, Series A - Social thinking in the 19th and 20th centuries

Individual evidence

1. ^ [1] Vita and obituary of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Saxony, February 2005

See Science Prize of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Saxony

literature

• Diethart Kerbs : Lifelines. German biographies from the 20th century. With an afterword by Arno Klönne. Klartext-Verlag: Essen 2007. ISBN 978-3-89861-799-4 .
• Reimann, Günter . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Günter Reimann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Wolfgang Saxon: Guenter Reimann, Economic Publisher, Is Dead at 100 , obituary in the New York Times , April 4, 2005