George Eliasberg

John "George" (Georg) Eliasberg (born January 31, 1906 in Wiesbaden , † September 12, 1972 in Berlin ) was a German journalist .

Life

The son of the businessman Leopold Eliasberg and his wife Fanny, b. Halpern lived in Libau ( Courland ) until 1914 and in Saint Petersburg from 1914 to 1917 , where he attended the Preobrazhenskaya School . In 1917/18 he switched to the high school in Yalta ( Crimea ). From January 1919, he lived in Hamburg , where he attended the 1925 Thaer - Oberrealschule the matriculation examination took off. In 1925 he began studying natural sciences , philosophy and history in Hamburg . From 1926 to the winter semester of 1931/32 he studied at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin . In 1933 he received his doctorate on polynuclear complexes of metal thiosulfates and sulfites in chemistry .

Already in Hamburg Eliasberg made contact with the International Socialist Combat League . While studying in Berlin in 1926 he joined the “Socialist Student Group”, then the “Red Student Group” and the KPD . Together with Richard Löwenthal and Franz Borkenau he belonged to the Reich leadership of the Communist student faction ( Kostufra ). All three were expelled from the KPD at the end of 1929 as “deviants” because they had criticized the communist line of fighting social democracy as “ social fascists ”. They made contact with the Leninist Organization (ORG) called the circle of critical social democrats and communists, which became known as the group Neubeginnen during National Socialism . When the Neu Beginnen group went illegally after the National Socialist seizure of power , Eliasberg took on a leading position and from 1935 took over the group's domestic management.

In the course of a wave of arrests, Eliasberg was arrested in the summer of 1935 and charged with “preparing for high treason”. On September 8, 1936, he became the four years and six months ' imprisonment convicted, he in the prisons Brandenburg-Gorden and Waldheim was serving. His doctorate was revoked. After his release from prison in 1940 he was expelled as an "enemy alien" and finally emigrated to the USA in 1941 via Genoa and the Dominican Republic . Here he worked for Karl Frank until the end of the war , for the American intelligence service OSS and under the pseudonym Stefan Weyl as a commentator for the German broadcasts of the station “ Voice of America ”. He also published on the German resistance movement .

After the end of the war, Eliasberg resumed contact with comrades-in-arms from the resistance movement, who, like Fritz Erler and Kurt Mattick, were now involved in post-war social democracy . In 1947 Eliasberg took on the American citizenship and from 1949 worked again for the "Voice of America". He became the New York correspondent for the Neue Zeitung (Munich) and was news editor from 1953 to 1960. From 1963 he worked at RIAS Berlin.

In the mid-1960s, Eliasberg finally returned to Germany. The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung initially hired him as the director of studies at a folk high school. In consideration of his poor health, he was employed as a research assistant for the foundation from 1968. Eliasberg last dealt with the history of the " Ruhr War " until his death .

Fonts

• About polynuclear complexes of metal thiosulfates and sulfites ... , Ohlau i. Schl 1933.
• Historical foundations of the Communist International. (the dream of the world revolution); the socialist legacy of the West, the revolutionary legacy of the East. SPD, Berlin 1949.
• Marxism's hostile children. Leninism and socialism. H. Regnery Co., Hinsdale, Ill 1949.
• The Ruhr War of 1920. New Society, Bonn-Bad Godesberg 1974, ISBN 3-87831-148-6 .
• and Jon B. Jansen: The silent war. The underground movement in Germany. 1st edition. Lippincott, Philadelphia 1943.

literature

• Jan Foitzik: Two documents from the underground. Paul Sering [di Richard Löwenthal]: (draft) for criticism of the organization. [May / June 1935] and [Stefan] Neuberg [di Georg Eliasberg]: History of the organization. June 1935. In: IWK: international scientific correspondence on the history of the German workers' movement. 21, No. 2 1985, pp. 142-182.
• Committed to freedom. Memorial book of the German social democracy in the 20th century. Schüren, Marburg 2000, ISBN 978-3-89472-173-2 .
• Richard Löwenthal: Introduction . In: Der Ruhrkrieg von 1920. Verl. Neue Gesellschaft, Bonn-Bad Godesberg 1974, ISBN 3-87831-148-6 , pp. IX – XXI.
• Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 , pp. 222 .
• Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945. Edited by the Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem. Saur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 .

Web links

• Biographical information from the Handbook of the German Communists
• Georg Eliasberg's estate in the Archive of Social Democracy, Bonn