Gertrud Alexander

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gertrud Alexander among others also: GGL Alexander or Gertrud GL Alexander or Gertrude Alexander , (born January 7, 1882 in Ruhla as Gertrud Mathilde Bertha Gaudin ; † March 22, 1967 in Moscow ) was a German-Soviet communist and politician as well as an author , publicist and Art critic .

Life and career

Gertrud Gaudin was born as the daughter of a doctor in Ruhla, Thuringia . She studied at the University in Jena , then at the art school in Eisenach and at the Royal Academy of Arts in Berlin . To finance her studies, she worked as a drawing teacher . Until 1908, drawing teacher in higher education.

In 1902 she met Eduard Ludwig Alexander (1881–1945), who was studying law at the time and later a. a. worked as a lawyer in Berlin from 1911 . In 1908 Gertrud Gaudin and Eduard Ludwig Alexander married in Berlin, they had two children, their eldest son Karl was born in 1912; the marriage ended in divorce in the 1920s.

She made the acquaintance of Clara Zetkin in 1907 and began her first journalistic work for the social democratic press ; Among other things, she wrote the series of articles The Prometheus saga in 1909 for the women's magazine Die Equality . As a married Gertrud Alexander she became a member of the SPD . During the First World War she worked illegally for the Spartakusbund, which her husband co-founded in 1917 . In 1919, like her husband , she became a member of the KPD , she headed the cultural work within the party's agitprop department and was responsible for the features section of the party's newspaper Die Rote Fahne . Between 1920 and 1925 she published around 160 articles; During this time she was considered the most important art and culture critic of the KPD. In the Kunstlump debate, she expressed her opinion clearly against John Heartfield and George Grosz ; her rejection of the Dadaist hostility towards art is also evident in her review of the premiere of the First Proletarian Theater in Berlin ( Erwin Piscator ) at the end of 1920. She published mostly under the pseudonyms "GGL Alexander" or "Gertrud GL Alexander" (alias "Gertrud Gaudin Ludwig Alexander"), also as GGL GG (G.) Ludwig , Gertruda Alexander , AL vs. Fr. Jerome Some of her writings are also under "Gertrude Alexander" archived or listed.

May 1923 in Geraberg / Thuringia : Gertrud Alexander (seated far right) on the Marxist work week

In 1923, Gertrud Alexander worked together with Hermann Duncker and Karl August Wittfogel to develop the “cultural-political emergency program of the KPD”. She took part with her husband and son Karl in the Marxist Work Week in preparation for the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research . In December 1925 she moved to the Soviet Union and came to Moscow, where she was accepted into the Comintern 's women's secretariat . In 1926 she became a member of the CPSU and was from 1931 to 1939 as an agent of the Central Administration for Literature (Gawlit) and as a political editor at the Moscow State Central Library and the Lenin Library .

During the Stalin Purges she was briefly detained in 1937 and evacuated from 1939 to 1944 . After 1945 she worked as a freelance translator and editor for the Soviet Information Office and the magazine Soviet literature .

Gertrud Alexander died in Moscow at the age of 85.

Publications (selection)

  • On the cultural front (memories). In: Contributions to the history of the labor movement. Vol. 22, No. 5, 1981, pp. 714ff.
  • Ugroza vojny i rabotnicy zapada . Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo, Moskva 1929. (Russian)
  • Mobilizing women. The imperialist threat of war and women . Hoym, Hamburg 1928.
  • From Clara Zetkin's life and work . Association Internat. Publishing company, Berlin 1927.
  • Fighting women . (=  Historical-materialistic studies. 1). New Dt. Publishing house, Berlin 1924.
  • The reconstruction of Russia must be promoted by the international proletariat. (= Workers Aid and Soviet Russia. 2). Berlin / Leipzig 1922.

From the Red Flag

  • Literature review. In: The Red Flag. 4, No. 264, June 13, and No. 265, June 14, 1921. Fähnders / Rector, No. 10, pp. 96-100.
  • On the question of the criticism of bourgeois art. In: The Red Flag. 4, No. 4, January 4, 1921. F / R, No. 9, pp. 95f.
  • With a comment by Julian Gumperz , Proletarisches Theater und "Opponent". In: The Red Flag. 3, No. 213, October 21, 1920. F / R, No. 42 and No. 43, pp. 211-213.
  • Proletarian theater. In: The Red Flag. 3, No. 210, October 17, 1020. F / R, No. 41, 208-211.
  • Dada. In: The Red Flag. 3, No. 139, July 25, 1920. F / R, No. 11, 100-102.
  • Art, vandalism and the proletariat. Reply. In: The Red Flag. 3, No. 111, June 23, and No. 112, June 24, 1920. F / R, No. 4, pp. 60-65.
  • Lord John Heartfield and George Grosz. In: The Red Flag. 3, No. 99, June 9, 1920. F / R No. 2, pp. 55-57.

literature

  • Michael Struss: The contribution of Gertrud Alexander's art criticism and propaganda to the aesthetic and cultural-political processes of understanding of the revolutionary German working class. Dissertation. Humboldt University, Berlin 1989.
  • B. Endler: "I'm in the political battle of the day," Gertrud Alexander. In: Contributions to the history of the labor movement. Vol. 23, N. 4, 1982, p. 588 ff.
  • Alexander, Gertrud. In: Lexicon of socialist German literature. Leipzig 1964, pp. 53-55.
  • Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German communists. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 ( bundesstiftung-aufendung.de ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e See information about Gertrud Alexander on www.ddr-biografien.de (see web links).
  2. ↑ Walter Fähnders, Martin Rector (ed.): Literature in the class struggle, on the proletarian-revolutionary literary theory 1919.1923. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1974 (Hanser, Munich 1971). Some of her essays are documented there (No. 2, 4, 9–11, 41, 43, with notes). Concerning her person, the brief note no. 2 p. 224f.
  3. ↑ Both children went to Moscow with Gertrude Alexander in 1925. The son Karl lives in Moscow. Michael Buckmiller , 1988, p. 152 u. 145, cited by Edler, 1982, p. 590.
  4. ↑ From the beginning of 1919 to 1925, feature editor of the Rote Fahne; since April 1923 employee of the education and propaganda department at the headquarters of the KPD; since 1925 in Moscow, until 1930 correspondent for the features section of the Rote Fahne. Michael Buckmiller, 1988, p. 152.
  5. ↑ See information about Gertrud Alexander. In: Theories and Organization of Proletarian Revolutionary Literature in the Weimar Republic 1919–1923. ( Memento from August 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ^ Walter Fähnders, Martin Rector (Ed.): Literature in the class struggle. 1974. For the Kunstlump debate of June 1920, see p. No. 1-5, pp. 47-66. For their debate with Julian Gumperz and the opponent about the Proletarian Theater in October, 1920, No. 41–43, pp. 208–213. Three of her Rote Fahne articles against Proletkult (1921), Expressionism (1921) and against Dada (1920), No. 9-11, pp. 95-102.
  7. ^ Institute for Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the SED, Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Central Committee: Contributions to the history of the workers' movement, issue 24 . Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1962, p. 591ff. Supplemented by Michael Buckmiller, The "Marxist Work Week" 1923 and the founding of the Institute for Social Research ". In: Willem van Reijen , G. Schmid Noerr (ed.): Grand Hotel Abgrund, Eine Photobiographie der Frankfurter Schule. Junius, Hamburg 1988, Pp. 141–182, the Alexander family on p. 142 (Eduard Ludwig), 145 (Karl), 151f. (Gertrud).
  8. ↑ As Weil, Korsch, Lukacs, Pollock, Wittfogel, Gumperz, Sorge u. v. a., in Thuringia, Pentecost, 1923. Michael Buckmiller in: Grand Hotel Abgrund
  9. ↑ Walter Fähnders, Martin Rector: Left radicalism and literature. Studies on the history of socialist literature in the Weimar Republic. 2 volumes. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1974. deal in the 1st volume with the Kunstlump Debate (pp. 100-107 and note 305, pp. 344f.) And their discussion with Lu Märten (p. 128f. And note 361, p. 348f.) . Further references are also available there
personal data
SURNAME Alexander, Gertrud
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gaudin, Gertrud Mathilde Bertha (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Soviet communist, politician, publicist, editor and cultural critic
DATE OF BIRTH January 7, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Ruhla
DATE OF DEATH March 22, 1967
Place of death Moscow