Heinz Neumann (politician)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Heinz Neumann , also Heinz-Werner Neumann (born July 6, 1902 in Berlin , † November 26, 1937 in the Soviet Union ) was a German politician ( KPD ) and journalist . He was a KPD representative at the Comintern , editor-in-chief of the party newspaper Die Rote Fahne and a member of the Reichstag .

Life

Coming from a middle-class family, Heinz Neumann came into contact with Marxist ideas while studying philology and was accepted into the KPD by then Secretary General Ernst Reuter in 1920 , where he was initially supported by August Thalheimer . From 1921 Neumann wrote leading articles for various KPD newspapers and became editor of the Rote Fahne in 1922 after giving up his studies . During a six-month stay in prison he learned Russian, so that at the end of 1922, during a trip to the Soviet Union , he was able to speak with Soviet party officials, including Stalin , with whom Neumann worked closely from now until 1932, without an interpreter.

Initially belonging to the left wing around Ruth Fischer in the KPD , he allied himself in 1923 with Arthur Ewert and Gerhart Eisler and became political leader in the Mecklenburg party district. After the Hamburg uprising , Neumann fled to Vienna in 1924 and was expelled from there to the Soviet Union in 1925, where he replaced Iwan Katz as KPD representative at the Comintern in the same year . From Moscow Neumann played an important role until 1927 in the process known as "Bolshevization" and in the replacement of Ruth Fischer and Arkadi Maslow from the party leadership, which brought the KPD under Stalin's control and brought him into the party's Central Committee. From July to December 1927 he represented the Comintern in China. With the Georgian communist Bessarion Lominadze he organized the uprising in Guangzhou on December 11, 1927, in which around 25,000 communists were killed.

In 1928 Neumann returned to Germany and since the elimination of the " Compromisers " in the context of the Wittorf affair, alongside Ernst Thälmann and Hermann Remmele, he was the most important politician of the KPD. During this phase he was considered the party's most important theorist and became editor-in-chief of the Rote Fahne . As the “chief ideologist” Neumann was in charge of the ultra-left line ( RGO and social fascism policy ) of the party, but at the same time advocated a decisive fight against the National Socialists and coined the KPD's formula “Beat the fascists, where you meet them! ”Kurt Tucholsky rewrote this formula in his poem Rosen auf den Weg as:“ Kiss the fascists wherever you meet them. ”

Elected to the Reichstag in 1930 , Neumann developed differences with Stalin and Thälmann from 1931 onwards, as they underestimated the danger of the NSDAP coming to power from his point of view. In the following factional disputes he was defeated in April 1932 and was released from his functions in October 1932 and also lost his seat in the Reichstag in November 1932 .

From August 1931, he was next to Hans Kippenberger as a major client of the police killings at the Berlin Bülowplatz , since September 1933 he was therefore a warrant searched. His partner Margarete Buber-Neumann denies that Neumann was involved in these political murders: "Heinz Neumann was an opponent of individual terror, had nothing to do with the KPD's apparatus of terror".

Initially transferred to Spain as Cominternemissary and after his expatriation from Germany in August 1933, Neumann was on the German Reich's first expatriation list from 1933 . Living illegally in Switzerland, he had to practice self-criticism in January 1934 . He was accused of trying to split the party together with Remmele. Arrested by the Swiss immigration police in Zurich at the end of 1934, he was imprisoned there for six months and in 1935 expelled to the Soviet Union. Here he fell into the Great Terror and was arrested on April 27, 1937 as part of the German operation of the NKVD and sentenced to death by the military college of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union on November 26, 1937 and shot on the same day.

Margarete Buber-Neumann was Heinz Neumann's partner from the summer of 1929. After his disappearance, she was also arrested and extradited to National Socialist Germany in 1940 by Soviet authorities . In the first part of her autobiography, she reports about her years with Heinz Neumann, about their time together in Berlin, the Soviet Union, Spain, Switzerland and finally back in Moscow and about Neumann's departure from Stalinism.

Publications

  • The patriotic murderers of Germany. Bavaria in the little Entente. The result of the Munich high treason trial. Berlin 1923 (together with Karl Frank ).
  • Maslow's offensive against Leninism. Critical remarks on the party discussion. Hamburg 1925.
  • What is Bolshevization? Hamburg 1925.
  • Ultra-left Menshevism. Berlin 1926.
  • JW Stalin. Hamburg 1930.
  • Through red unity to power. Heinz Neumann's settlement with the politics of the social democratic party executive. Berlin 1931.
  • Prestes , the freedom hero of Brazil. Moscow 1936.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Michael Hepp (ed.): The expatriation of German citizens 1933–45 according to the lists published in the Reichsanzeiger . tape 1 : Lists in chronological order. De Gruyter Saur, Munich 1985, ISBN 978-3-11-095062-5 , pp. 3 (reprinted 2010).
  2. ↑ Kiss the fascists . In: Der Spiegel . No. 8 , 1956 ( online ).
  3. ^ Google Books
  4. ^ Margarete Buber-Neumann : From Potsdam to Moscow. Stations on a wrong path . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1985, p. 245, cf. P. 246 f.
  5. ^ Margarete Buber-Neumann : From Potsdam to Moscow. Stations on a wrong path . Frankfurt am Main 1985, pp. 149-444.
personal data
SURNAME Neumann, Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (KPD), MdR and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH July 6, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 26, 1937
Place of death Soviet Union