Hubert L'Hoste

Hubert L'Hoste (born October 1923 in Oberlinxweiler ; † August 1, 1959 in Simferopol ) was a young pioneer from the Saarland , who was sent to the Soviet Union as a flagship pioneer in the run-up to the Saar referendum in 1935 , where he temporarily ended up in Gulag camps and never returned to the country was allowed to leave. Two books about Hubert L'Hoste were published under the title Hubert in Wonderland - one for propaganda purposes by his quasi-adoptive mother Maria Osten in the Soviet Union (1935) and a documentary biography by the author and screenwriter Wolfgang Brenner (2012).

Childhood and family

As the second youngest of six children, Hubert L'Hoste grew up in a communist family. Johann L'Hoste , Hubert's father, was a railroad employee in the nearby district town of St. Wendel and was one of the exposed activists of the Saarland KPD . Just like the four older brothers Johann, Karl, Kurt and Roland, the second youngest son in the family also got involved early on with the Young Pioneers, the KPD's children's organization. Only the youngest child in the family, Anneliese, did not appear politically. Hubert's mother Maria was strongly inclined to Catholicism , but was loyal to her husband's political activities. The family was politically exposed in two ways: firstly because of the father's position within the Saar offshoot of the KPD founded in St. Ingbert in 1919 , and secondly because of the fact that Oberlinxweiler, although bordering on the mining and smelting region in the southern part of the country , already in the rural, conservative- Catholic north-east of the Saar area. Nevertheless Johann L'Hoste successfully ran for council level and sat at times as a deputy of the Saarland KPD in the League of Nations used Saarbrücken provincial government .

The Saar , a traditionally between France fought and Germany region was under control, according to the Versailles Treaty, the League of Nations to the Saar plebiscite 1935th In fact, the French determined the fate of the country. In 1923 the Saarland KPD took part in a 100-day strike against the mines exploited by the French state for reparation purposes. Until the 1930s, agitation against French imperialism was a central element of the party’s work. That changed when Hitler and the NSDAP seized power in Germany in 1933. The scheduled for January 1935 Saar plebiscite in which the people about the alternatives retaining the League of Nations mandate, union with France or with Germany should vote, was for two reasons a test case: first as an early opportunity to expansionist aspirations of the Nazi state Paroli to secondly as a practical test for the united front concept, which the Comintern propagated as a new strategy after the failure of the ultra-left course of the 1920s.

The polarization in supporters of the German Front (NSDAP, center , German national and conservative small parties) and supporters of the status quo ( SPD , KPD, dissidents from the center and bourgeois parties ) also had far-reaching consequences for the L'Hoste family. Social isolation, death threats and, in general, the question of one's personal future after the region would join Germany raised existential questions. These were contrasted by the commitment of numerous left and bourgeois activists who were committed to maintaining the status quo as part of the Saar vote. The Comintern activists Michail Kolzow and Maria Osten, who were quartered with the family in autumn 1933 , planned an unusual propaganda coup: Hubert should live as a model pioneer in the Soviet Union for a while, keep a diary during the trip and, as a living object of illustration, bear witness to the widespread, including at L'Hostes experienced poverty in the capitalist countries, the struggle against it and - as a counterpart - the social achievements in the Soviet Union. Partly out of political conviction, partly out of the motive to get at least one family member to safety, the family accepted the proposal.

Model pioneer from the Saar area (1934–1941)

In October 1933 Hubert L'Hoste traveled to Paris , from there with Maria Osten via Basel and Prague to Moscow . Together with the writers' association activist Osten and the journalist Mikhail Kolzow, who among others worked for Pravda , he lived in the house on the Moskva , a spacious residential complex near Gorky Park , in which numerous members of the nomenklatura as well as well-known intellectuals and others The pillars of the regime lived. In 1934 he started school at the German Polytechnic Work School Karl Liebknecht . At the same time, Maria Osten and Michail Kolzow worked on the propaganda marketing of Hubert L'Hoste's biography. As part of arranged meetings, the eleven-year-old met among others the popular equestrian general Budjonny and the Soviet Marshal Tukhachevsky . He also made the acquaintance of a well-known compatriot - the Merzig- born writer Gustav Regulator . The highlight of the biographical marketing was Maria Ost's publication Hubert im Wunderland, which was conceived as a book for young people . Days and Deeds of a German Pioneer, published in 1935 by Michail Kolzows Jurgaz-Verlag . Comintern chairman Georgi Dimitrov contributed the foreword to the book .

Despite or because of its temporary popularity (after Hubert appeared in Wunderland , a number of squares, streets and businesses were named after Hubert L'Hoste), the years before the outbreak of war were extremely changeable for Hubert. In addition to massive difficulties in settling in the new environment, conflicts due to his exposed status and a temporary tendency to over-fulfill the given role, there was the fact that Maria Osten and Mikhail Kolzow were increasingly involved in campaigns outside the Soviet Union. As a former employee of Malik Verlag , Maria Osten played an important interface role between Western writers in exile and the Comintern. To support the anti-fascist united front, she worked with Bertolt Brecht , Ernst Busch , Erich Weinert and Ludwig Marcuse , among others . In 1936 she persuaded Lion Feuchtwanger to go on his later highly controversial trip to the Soviet Union. With the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, Kolzow and Osten expanded their activities to Spain . In the Madrid Hotel Gaylord they met Ernest Hemingway , among others , who had both appear as minor characters in his novel Whom the Hour Strikes . For Hubert L'Hoste, Maria Ost's involvement in Spain also brought a change: In Spain, Maria Osten adopted the orphan boy Jusik, who also moved into the Moscow apartment.

Largely left to his own devices, the former star pioneer rebelled more and more against the demands that were made of him. L'Hoste's academic performance deteriorated increasingly. Michail Kolzow and Maria Osten had hardly been able to take care of Hubert because of their activities. As intellectuals, they were also increasingly drawn into the maelstrom of the Stalinist waves of purges at the end of the 1930s. Despite his own insider knowledge of the practices of the NKVD in Spain and the knowledge that Stalin generally mistrusted the Spanish fighters , Koltsov returned to the Soviet Union in October 1937. He was arrested in December 1938. After the arrest, L'Hoste and his partner, a student , took over the orphaned apartment. There was a final meeting with Maria Osten. Despite Koltsov's warning to follow him to the Soviet Union, Osten had returned there to help Koltsov. However, her foster son refused to allow her in as the wife of an "enemy of the people". East had to go to a hotel. East, meanwhile professionally and socially isolated and afflicted with the stigma of the "Compromiser", was expelled from the party a little later - at the instigation of Walter Ulbricht and Kurt Funk ( Herbert Wehner ), among others - and was probably shot as an alleged spy in September 1942. Kolzow was finally convicted and executed as a Trotskyist in February 1940 . Hubert L'Hoste, unsuccessful in school, has meanwhile completed an apprenticeship as an electrical mechanic through the mediation of Kolzow's brother, the cartoonist Boris Jefimow .

Descent (1941–1959)

With the beginning of the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Hubert L'Hoste's living conditions deteriorated drastically. On September 28, 1941, the Germans living in Moscow were forcibly relocated to the area around the Kazakh city ​​of Karaganda . Hubert L'Hoste hired himself out as a farm worker in a collective farm , where he - as an exile - was harassed by his superiors. In Karaganda there was, among other things, a meeting with Wolfgang Leonhard , another former youth from the Moscow residential complex. Some of the leadership cadre of the exiled KPD also made a stopover in Karaganda, including Walter Ulbricht. Despite public reprimands on the part of Ulbricht and the hard work, Hubert managed to build up a new perspective on life in the Kazakh steppe. Thanks to his craftsmanship, he got better work over time. Towards the end of the war he married the German- Russian Amelie. A little later his daughter Ella was born.

Contact with the family had been completely cut off since the beginning of the war. The L'Hostes had left the Saar area after the end of the Saar referendum. Initially, they stayed with relatives near Thionville . Conditions were catastrophic in the camps set up for the Saar refugees, a total of around 8,000 people. Many preferred to return to Germany because of the intolerable conditions. Many of those who stayed were considered stateless and were given the so-called Nansen pass from the League of Nations . The French government finally concentrated the majority of the Saar exiles near Bordeaux . After moving several times, the family settled in the small town of Charleville-Mézières in northern France on the border with Belgium . The three eldest sons served in the French army after the outbreak of World War II. Johann and Kurt were interned as prisoners of war in so-called Stalags . Kurt, the third son who fought in the French expeditionary force in Syria , ended up in the Dachau concentration camp after several stops . Roland, the youngest brother, was interned in Siegburg . Johann L'Hoste also passed through several German camps and was one of the survivors of the death march from the Flossenbürg concentration camp to Dachau in April 1945. There he met his second youngest son, Roland , who was dying due to a typhoid infection.

Despite the experiences, the family returned to Saarland after the war. Only Anneliese, who had meanwhile married, stayed in France. Efforts to find Hubert's whereabouts - among other things via the Red Cross tracing service and through submissions to the Politburo of the CPSU - initially remained unsuccessful. Coincidences and misunderstandings had meanwhile led to a dramatic deterioration in Hubert's life. He was sentenced to five years in a camp in 1946 for stealing company property and released as a broken man in 1951. After his release, Hubert L'Hoste had the idea of ​​returning to his Saarland family. His applications to leave the country were denied. A little later, L'Hoste was sentenced again to prison for unauthorized entry into a prisoner-of-war camp, this time to a normal prison term of five years, which he served with common criminals in a normal prison.

After his dismissal in 1956, which was already in the period of de-Stalinization , the state authorities tried to pacify the former model pioneer with individual concessions. Hubert L'Hoste received permission to move with his family to the Crimea , partly because of Boris Yefimov's intercession . Another concession was the long-awaited meeting with the mother, which took place in 1958. Hubert L'Hoste was meanwhile embittered and marked by his experiences, moreover, seriously ill. Due to undiscovered gallstones , he died in 1959 in the Simferopol District Hospital at the age of 35 from a ruptured appendix .

Hubert in wonderland

Hubert L'Hoste's biography has been described in two books with the same title. The first, written by Maria Osten, only appeared in Russian with the title “ Days and Deeds of a German Pioneer” . It is based on Hubert's notes immediately after his trip to the Soviet Union and was essentially used for Stalinist propaganda. Against Ost's intervention, parts of her book were finally broadcast on the German-Russian wave - a station that was received primarily by people critical of the regime in Germany. The director of Kolzows Verlag, presumably with the consent of Kolzow himself, disregarded Ost's concerns that the text was too childish and sudden for an adult audience. As the title of the book Hubert im Wunderland already suggests, Ost's book is a propaganda work that was supposed to portray the advantages of the Soviet Union in the brightest possible colors.

The history of L'Hostes was not an issue for the major publishers in Germany. The writer and screenwriter Wolfgang Brenner, who in his title Hubert im Wunderland , published in 2012, revisited the story of the young Saarland pioneer from Oberlinxweiler, stated in an interview that it was not easy to accommodate the material - which is why the book came from one regionally anchored publisher, the Saarbrücker Conte Verlag , had appeared. Brenner tells the story of Hubert L'Hoste and his family as not untypical for the era: as the story of individual individuals who got under the wheels of great world politics of the 20th century - and who made direct acquaintance with both National Socialism and Stalinism .

literature

• Maria Osten: Hubert in Wonderland. Days and deeds of a German pioneer. Youth book; Jurgaz Publishing House, Moscow 1935.
• Wolfgang Brenner: Hubert in Wonderland. From the Saar region to red Moscow. Conte Verlag, Saarbrücken 2012, ISBN 978-3941657380 .
• Ursula El-Akramy: Transit Moscow - Margarete Steffin and Maria Osten , European Publishing House , Hamburg 1998, ISBN 978-3434504467 .
• Wolfgang Leonhard : The revolution releases its children . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1955, 22nd edition: Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-462-03498-7 , new edition: Anaconda Verlag, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-86647-460-4 (multiple mentions of meetings with Hubert L ' Hoste, there as Hubert Loste )

Web links

• Hubert in wonderland. From the Saar region to red Moscow. . Book review by Michael Mentes, Saarbrücker Zeitung , June 26, 2012.
• Moving fate of children . Interview with Wolfgang Brenner in the Saarbrücker Zeitung, May 7, 2012.
• To the biography of Maria Ostens (PDF; 710 kB). Seminar paper on the seminar Dream and Trauma. The Soviet Union as a country of exile for German writers (1933–45) by Kirstin Engels. Accessed September 8, 2012.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolfgang Brenner: Hubert in Wonderland. From the Saar region to red Moscow. Conte Verlag, Saarbrücken 2012, ISBN 978-3941657380 ; Pp. 11/12 and 15 ff.
2. ↑ Brenner, Hubert im Wunderland, p. 15 ff.
3. ↑ Patrick von zur Mühlen: "Beat Hitler on the Saar!" Voting campaign, emigration and resistance in the Saar area 1933–1935. Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, Bonn 1979, ISBN 3-87831-308-X
4. ↑ Brenner, Hubert im Wunderland, p. 59 ff.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Brenner, Hubert im Wunderland, p. 72 ff.
6. ↑ Kirstin Engels. On the biography of Maria Ostens, Ruhr-Uni Bochum ( Memento of the original from December 1, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Dream and trauma. The Soviet Union as a country of exile for German writers (1933-45). (PDF file; 694 kB) 
7. ↑ Brenner, Hubert im Wunderland, p. 240 ff.
8. ↑ Lone wolf among wolves . Fritjof Meyer, Der Spiegel , March 29, 1993
9. ↑ Brenner, Hubert im Wunderland, p. 143 ff., P. 221 ff., P. 233 ff.
10. ↑ Brenner, Hubert im Wunderland, pp. 274 ff.
11. ↑ Brenner, Hubert im Wunderland, pp. 284 ff.
12. ↑ Wolfgang Brenner: "Hubert in Wonderland" ( Memento of the original from June 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Salli Sallmannsberg, Kulturradio of RBB , August 23 2012 
13. ↑ A moving child's fate  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Interview with Wolfgang Brenner in the Saarbrücker Zeitung, May 7, 2012.  
14. ↑ Hubert in Wonderland. From the Saar region to red Moscow.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Book review by Michael Mentes, Saarbrücker Zeitung , June 26, 2012