International Socialist Combat League

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The International Socialist Combat League (ISK) was a socialist split from the SPD during the Weimar Republic and was active in the resistance against National Socialism . Internationally, the organization appeared under the names Militant Socialist International (MSI), Internationale Militante Socialiste and Internacio de Socialista Kunbatalo .

history

Since 1925 the ISK has been the political and organizational platform of a group around the Göttingen philosopher Leonard Nelson and his colleague Minna Specht . Nelson and Specht founded a forerunner organization under the name International Socialist Youth Association (ISJ / IJB) in 1917 with the support of Albert Einstein . Leonard Nelson - philosophically attributed to Neo-Kantianism - wanted to have a political impact as a university lecturer early on, beyond the university. He was the representative of an ethically motivated, anti-clerical as well as anti-Marxist, but also undemocratically oriented socialism , which also included a strictly mandatory animal welfare and vegetarianism . Nelson decided to found the ISK after members of the ISJ had been expelled from both the KPD in 1922 and, finally, from the SPD in 1925 .

For public relations work, the ISK had taken over the publishing house “Public Life” from the ISJ, in which the “ isk - Bulletin of the International Socialist Struggle Federation ” appeared from January 1, 1926 . (From January 1929 an edition was published in Esperanto , and from April of the same year a small edition in English was published every quarter.) The paper usually had a length of eight pages and an average of 5000 to 6000 copies. - In addition, the main works of Nelson were published in the publishing house, his philosophical-political series of publications “ Public Life ” as well as his 1904 with the mathematician Gerhard Hessenberg and the physiologist Karl Kaiser re-established “ Abhandlungen der Fries ' school, New Series ”, which after the Nelson's death until 1937 could be continued by the Nobel Prize for Medicine Otto Meyerhof , the sociologist Franz Oppenheimer and Minna Specht.

Adhesive note of the International Socialist Combat League 1932

In view of the increasing electoral success of the National Socialists in the late phase of the Weimar Republic, the ISK also became publicly active with the founding of the daily newspaper Der Funke , which was headed by Willi Eichler . Noteworthy is his urgent appeal for the Reichstag election of July 1932 , which was widely posted in Berlin and called for “the merging of the SPD and KPD for this election campaign”. It was signed by Käthe Kollwitz , the writers Kurt Hiller , Erich Kästner , Heinrich Mann , Ernst Toller and Arnold Zweig as well as the scientists Albert Einstein , Franz Oppenheimer , Emil Gumbel and Arthur Kronfeld .

After the ban by the National Socialists in 1933, the ISK continued to work in the resistance. However, as early as 1931, the ISK stopped its "cadre training" for young adults in order to fight against the growing fascism. Better prepared (e.g. by destroying all written party records) and more tightly organized than the larger parties SPD and KPD, which are now also illegal, the ISK was able to maintain its resistance work (expulsion of political refugees, technical sabotage, distribution of leaflets, etc.) until 1938 when a number of ISK members were arrested in a wave of arrests. Among them was Rudi Höll , ISK activist and supporter of Silvio Gesell's free economy . He had last worked underground in Munich and committed suicide shortly after his arrest. His wife Marianne, nee Timm, was imprisoned a short time later and sentenced to two years in prison as a "confidante". One focus of the ISK's illegal work was the attempt to establish a clandestine union , the Independent Socialist Union (USG), with the support of the International Transport Workers' Federation . The sabotage of the inauguration of the Reichsautobahn in 1935 became the most famous resistance action of the ISK. On the night before Hitler's inauguration drive, ISK activists posted anti-Nazi slogans on all bridges. The Nazi propaganda film for the inauguration act therefore had to be cut in numerous places in order not to distribute it.

In exile, the ISK published the journals Reinhart-Briefe and Sozialistische Warte , which were smuggled to Germany and were also valued by other organizations of the resistance because of their factual and non-polemical reporting . Associated with the ISK were the Socialist Vanguard Group in England and Internationale Militante Socialiste in France.

ISK members after 1945

After the Second World War, the ISK was no longer run as an organization and dissolved on December 10, 1945 after exploratory talks between Willi Eichler and the SPD chairman Kurt Schumacher ; most of its former members joined the SPD.

A prominent member of the ISK was the later deputy federal chairman of the working group of formerly persecuted social democrats and SPD city councilors in Frankfurt am Main Ludwig Gehm . After resistance activities in France (where she worked in an ISK group in Paris), Nora Platiel (nee Block) came to Kassel in 1949, where she rejoined the SPD and worked as a district judge. The longtime ISK chairman Willi Eichler represented the SPD from 1949 to 1953 in the Bundestag and is considered one of the main authors of the Godesberg Program , Alfred Kubel was a longtime member of the Lower Saxony government - 1970-1976 as prime minister, the Hamburg ISK Member Hellmut Kalbitzer was Several times a member of the Bundestag, the Hamburg Parliament and from 1958 to 1962 Vice President of the European Parliament . Fritz Eberhard , who belonged to the ISK until 1939, was a member of the Parliamentary Council and played a leading role in the establishment of the right to conscientious objection in the Basic Law . Other well-known members are the publicist Hilde Meisel , the historian Susanne Miller , the physicist and educator Grete Hermann , the SPD politician Anna Beyer and the educator Erna Blencke .

The follow-up projects of the ISK include the magazine Geist und Tat - monthly for law, freedom and culture , published by Willi Eichler from 1946 to 1971, and the European Publishing House until the 1960s .

structure

The ISK never wanted to attract a large number of members, but rather to organize as active and powerful as possible, which benefited the resistance work from 1933 onwards. In contrast to large parties, there were numerous hurdles that made joining the ISK more difficult:

  • Participation in the trade union, ISK / IJB and the labor movement in general was compulsory for members; there was no passive membership option.
  • In place of a membership fee, there was a so-called party tax, which amounted to all (!) Income of the member in excess of 150 Reichsmarks.
  • Even the way of life was based on high ideals from the area of ​​ethical socialism: no nicotine , no alcohol , mandatory punctuality and order, even leaving the church was a condition for membership because of the anti-clerical attitude of the organization. Since the ISK demanded animal rights , vegetarianism was demanded.

The ISK never had more than 300 members, probably also because of the strict requirements for those wishing to join. These were organized in 32 local associations. However, the ISK had several times as many (1933 between 600 and 1000) as close sympathizers involved in political work. 85 percent of ISK members were under 35 when a 1929 survey was carried out.

Chair of the ISK (until 1925 IJB):

From 1924 to 1933, the ISK (or its forerunner IJB) maintained the Walkemühle rural education home in Adelshausen near Melsungen in Hesse , and the party's own daily newspaper appeared from 1931 to 1933The spark , which was also banned by the National Socialists. The activities of the ISK within the fulling mill are now well documented.

See also

literature

  • Jan Foitzik: Between the fronts. On the politics, organization and function of left-wing political small organizations in the resistance 1933 to 1939/40 , Bonn 1986, ISBN 3878314396 .
  • Hellmut Kalbitzer : Resist and help shape. A lateral thinker remembers. Edited by Christiane Rix with the assistance of Thomas John. The New Society, Hamburg 1997
  • Karl-Heinz Klär: Two Nelson federations: Internationaler Jugend-Bund (IJB) and Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampf-Bund (ISK) in the light of new sources. In: International scientific correspondence on the history of the German labor movement . Vol. 18, H. 3, 1982, pp. 310-360
  • Sabine Lemke-Müller: Ethical socialism and social democracy. Willi Eichler's political path from ISK to SPD (= Political and Social History series. Vol. 19). Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, Bonn 1988 ISBN 3-87831-459-0 (Also: Marburg, University, dissertation, 1986)
  • Sabine Lemke-Müller: Ethics of Resistance. The struggle of the International Socialist League (ISK) against National Socialism. Sources and texts on resistance from the labor movement 1933–1945. Dietz, Bonn 1996 ISBN 3-8012-4076-2
  • Heiner Lindner: "In order to achieve something, you have to take on something that you think is impossible". The International Socialist Combat League (ISK) and its publications (= Series History Discussion Group. H. 64). Historical Research Center, Bonn 2006 ISBN 3-89892-450-5
  • Werner Link : The history of the International Youth Association (IJB) and the International Socialist Fighting Association (ISK). A contribution to the history of the labor movement in the Weimar Republic and in the Third Reich (= Marburg treatises on political science. Vol. 1, ISSN  0542-6480 ). Hain, Meisenheim am Glan 1964, (At the same time: Marburg, University, dissertation, 1961)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Hildegard Feidel-Mertz: Adult Education in National Socialism In: Handbuch Adult Education / Further Education P. 45 .
  2. ↑ Wera Wendnagel: Marianne's legacy or how my mother bequeathed the free economy to me. Helmer, Sulzbach (Taunus) 2010, ISBN 978-3-89741-304-7 , pp. 56-64.
  3. ↑ Nelson demanded: “A worker who does not just want to be a 'hindered capitalist' and who is serious about the fight against all exploitation, who does not bow to the contemptible habit of exploiting harmless animals, who does not take part in everyday life Millions of Murder ”(quoted from: Matthias Rude: Antispeziesismus. The liberation of humans and animals in the animal rights movement and the left. Schmetterling-Verlag, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-89657-670-5 , p. 129).
  4. ^ Walkemühle rural education home in Adelshausen near Melsungen