Jürgen Kuczynski

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Jürgen Kuczynski (1997)
Memorial plaque in Jürgen-Kuczynski-Park, Berlin-Weißensee

Jürgen Kuczynski (born September 17, 1904 in Elberfeld (now Wuppertal ), † August 6, 1997 in Berlin ) was a German economic historian and economist .

Life

Jürgen Kuczynski was born as one of six children of the statistician Robert René Kuczynski and the painter Bertha Kuczynski , b. Gradenwitz was born into a wealthy Jewish family. He studied philosophy, statistics and political economy in Erlangen , Berlin and Heidelberg and was a research student in the USA from 1926. In 1929 he returned to Germany and from then on lived in Berlin. He had been a KPD member since 1930 . He was editor of the Rote Fahne and created economic policy analyzes.

In 1936, Kuczynski left Nazi Germany and went into exile in England. There he was recruited as a statistician by the US secret service Office of Strategic Services (OSS). After the outbreak of the Second World War , like many other emigrants, he was interned as an undesirable foreigner .

Kuczynski managed to win the nuclear physicist Klaus Fuchs for the Soviet military intelligence service GRU . His sister Ruth Werner became its command officer.

In June 1943, Kuczynski founded the initiative committee for the unity of German emigration in London , which led to the establishment of the Free German Movement in Great Britain on September 25, 1943 . Until the summer of 1944 he was a member of the management of the KPD emigrant organization in Great Britain, then he was removed from this position after a dispute with Kurt Hager . He also worked for the German freedom broadcaster 29.8 .

In late 1944 he prepared analyzes of the economic effects of the Allied bombing for the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS).

Kuczynski returned to Germany as a US lieutenant colonel on behalf of the USSBS in 1945 to secure important documents of German arms production. In Heidelberg he personally arrested the IG Farben boss Hermann Schmitz .

In 1945 he became President of the Central Finance Administration in the Soviet Occupation Zone . In 1946 he became a member of the SED . In the same year he was appointed to the chair for economic history at Berlin University and until 1956 headed the institute for economic history there. On June 30, 1947 he was elected first chairman of the Society for the Study of Culture of the Soviet Union (forerunner of the Society for German-Soviet Friendship DSF). In 1950, the ongoing anti-Semitic campaign in the Stalinist Soviet Union resulted in Kuczynski's removal from this position. From 1949 to 1958 he was a member of the People's Chamber .

At the same time he was one of the most prominent and productive scientists in the GDR . In 1955 he was the founder and head of the economic history department at the Institute for History of the Academy of Sciences and the Institute for Economic History, which was then tailored to his needs.

On March 19, 1964, Kuczynski appeared as an expert witness to the joint plaintiff Friedrich Karl Kaul in the first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial . In his historical report, Kuczynski analyzed the “interdependence of security police and economic interests in the establishment and operation of the Auschwitz concentration camp” between IG Farbenindustrie and the SS - and fuel plant in Europe, the SS camp commandant financially and through building material contingents supported the expansion of the concentration camp and in return received prisoners for the expansion of the plant.

On the 28th day of the trial, March 19, 1964, Kuczynski appeared before the Frankfurt jury court to present his report. Since his final appointment as an expert was the responsibility of the court, an intensive selection and job interview took place, which was conducted by the additional judge, District Judge Hummerich. Since it turned out beyond doubt that Kuczynski's scientific method determined Marxist-Leninist, he himself was a member of the SED and an avowed communist, the defense took this as an opportunity to reject Kuczynski as an expert because of concerns about bias. Defense lawyer Laternser's justification was that a "professor paid by the Soviet occupation zone" had to be bound by the "principles of the communist SED" and therefore could not be independent; However, independence is a basic requirement for the appointment as a court expert. This rejection request did not go unchallenged, apart from the intervention of Kaul, both the public prosecutor and another defense lawyer, lawyer Schallock, opposed the rejection request. According to this, the selection of the expert in a German court should not be based on previous "opinion snooping", but solely on the basis of the professional suitability and the quality of the expert opinion. The jury agreed with this view and rejected the request for rejection. Kuczynski was therefore able to present his report. However, this had considerable substantive deficiencies, which Kuczynski had to admit: he had knowingly not listed and not used certain statements by former employees of IG Farben in order to reach his expert conclusions. After ascertaining this fact, the defense - unanimously - rejected Kuczynski as an expert because of concerns about bias. This second rejection request was successful and only then was Kuczynski dismissed as an expert because of demonstrable errors and lack of independence.

As a professor emeritus in 1968, he was able to present himself successfully as a “lateral thinker and cheerful Marxist”, especially among younger government critics, in the 1980s. The starting point for this was his book Dialogue with My Great-Grandchild , which was published in 1983, was widely read at the time and was very critical by the circumstances . His public lectures were very popular. Because of his “revolutionary nobility” and his old age, he had a certain freedom from fools in the GDR . Most recently he was active in the PDS elders' council and a columnist for the daily newspaper Junge Welt .

Kuczynski had a close personal relationship with Erich Honecker . For his speeches he wrote the passages on the "economic situation in the world of capital". Honecker "was my mouthpiece and my postman to the ND, " said Kuczynski, describing the relationship between the two.

With around 70,000 volumes, he owned one of the largest and most valuable private libraries . This was taken over in 2003 by the Central and State Library Berlin and is placed in the historical collections of the Central and State Library Berlin Foundation .

Tomb of the Kuczynski couple

Together with his wife, the economist and translator Marguerite Kuczynski, Kuczynski had three children - Thomas (like his father a university professor and economic historian), Peter (for many years an Americanist at the Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg) and Madeleine. Jürgen Kuczynski is buried in the cemetery of the Dorotheenstadt and Friedrichswerder communities in Berlin.

Attitude to Stalinism

Jürgen Kuczynski 1981

In 1952, with thoroughly panegyric intent, Kuczynski openly praised Stalin's language and attitude. As a synonym for Stalinism, he often used the term Stalin Era . He understood it to mean the totality of the spiritual and real events during Stalin's rule, specifically both the positive and the negative effects. He rejected the condemnation of Stalin in 1956 and the subsequent negation of Stalin as a "continuation of Stalinism". It is unacceptable not to mention Stalin again after he has fallen from grace. Kuczynski saw two great achievements of Stalin: He would have achieved industrialization by building up heavy industry in rural Russia. This was one of the prerequisites for victory over the German Reich . He also had the confidence of the Soviet people. The veneration of his person and his speeches gave the people and the soldiers moral and fighting strength, postulated Kuczynski. He was critical of the fact that Stalin had abused this trust by brutally enforcing his dictatorship. According to Kuczynski , Stalin used his propaganda skills, which he undoubtedly had , to establish dogmas and to kill real "scientific" disputes of opinion.

Personally, Kuczynski was involved in Stalin's purges insofar as he had to “convince” Hermann Duncker after the arrest of his son Wolfgang that the “Soviet justice system did not make any mistakes here either”. According to his account, he suffered from underlining the flawlessness of Stalin's policy against his better judgment.

Awards and honors

In 2015, an unnamed green space near Parkstrasse in Berlin-Weißensee , his place of residence from the late 1950s until his death, was named Jürgen-Kuczynski-Park .

On October 14, 2017, a plaque was unveiled in front of the house where he was born in Wuppertal.

Publications

Jürgen Kuczynski has made over 4,100 publications, some of which he wrote together with other authors. According to his own statement, of these are "around 100 books or larger brochures"; Mario Keßler lists the sixty most important of these (see link below).

Major scientific works are:

  • History of the situation of workers under capitalism (40 volumes)
  • Studies on the history of social sciences (10 volumes)
  • History of the everyday life of the German people (5 volumes). ISBN 3-89438-191-4

Other works u. a .:

  • Memoirs. The education of the JK to become a communist and scientist . Berlin and Weimar 1973
  • Dialogue with my great grandson. 19 letters and a diary. Berlin 1983. Published again in 1996; Black marginal markings in this issue clarify the areas removed from the GDR censorship.
  • A dissident who is loyal to the line. Memoirs 1945–1989. Berlin 1992
  • A hopeless case of optimism? Memoirs 1989-1994. Berlin 1994
  • Continued dialogue with my great-grandson: fifty questions to an incorrigible great-grandfather. Berlin 1996
  • A loyal rebel. Memoirs 1994-1997 . Berlin 1998

He was a regular author of the weekly newspaper Die Weltbühne .

See also

literature

  • Kuczynski, Jürgen . In: Collegium Politicum at the University of Hamburg. Historiography Working Group (Ed.): Historians in Central Germany . Ferd. Dümmerls Verlag, Bonn / Hanover / Hamburg / Munich 1965, p. 59 f.
  • Thomas Grimm: Jürgen Kuczynski. In: What remained of the dreams. A balance sheet of the socialist utopia. With a foreword by Heiner Müller . Siedler Verlag , Berlin 1993, pp. 91–110. ISBN 3-88680-482-8 .
  • Thomas Heubner (Ed.): ZeitGenosse Jürgen Kuczynski . Elefanten Press, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-88520-527-0 .
  • Jürgen Kuczynski: Friends and good acquaintances. Conversations with Thomas Grimm , Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 1997, ISBN 978-3-89602-134-2 .
  • Wolfgang Girnus (Ed.): Socialist world citizen and encyclopedia. Mosaic stones for Jürgen Kuczynski . Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2007, ISBN 978-3-86583-159-0 .
  • Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk :  Kuczynski, Jürgen . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Anke Geißler: For a reorientation of the GDR and its historical studies - Jürgen Kuczynski and the controversy surrounding his book “The outbreak of the First World War and German Social Democracy. Chronicle and Analysis “in the mid-1950s. Helle Panke, 2011 (Issues on GDR history 124)
  • 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 ).
  • Agnieszka Brockmann: The Kuczynski estate in the Central and State Library Berlin . Central and State Library, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-925516-39-9 .
  • K. Olectiv / The last days of ... A research on the collective serial novel in the ›Rote Fahne‹ by Emanuel Bruck and Jürgen Kuczynski - compiled by Gaston Isoz and Thomas Möbius. Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-941959-05-7 .
  • John Green: A Political Family: The Kuczynskis, Fascism, Espionage and The Cold War . Routledge Studies in Radical History and Politics, 2017
  • Claus-Dieter Krohn: Kuczynski, Jürgen. In: Harald Hagemann , Claus-Dieter Krohn (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of the German-speaking economic emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Adler – Lehmann. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11284-X , pp. 336–338.
  • Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of the German-speaking emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Politics, economy, public life . Munich: Saur, 1980, p. 400f.
  • Agnieszka Brockmann: Robert René Kuczynski, Jürgen Kuczynski . In: Günter Benser , Dagmar Goldbeck, Anja Kruke (eds.): Preserve, spread, enlighten. Archivists, librarians and collectors of the sources of the German-speaking labor movement. Supplement . Bonn 2017, ISBN 978-3-95861-591-5 , pp. 49-61. Online (PDF, 2.7 MB)

Movie

Web links

Commons : Jürgen Kuczynski  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Jürgen Kuczynski  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Michael Landmann: In the service of antifascism in antifa 9/2014
  2. ↑ The Legacy of US Officer Gould
  3. ↑ Shareen Blair Brysac: Mildred Harnack and the "Red Orchestra". The story of an unusual woman and a resistance movement. Scherz, Bern 2003, ISBN 3-502-18090-3 , p. 509
  4. ↑ Alfred Fleischhacker (ed.): That was our life, memories and documents on the history of the FDJ in Great Britain 1939-1946. Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-355-01475-3 , p. 221.
  5. ↑ Thomas Klein: For the unity and purity of the party . Cologne / Weimar 2002, p. 190.
  6. ↑ Jürgen Kuczynski . In: District lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein
  7. ^ A b Fritz Bauer Institute: Tape recording of the 1st Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial. Retrieved December 16, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Florian Schmaltz: Jürgen Kuczynski's historical report on the role of IG Farben and the Monowitz concentration camp in the first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial . In: Irmtrud Wojak (Ed.): “Holding a court day over ourselves ...” History and impact of the first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial . Series: Yearbook on the history and impact of the Holocaust . Campus, Frankfurt 2001, ISBN 3-593-36721-1 , pp. 117-140
  9. ^ Annette Rosskopf: Friedrich Karl Kaul . Lawyer in divided Germany (1906–1981) . Berlin 2002, p. 248 ff.
  10. ^ Jürgen Kuczynski: A dissident loyal to the line . Structure of Taschenbuch Verlag, Berlin 1999, pp. 254–268
  11. ↑ Kuczynski estate. Central and State Library Berlin , archived from the original on June 16, 2016 ; accessed on June 16, 2016 .
  12. ↑ Jürgen Kuczynski: The Language of JW Stalin , in: The Truth, Issue No. 295, December 24, 1952.
  13. ↑ Jürgen Kuczynski: Dialogue with my great-grandson - Nineteen letters and a diary . Construction, Berlin / Weimar 1983, 8th edition 1987, ISBN 3-351-00182-7 , pp. 77-81
  14. ↑ Honorary doctoral students of the TH / TU Dresden. Technical University of Dresden, accessed on February 8, 2015 .
  15. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Jürgen Kuczynski. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed September 26, 2015 (Russian).
  16. ^ Park in Weißensee named after Jürgen Kuczynski. In: Berliner Zeitung. August 21, 2015, accessed September 3, 2015 .
  17. ↑ Dirk Krüger: Wuppertal honors Jürgen Kuczynski [Our time] . In: Our time . ( Unser-zeit.de [accessed on November 8, 2017]).
  18. ^ Günter Kröber: The third rebirth. The publications of the JK A primarily quantitative analysis. Second addendum . In: ZeitGenosse Jürgen Kuczynski . Elefanten-Press, Berlin 1994, p. 23
personal data
SURNAME Kuczynski, Jürgen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Forster, Peter (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian and economist
DATE OF BIRTH 17th September 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Elberfeld
DATE OF DEATH August 6, 1997
Place of death Berlin