Jacob Reich

This article deals with the communist Jakob Reich; on the rhetorician and poet see Jacob Reich .

Jakob Reich (later: Arnold Thomas Rubinstein; * May 23, 1886 in Lemberg , Austria-Hungary ; † March 15, 1955 in New York ) was a German-Russian communist who - as "Comrade Thomas" - in the 1920s of Berlin was mainly active in a leading position in a conspiratorial manner.

Life

As a student, Reich joined an illegal socialist activist group that was working towards a revolution in Russia. After the failure of the Russian Revolution of 1905 , he emigrated to Switzerland. There he worked in various fields: he studied education, experimented with explosives in a chemical laboratory and was a co-founder of a socialist magazine. Later he was in close contact with Russian Bolshevik emigrants such as Zinoviev and Radek , who like Lenin lived in exile in Zurich at the time. Reich published their writings in German translation. a. arrested for this, but was released shortly afterwards, in January 1919, and went to Moscow, where his comrades had meanwhile taken over political power. Reich took part in the founding congress of the Comintern, but soon left the Soviet Union to take up intelligence work in Berlin.

Reich was a high-ranking functionary and publishing director for the Comintern in the 1920s . With his headquarters in Berlin in 1921, as head of the secret Western European Secretariat (WES), he was the main figure of the Comintern in Western Europe. With the death of Lenin and the rise of Stalin, the influence and activities of "Comrade Thomas" waned; In view of the beginning of the Stalinist purges , he gradually withdrew, avoiding trips to the Soviet Union. In 1928, as J. Thomas, he was one of the editors of a German-language “Illustrated History of the Russian Revolution” and in the following year of the “Illustrated History of the Civil War in Russia”. Then his public traces are lost.

When Hitler came to power at the latest, Reich left Germany and lived in Prague for the next few years, where he made contact with the local group of psychoanalysts. He played the decisive role in the organization of the escape of the psychoanalyst Edith Jacobson, who was imprisoned in Berlin for political reasons . His step-daughter Lore Reich Rubin later reported on the circumstances of this daring company, the organizer of which "lived under a false identity and with a forged passport."

Jakob Reich was married to Berta Brutzkus (1887–1965), who studied medicine in Zurich and obtained her doctorate in 1912. Their daughter Hanna (1914–1992) was born there. Reich's second wife was Ruth Oesterreich (1894–1943), a communist activist. A daughter was also born from this marriage. In 1938 he married Annie Reich , b. Pink, who was married to the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich until 1933 , and went to the USA with her in 1938.

Fonts

• Illustrated history of the 1917 Russian Revolution . ed. by W. Astrow , A. Slepkow and J. Thomas. Berlin, W. Munzenberg, 1928.
• Illustrated History of the Civil War in Russia 1917-1921 . Berlin: New German Publishing House , 1929.
• Illustrated history of the German Revolution. Internationaler Arbeiter-Verlag, Berlin 1929.
• The First Years of the Communist International , introduced, edited and commented on by Boris Nikolajewski . Original: Les premières années de l'Histoire de l'Internationale Communiste , translated by Harry Ratner from J. Freymond, Contribution à l'Histoire des Communistes (Genève 1965).

literature

• Alexander Watlin : "Comrade Thomas" and the secret activities of the Comintern in Germany 1919–1925. In: ders .: The Comintern 1919-1929. Historical studies . Decaton-Verlag, Mainz 1993, pp. 21-44.
• Karl Retzlaw : James Thomas. The man in Western Europe. In: ders .: Spartacus. Rise and fall. Memories of a party worker. New Critique Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1972, pp. 218–233.
• Jörg Bremer : The Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (SAP). Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1978, pp. 104-109.
• Udo Vorholt : Excursus: On the person of J. Thomas. In: ders .: The Soviet Union in the judgment of the social democratic exile 1933–1945. Verlag Peter Lang, Frankfurt / Main 1991, pp. 161-165.
• James Edward Martin: Comrade Thomas. In: ders .: Wilhelm Reich and the Cold War. Ashland OR (USA) 2014, pp. 64–82. ISBN 978-0-9802316-8-7
• Handbook of the German Communists
• Birgit Schmidt : Who was Ruth Oesterreich? On the trail of a forgotten socialist. Series: Resistance Women, 13th Edition AV , Lich 2011 ISBN 978-3-86841-058-7

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kasper Braskén: The International Workers' Relief, Communism, and Transnational Solidarity. Willi Munzenberg in Weimar Germany . Palgrave Macmillan, Houndsmills 2015, ISBN 978-1-137-30423-0 , p. 34.
2. ↑ Lore R. Rubin: My memories of Edith Jacobson. In: Ulrike May / Elke Mühlleitmer (eds.): Edith Jacobson. Gießen, Psychosozial-Verlag 2005, pp. 313–327 (319)

Web links

• Literature by and about Jakob Reich in the catalog of the German National Library
• Arnold Thomas Rubenstein Historical Papers estate in the Archives of the University of Maine