Jan Valtin

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Jan Valtin (photo from 1950)

Jan Valtin , actually Richard Krebs , completely Richard Herrmann Julius Krebs (born December 17, 1905 near Mainz , † January 1, 1951 in Betterton , Kent County (Maryland) , Maryland, USA) was a German communist, agent for the Comintern , double agent for the Comintern with the Gestapo and writers. He was also a US citizen .

Life until 1933

The son of a sea captain in a senior position at North German Lloyd and a Swedish mother was born Richard Hermann Julius Krebs . Krebs grew up in Hong Kong, Genoa and Bremen. After the death of his father, he left the secondary school and hired himself as a cabin boy on a sailing ship.

In 1923 Krebs joined the KPD and in the same year took an active part in the Hamburg uprising , which was supported by the Comintern and suppressed one day later. Afterwards, Krebs became an agent for the Comintern OMS courier and secret service in the area of ​​international shipping. In 1925 and 1926 he completed appropriate training in Leningrad . As a seaman he was of particular international use. In 1926 he was ordered to kill a "traitor" in the USA without the background being given to him. The attack failed; Cancer was caught and brought to justice. He received a ten-year prison term in San Quentin State Prison . During this time he continued his education and took courses on journalism and several languages ​​at a distance university. When he was released early in 1929, Stalin was completely in power. Krebs came back as an agent. He was assigned to the Hamburg base of the International of Seamen and Harbor Workers (ISH).

Life after 1933

After the seizure of power of Hitler the Comintern sent him as an agent to Germany. He was soon arrested by the Gestapo in Hamburg . During interrogations in the town hall , the headquarters of the Gestapo in Hamburg, and stays in the Fuhlsbüttel concentration camp , Krebs was severely tortured. In " Red Marine process" under Attorney Henry Jauch , the nine death sentences ended, he was in July 1934 to the relatively low sentence of four years ' imprisonment convicted. At the same time, his German wife Hermine Krebs, who also worked for the ISH, returned to Germany from Copenhagen. Hermine had resigned from the KPD, but was denounced by a spy named Hermann Beilich , who had been smuggled into the ISH by the Gestapo, and was arrested by the Gestapo in autumn 1934. After a trial before the Hamburg Higher Regional Court, she was sentenced to two years in prison on October 10, 1935, when the court accepted that she had renounced communism. Therefore, she was released after a year.

The Comintern was able to come into contact with Krebs while in captivity and ordered him to appear “turned around” and become a double agent with the Gestapo . After Krebs had agreed to work as an agent for the Gestapo, he was brought before the head of the Hamburg Gestapo, Bruno Linienbach, who gave his approval. With this Richard Krebs managed to be released, although he remained under the supervision of the Gestapo. The Gestapo sent him to Denmark in 1937 to spy on the ISH headquarters there. The apparent Nazi agent had planned to use his stay abroad to flee, but the Gestapo had threatened reprisals against his wife and son, who had been held hostage, in this case. The Comintern officials greeted him warmly, but did nothing to free Krebs' wife and son, even when Krebs insisted on their liberation. He was then suspected of actually being a Gestapo agent.

When Krebs then questioned his solidarity with the Soviet Union, the GPU decided to take him to the Soviet Union. Krebs was detained in a house in Denmark, but escaped at the last second. His Comintern superiors, above all Ernst Wollweber , pursued Krebs worldwide in international seafarers' unions with profiles as a Gestapo agent.

Life in exile

In 1938, Krebs reached the United States by adventurous routes. There, in 1938, he received news of the death of his wife, who had died of leukemia on November 15, 1938 in a hospital.

In 1940, Krebs was able to publish the partly autobiographical novel Out of the Night in the USA under the name Jan Valtin , which was a great success and translated into many languages. In this book he dealt with Stalinism . The proceeds made it possible for Cancer to live a decent life in the United States.

In December 1941, Krebs reported to the US Army to take part in the war against Germany as a soldier. But the cooperation of an active opponent of the Soviet Union was not much in demand at the beginning of the alliance with the Soviet Union. In November 1942, Krebs was also reported as a Gestapo agent through a denunciation of the presumably communist Erich Krewet , who was also active in the ISH and also in exile in the USA . As a result, Krebs was arrested in December 1942 and only released as innocent after a trial at the end of May 1943.

It was not until August 1943 that Krebs was drafted as an infantryman and from February 1944 he was used in the Philippines to fight the Japanese in the Pacific War. In 1947, Krebs was granted US citizenship . He survived an investigation by the Un-American Activities Committee and survived an attack he attributed to the GPU .

Krebs returned shortly to West Germany in 1948, only to leave it again soon. In his opinion, too many unrepentant old National Socialists were able to continue their careers in the new state unhindered. He returned to the USA.

After the war, Krebs worked as a writer. He was chronically ill - the consequences of the Gestapo torture often caused attacks of pain, he had contracted an incurable virus infection in the Filipino trenches and suffered from severe war depression . Richard Krebs died in Betterton, Maryland in 1951 at the age of 45. So he did not live to see the publication of his novel in West Germany, which took place in 1957.

plant

  • Out of the night. Alliance Book Corporation, New York 1941. The book has been translated into many languages. In German as a diary of hell s. u.
  • Diary of Hell. From the American English by Werner Krauss. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1957, Greno 1986. New edition: bahoe books , Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-903022-25-6 .
  • Bend in the river. New York 1942.
  • Children of yesterday. New York 1946.
  • Castle in the sand. New York 1947.
  • Wintertime. New York 1950.

literature

  • Hermann Kuhn : Break with communism. About autobiographical writings by ex-communists in divided Germany. Münster 1990, ISBN 3-924550-45-X .
  • Dieter Nelles: Jan Valtin's “Diary of Hell” - legend and reality of a key novel in the totalitarianism theory. In: 1999 journal for social history of the 20th and 21st centuries. 1/94. Hamburg 1994, pp. 11-45.
  • Dieter Nelles: The rehabilitation of a Gestapo agent: Richard Krebs / Jan Valtin. In: Social.History. Journal of historical analysis of the 20th and 21st centuries. No. 18 (3/2003). Bremen 2003, pp. 147–158 (criticism of Waldenfels' book).
  • Michael Rohrwasser : Stalinism and the renegades. The literature of the excommunists. Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-476-00765-0 .
  • Michael Rohrwasser: The birth of the renegade: Richard Krebs - Jan Valtin and the responses of the critics. In exile: research, knowledge, results. (Journal), Special Volume 1, 1987: Conceptions of Realism in Exile Literature. Conference of the Hamburg Office of Exile Literature 1986.
  • Michael Rohrwasser, Richard Krebs - Jan Valtin. In exile: research, knowledge, results. (Journal) Vol. 1/1986.
  • Ernst von Waldenfels: The spy who came from Germany. The secret life of the seaman Richard Krebs. Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-351-02538-6 .
  • Valtin, Jan . In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dieter Nelles: The rehabilitation of a Gestapo agent: Richard Krebs / Jan Valtin. In: Social.History. Journal of historical analysis of the 20th and 21st centuries. No. 18 (3/2003). Bremen 2003, p. 149
  2. ↑ Ernst von Waldenfels: The spy who came from Germany. The secret life of the seaman Richard Krebs. Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-351-02538-6 , pages 57-65
  3. ^ Hans-Robert Buck: The Communist Resistance to National Socialism in Hamburg, 1933-1945. 1969, p. 34.
  4. ↑ Dieter Nelles: The rehabilitation of a Gestapo agent: Richard Krebs / Jan Valtin. In: Social.History. Journal of historical analysis of the 20th and 21st centuries. No. 18 (3/2003). Bremen 2003, p. 150
personal data
SURNAME Valtin, Jan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cancer, Richard (real name); Krebs, Richard Herrmann Julius (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German communist, agent for the Comintern, double agent for the Comintern with the Gestapo and writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 17, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH near Mainz
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 1951
Place of death Betterton , Kent County (Maryland) , Maryland, USA