John Reed

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John Reed about 1915 Johnreed.name.jpg

John Silas Reed (born October 22, 1887 in Portland , Oregon , † October 19, 1920 in Moscow ) was an American journalist and in 1919 the founder and chairman of the first Communist Party of the United States, the Communist Workers' Party , from the - together with others revolutionary-socialist groups - only a little later the CPUSA emerged .

Life

After completing his studies in sociology and economics at Harvard (1910), Reed worked from 1913 on Max Eastman's magazine The Masses . He reported on the silk weavers' strike in Paterson, New Jersey, and was arrested while trying to deliver a speech for the strikers. In the fall of 1913, the Metropolitan Journal sent him to Mexico . His reports of the Mexican Revolution marked his breakthrough as a journalist.

In 1914, Reed was a war correspondent in the First World War for The Masses and the Metropolitan Journal in France, Germany, Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria. He met Louise Bryant in Portland, Oregon in 1915 and married her in November 1916. Bryant had previously had an affair with Eugene O'Neill . Lincoln Steffens encouraged Reed and Bryant to go to Russia as correspondents. They left in August 1917 and returned in late April 1918; they experienced the October Revolution up close. Reed's book Ten Days that Shook the World , it appeared with a foreword by Lenin in March 1919 (German 1922), became famous, Bryant's Six Red Months in Russia did not. Reed met Lenin and later spoke to Emma Goldman , who was already skeptical at the time. Reed was from April to June 1919, the 10 numbers of the weekly New York Communist of the left wing ( Left Wing Section ) of the Socialist Party of America in New York City out.

Reed was one of the radicals expelled from the Socialist Party of America on August 30, 1919. These subsequently founded two separate parties. Reed's party was the Communist Labor Party of America , the CLP, and the following day the Communist Party of America , the CPUSA, was founded. Reed was the first chairman of the Communist Labor Party and the editor of its magazine, The Voice of Labor .

Burial in Moscow in 1920

When Reed was charged with rioting , he fled with a forged passport via Norway, Sweden and Finland to Soviet Russia in October 1919, to seek support for his CLP from the Comintern .

Back in Russia in 1920, he contracted typhus in September 1920 and died a few days before his 33rd birthday. Along with Charles Ruthenberg and William Dudley Haywood, he is one of the few Americans who received an honorary grave in Moscow on the Kremlin wall among other prominent communists.

Lenin wrote the foreword to the American edition of John Reed's 10 Days that Shook the World . Under Stalin , the book fell victim to censorship in Russia. The New York Times ranked it 7th of the hundred most important journalistic works in 1999.

Selected Works

  • The Day in Bohemia , 1913, New York: The Author.
  • The War in Eastern Europe , 1916, New York: C. Scribner's Sons.
  • Tamburlaine, and Other Verses by John Reed , 1917, Riverside.
  • Red Russia , The Liberator Publishing Co., New York 1919.
  • Ten days that shook the world . With a foreword by VI Lenin and a foreword by NK Krupskaya. Translated by Willi Schulz. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1957. Online version ( Memento of July 3, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (In the original English: Ten Days that Shook the World. International Publishers, New York. ISBN 978-0-7178-0200-5 ).
  • Daughter of the Revolution, and Other Stories by John Reed , 1927, New York, Vanguard Press.
  • Adventures of a Young Man , 1966, Berlin: Seven Seas Publishers.
  • An Anthology, by John Reed. , 1966, Moscow: Progress Publishers.
  • Stations of my life . Dietz, Berlin 1977.
  • A revolutionary ballad. Mexico 1914. (previously published under the title “Mexico in Aufruhr” ) Eichborn Verlag, Die Andere Bibliothek series , Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-8218-4560-0 (In the original English language: Insurgent Mexico. International Publishers, New York. ISBN 978-0-7178-0099-5 ).

Collective editions

  • The Education of John Reed . International Publishers, New York 1955.
  • The Complete Poetry of John Reed . Pine Hill Press, Freeman 1973.
  • The Complete Poetry of John Reed . University Press of America, Washington, DC 1983, ISBN 0-8191-2931-3 .
  • Collected poems . Lawrence Hill, Westport 1985, ISBN 0-88208-189-6 .
  • John Reed for the Masses . McFarland, Jefferson 1987 ISBN 0-89950-214-8 .
  • John Reed and the Russian Revolution . St. Martin's Press, New York 1992, ISBN 0-312-06891-3 .
  • The Collected Works of John Reed . Modern Library, New York 1995, ISBN 0-679-60144-9 .

literature

  • Alan Cheuse: The Bohemians - John Reed and his friends who shook the world . Applewood Books, Cambridge, Mass. 1982
  • David C. Duke: John Reed , Twayne, Boston 1987, ISBN 0-8057-7502-1 .
  • Eric Homberger: John Reed , Manchester University Press, Manchester 1990, ISBN 0-7190-2194-4 .
  • Tamara Hovey: John Reed - witness to revolution . George Sand Books, Los Angeles 1976.
  • Robert A. Rosenstone: Romantic revolutionary - a biography of John Reed , Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1990, ISBN 0-674-77938-X .
  • Harald Wessel : John Reed - red reporter from the Wild West . Verl. Neues Leben, Berlin 1979.

Feature films

  • Reed, México insurgente , feature film about the Mexican Revolution , based on Reed's newspaper reports. - Mexico, 1973, 124 min. - Director: Paul Leduc; Script: Emilio Carballido , Carlos Castañón, Juan Tovar.
  • Reds ; Feature film about the life of the American communist and writer John Reed. - USA, 1981, 194 min. - Screenplay, direction and leading actor: Warren Beatty (three Oscars )
  • Mexico in flames and I saw the birth of a new world , also ad T .: 10 days that shook the world ; Two-part feature film about John Reed's experiences during the Mexican and Russian revolutions. - Italy / Mexico / USSR, 1982, together approx. 240 min. - Director: Sergei Bondartschuk , leading actor: Franco Nero .

Web links

Commons : John Reed  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On his return in 1920. Emma Goldman: Living My Life . 1931.
  2. ↑ Felicity Barringer, Journalism's Greatest Hits: Two Lists of a Century's Top Stories , published in the New York Times on March 1, 1999, article text retrieved from the New York University website
personal data
SURNAME Reed, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reed, John Silas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American journalist
DATE OF BIRTH October 22, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Portland , Oregon
DATE OF DEATH October 19, 1920
Place of death Moscow