Josef Strasser

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Josef Strasser (born September 11, 1870 in Cracow , Austria-Hungary ; died October 15, 1935 in Vienna ) was a socialist politician, journalist and Marxist theorist in the Habsburg state and in the First Republic.

Life

Josef Strasser was born the son of a railway employee and a cleaning woman and, despite constant financial difficulties, graduated from the humanistic grammar school in Vienna. The first political attempts were made during the school years, which ultimately led to an intensive commitment within the framework of the socialist labor movement. While studying law in Vienna and Zurich (it remained unfinished) Strasser initially worked as an external employee of the Arbeiter-Zeitung . In 1901 Strasser was promoted to editor-in-chief of the social democratic newspaper Freigeist in Reichenberg and developed into a central figure of the German-Bohemian social democracy. Even before 1914, Strasser criticized national and nationalist tendencies within the party; the opposition in the German-Austrian social democracy , considered Reichenberger Left, was theoretically and practically significantly shaped by him. In 1912 he married the writer Isadora von Schwartzkoppen . In 1917 Strasser's son, Peter Strasser , was born. Even before the outbreak of war, Strasser moved to Vienna, where the critic of any truce policy of the party leadership no longer played a central role in social democracy. Strasser finally joined the Communist Party of Austria in 1919 and took over the leadership of the party press there - with interruptions - until 1929. In the course of the Stalinist waves of purges, Strasser died in 1935 in political and human isolation.

Services

The climax of his practical and theoretical achievements fell in the "Reichenberger period"; so essentially in the first decade of the 20th century. Under Strasser's leadership, Reichenberg, the cradle of (German-) Austrian social democracy, once again became an essential organizational center of the socialist movement of the monarchy. Despite simmering "national" disputes between the Viennese and Prague party headquarters and fierce external attacks by German national opponents, the common "social" questions are also relatively consistently brought to the fore. Strasser wrote: "For the class-conscious proletarian, the proletarian is the measure of all things, not the German, the Catholic, etc." In this context, Strasser's theoretical contributions were made, which are not only against Czech aspirations for autonomy in the movement, but particularly sharply against German nationalists Tendencies in the German-Austrian social democracy - as represented by Leuthner, Hartmann, but also Otto Bauer - directed. Strasser, like Rosa Luxemburg and Anton Pannekoek (whose work Klassenkampf und Nation was edited by Strasser in Reichenberg in 1912) belonged to a specific left minority in the international socialist (pre-war) movement, which rejected the right of self-determination of the peoples and the unconditional primacy of class interests stressed in dealing with the national question. According to Strasser, nations would dissolve in a general process of assimilation after the transition from capitalism to socialism .

Fonts

  • The worker and the nation . Verlag von Runge & Co., Reichenberg 1912 (new edition: Junius, Vienna 1982). (a collection of his most important essays and writings)

literature

  • Th. Venus:  Strasser Josef. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 13, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2007–2010, ISBN 978-3-7001-6963-5 , p. 363 f. (Direct links on p. 363 , p. 364 ).
  • Isa Strasser: Josef Strasser - A picture of life . In: Josef Strasser: The worker and the nation . Junius, Vienna 1982, ISBN 3-900370-03-6 ; Pp. 101–107 (written in 1970; Isa Strasser was the wife of Josef Strasser).
  • Gabriella Hauch: "It is necessary that we speak clearly and openly." Josef Strasser (1870–1935), a democratic communist in Austria . In: Yearbook for Historical Research on Communism, 2018, pp. 61–78.

Web links

References

  1. ↑ Isa Strasser: Josef Strasser - A picture of life . In: Josef Strasser: The worker and the nation . Junius, Vienna 1982, pp. 101-107.
  2. ↑ Marlis Sewering-Wollanek: The German social democracy in Bohemia between 1889 and 1914 . In: Wolfgang Maderthaner (ed.): Social Democracy and Habsburg State, Vienna 1988, pp. 167–189.
  3. ↑ Quoted from Gustav Eckstein : Review of the book “Der Arbeiter und die Nation” by Josef Strasser . In: The New Time . Weekly of the German Social Democracy . Vol. 30 (1911/1912), Vol. 2 (1912), Issue 41, pp. 562-564, quoted on p. 564.
  4. ^ Otto Bauer: Deutschtum und Sozialdemokratie. Vienna 1907.
  5. ↑ Michael Löwy : Internationalism and Nationalism. Critical essays on Marxism and the “national question”. With a contribution by Enzo Traverso . Cologne 1999, p. 60f.
personal data
SURNAME Strasser, Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION socialist politician, journalist and Marxist theorist
DATE OF BIRTH September 11, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Krakow
DATE OF DEATH October 15, 1935
Place of death Vienna