Karl Borromeo Frank

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Karl Borromeo Frank , also Karl B. Frank or just Karl Frank ; Pseudonyms: Paul Hagen , Wilhelm Müller , Willi Müller , Josef , Maria , LA Gruber (born May 31, 1893 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; † May 21, 1969 in New Milford, Connecticut ) was an Austrian-German-American political publicist , Politician and psychoanalyst. At first he was politically at home with the Austrian and German Communists ( KPÖ , KPD ), later he was close to the German Social Democrats ( SPD ).

Life

The son of a small business owner left the Catholic Church at the age of 13. After studying psychology, biology and philosophy at the University of Vienna , which was temporarily interrupted by his participation in the war from 1914 to 1916 , he received his doctorate in 1918 there. phil; Having become an opponent of the war through the experience at the front, he joined a socialist student group.

After the First World War , Frank headed the Vienna Student Committee , which he also represented in the Vienna Workers' Council , and in 1919 he joined the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ), in which he worked as a functionary and editorial member of the party newspaper Rote Fahne . After moving to the German Reich, Frank was a member and functionary of the KPD from 1920 to 1924. In the early 1920s, Frank was married to the writer Alice Herdan , and this connection resulted in a daughter. In 1924, after working temporarily in Bavaria during the Hamburg uprising and being imprisoned several times in connection with the planning of acts of sabotage up to his escape or release from prison , Frank returned to Austria, where, as in Germany, he was Party official was active. From 1926 to 1929 Frank worked again for the KPD in Germany, for example as editor of the daily newspapers Kämper (Chemnitz) and Volksblatt (Gotha) and the KPD press service; Within the party, he was counted among the " Compromisers " current during this period . In 1928 Frank was involved in the kidnapping of the SPD functionary Wolfgang Schwarz and was sentenced to four months in prison in February 1929.

After he was released from prison in 1929, Frank was expelled from the KPD for writing a leaflet criticizing the party leadership, joined the Communist Party Opposition (KPO), of which he was a member, and at the same time joined the clandestine party in other workers' parties working "Miles Group" around Walter Loewenheim , the nucleus of the later group Leninist Organization / New Beginning . In 1932, at the instigation of the "Miles Group", he joined the newly founded SAPD , was a member of the party executive and the editorial team of the party newspaper Sozialistische Arbeiterzeitung and briefly headed the self-protection organization Sozialistischer Schutzbund, which is close to the SAPD . At the end of 1932, Frank was expelled from the party by the Berlin district leadership of the SAPD after he had propagated the joining of the SAPD to the SPD and the Iron Front . The party board stated that the decision of the Berlin district board had not come about in accordance with the statutes, but did not pursue the question further because Frank had in the meantime submitted an application for membership in the SPD. From 1929 to 1933 Frank worked as a political journalist in Berlin; During this time he also trained as a psychoanalyst.

After the Nazi seizure of power , Frank, who had since rejoined the SPD, returned to Vienna in 1933, and went into exile in Prague in 1934, where he worked as a secretary for the socialist resistance and emigration group “New Beginning”. The common features of the “Miles Group” and “New Beginning” were that both political groups worked in the SPD, bringing together members of the left-wing SPD and former KPD members. Since the group split in 1935, Frank headed the organization's structures in exile under the pseudonym Wilhelm Müller , and worked closely with the Revolutionary Socialists of Austria and the (New) Red Shock Troop under its foreign leader Robert Keller . Together, all three groups temporarily formed a "secret cartel" against the exiled party leadership of the SPD in Prague, which they challenged over the claim to sole representation for the German social democracy and control over the party assets, some of which had been rescued abroad.

Prague was followed by Paris in 1938/39 and London in 1939/40, and in 1940 he moved to the USA, where he worked for the American Friends of German Freedom and was a leading member of the Emergency Rescue Committee . In 1944 Frank was involved with well-known Social Democrats, Left Socialists, Communists and Left Catholics in the founding of the emigre organization “ Council for a Democratic Germany ”, which during its existence (1944/45) developed plans for a future post-war order in Germany and Europe. Frank had already drawn up his own plans for the role of a defeated post-war Germany in 1943 in his book Deutschland nach Hitler ("Germany after Hitler").

After 1945, Frank stayed in the USA, a country of emigration, where he mainly worked as a psychoanalyst , especially since he was temporarily denied entry to Germany despite the work of Ernst Reuter . Frank, who continued to see himself as a socialist and pacifist , no longer joined a party because he considered this political form to be out of date.

literature

  • Frank, Karl . 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 .
  • Short biography in: Resistance in Berlin against the Nazi regime 1933 to 1945. A biographical lexicon. Volume 11 First supplementary volume, Berlin 2005, p. 177.
  • Guy Stern: Karl Frank. In: John M. Spalek , Konrad Feilchenfeldt , Sandra H. Hawrylchak (eds.): German-language exile literature since 1933. Volume 3. USA: Part 5 . Bern: KG Saur, 2005 ISBN 3-908255-42-2 , pp. 53-71 (not used here)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On Frank's functions and role in the SAPD, see: Hanno Drechsler: Die Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (SAPD). A contribution to the history of the German labor movement at the end of the Weimar Republic. Meisenheim am Glan 1965, p. 172, p. 298 f. and p. 364.
  2. ↑ Dennis Egginger-Gonzalez: The Red Assault Troop. An early left-wing socialist resistance group against National Socialism. Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2018, in particular pp. 205 to 259.
personal data
SURNAME Frank, Karl Borromeo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Frank, Karl B .; Frank, Karl; Hagen, Paul (pseudonym); Müller, Wilhelm (pseudonym); Müller, Willi (pseudonym); Josef, Maria (pseudonym); Gruber, LA (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian-German-American political publicist, politician and psychoanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH May 31, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH May 21, 1969
Place of death New Milford (Connecticut)