Konrad Heiden

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Konrad Heiden

Konrad Heiden (born August 7, 1901 in Munich , † June 18, 1966 in New York City ) was a German - American journalist and political writer who wrote Hitler's first substantial biography in 1936 .

The social democratic journalist has been writing about Munich's political scene since the early 1920s, making him one of the earliest observers and a staunch opponent of the Nazi movement and Adolf Hitler. After he came to power, he fled to the United States through several stations and obtained American citizenship in the 1950s. Heiden dealt primarily with the ideology and character of National Socialism.

life and work

Youth and education

Konrad Heiden was born in Munich in 1901 as the son of Lina Deutschmann and Johannes Heiden. His father was a professional functionary of the Social Democratic Party of Germany , for which he worked as a workers secretary and city councilor in Frankfurt am Main. The mother came from a Jewish family. Heiden spent part of his youth in Frankfurt am Main. In May 1905, the parents divorced. His mother died in September 1906. Konrad Heiden attended secondary school in Frankfurt from 1908 to 1910 , then from 1911 to 1919 the municipal Lessing grammar school . His father also died in January 1916. From then on he lived with different foster families.

In the summer of 1919 he moved to his aunt in Munich and studied law and economics there from May 1920 . In 1922 he was elected chairman of the Republican Student Union.

Journalistic career until 1933

In 1923, while he was still studying, Heiden took on a position as assistant editor at Otto Groth , the Bavarian correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung (FZ), who taught him the basics of journalism. Heiden, like his sponsor Groth, was very interested in political issues, and developed into a specialist in the Nazi movement that was just emerging . He devoted himself particularly to reporting on their leader Hitler. In 1925, Heiden gave up his studies shortly before his exams and took a job as a permanent journalist at FZ. In 1929 he became a member of the editorial team of FZ in Frankfurt.

At this time, the Frankfurter Zeitung , which was close to the left-wing liberal DDP , experienced a sales crisis, which u. a. was caused by the decline in the number of followers of this party In 1932 the circulation was halved compared to 1919. The newspaper, which needed a lot of staff because of its striving for high journalistic quality, made annual losses of several hundred thousand RM from 1926 and became a restructuring case. The only possible salvation was the support of democratically minded industrialists from around the IG Farben . Although the newspaper remained formally untouched, some entrepreneurs tried to influence the economic policy line of the newspaper and to prevent criticism of the measures of the IG Farben and large-scale industry. The support by the IG-Farben was hidden in the paper itself. Konrad Heiden was barely allowed to write political articles, but headed the supplement Das Illustrierte Blatt and the women's supplement . Stefan Aust suspects that the political journalist Heiden should be discreetly pushed out of the reporting. Konrad Heiden published a. a. because of these difficulties in the FZ 1929 a report on an insulting trial of Hitler before the Munich district court in the magazine Das Tage-Buch . After Heiden had negotiated a change with the social democratic Hamburger Echo , FC granted him better conditions for a short time. He was used as an all-round reporter in all regions of Germany, but should still not report on politics if possible.

In March 1930, Heiden went to Berlin for a short time to strengthen the editorial team there, but continued to work as a reporter throughout the Reich. Heiden reported critically in 1930 about the election results in Thuringia , which led to the first participation of the National Socialists in a country of the German Reich. Thanks to his familiarity with the affairs and personnel of the NSDAP, in Berlin, as before in Munich, he learned internals of the party. His informants included, for example, party members who were close to the brothers Gregor and Otto Strasser and who were critical of Hitler. Heiden's salary at the Frankfurter Zeitung was so low at the time that it was barely enough to live on. When his demand for adequate pay remained unfulfilled and he was to be kept away from political reporting, he resigned on September 28, 1930. Heiden was then unemployed at the age of 29.

On January 13, 1931, Heiden joined the press publisher Dammert, a conservative press service, as a political editor, which he already resigned at the end of the year. So from 1932 he had to make a living as a freelance journalist and writer. On December 20, 1932, Heiden presented his first book in Berlin, History of National Socialism - The career of an idea that the Vossische Zeitung had already printed in parts. The work that was published by Rowohlt Verlag was in great demand.

Exile in Saarland and France

Shortly after the handover of power to the National Socialists , Heiden went into exile and mostly stayed illegally in Saarland . From June to December 1933 he lived in Zurich. His second book was published there in 1934, published by Emil Oprecht : The Birth of the Third Reich . In Saarbrücken , Heiden was co-editor of the magazine Deutsche Freiheit . In order to influence the referendum in Saarland on the annexation to the German Reich, he wrote two camouflaged pamphlets under the pseudonym Klaus Bredow: Hitler rast - The blood tragedy of June 30, 1934 , which dealt with the so-called Röhm Putsch , and Sind die Nazis socialists ? After the Saar referendum on January 13, 1935, Heiden fled to France and lived in Paris until May 1940. There he worked as editor-in-chief of the important exile magazine Das Neue Tage-Buch , published by Leopold Schwarzschild .

From 1933 to 1936 Konrad Heiden was, along with around 20 emigrants and non-German helpers - such as Albert Einstein , Heinrich and Thomas Mann , Romain Rolland and Henry Wickham Steed - a member of the "Friends of Carl von Ossietzky ". They made appeals to the Nazi regime demanding that Ossietzky be released from concentration camp imprisonment , and submitted a proposal to the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee to award Ossietzky the Nobel Peace Prize . As part of this campaign, a small brochure was created with supporting contributions from prominent authors. Konrad Heiden contributed the text Peace Prize - Character Prize .

In 1936 and 1937, Heiden's two-volume Hitler biography was published by Zurich's Europa Verlag . The English, American and French editions appeared at the same time. The first volume, Adolf Hitler - The Life of a Dictator - The Age of Irresponsibility , was distributed in 31,000 copies, the second volume, Adolf Hitler - A Biography - A Man Against Europe , in 15,500 copies. In it, Konrad Heiden summed up the National Socialists' worldview as follows: "Turmoil without intoxication, march without goal". The historian John Lukacs called this work the "first substantial study of Hitler". He attests to Heiden that he researched Hitler, who had always kept his origins and background a secret, over many years with intense interest: "His portrayal of Hitler's life and career was full of details and often remarkably precise." The political theorist In her main political work, Elements and Origins of Total Rule, Hannah Arendt refers to Konrad Heiden several times. She judges his Hitler biography that it is in some respects more precise and in almost every respect more weighty than the then standard biography of Alan Bullock from 1952. There is hardly anyone among the numerous Hitler biographers whose work is not based on Konrad Heiden's research would have built. Nevertheless, the author is largely forgotten today. The first biography about him, written by the former Spiegel editor-in-chief Stefan Aust , was only published in September 2016 under the title Hitler's First Enemy. The fight of Konrad Heiden .

Also in 1937 his book European Destiny was published by Querido, an exile publisher in Amsterdam . In January of the same year Konrad Heiden was expatriated from Germany and thus became stateless . His property was confiscated. In 1939 he published his book The New Inquisition on the November 1938 pogroms with Starling Press , New York, which was also sold in Paris under the title Les Vêpres Hitlériennes . It was only published in 2013 under the title Eine Nacht im November 1938. A contemporary report also in German. A typescript with the working title Nocturnal Oath is in the Zurich Central Library .

His biographer Stefan Aust certifies that Heiden not only studied his Nazi sources, but also understood them. After the experiences of the past few years, Heiden wrote as early as the turn of the year 1938/39 that nobody could afford not to take the threats contained in Mein Kampf and the statements of the SS very seriously. In this connection he quoted the SS weekly newspaper Das Schwarze Korps with the issue of November 24, 1938: “Because it is necessary, because we can no longer hear the world screaming and because ultimately no power can prevent us from doing it, we become the Jewish question now lead to their total solution. "And further:" The result would be the actual and final end of Judaism in Germany, its complete annihilation. "

Exile in the USA

At the beginning of the Second World War , Heiden was interned in France as "étranger indésirable" (undesirable foreigners) . Because of the unexpectedly rapid advance of the Wehrmacht in the western campaign , he was released in June 1940 and fled to the United States . He was one of more than 2,200 people whom Varian Fry made it possible to escape via Lisbon . With the help of the International Rescue Committee he received a false Czechoslovak passport in the name of David Silbermann. From Lisbon he traveled by ship to the USA in the second half of October 1940 with an American visa . He lived in New York City until March 1941, in San Francisco from June to December 1941 and then again in New York. On February 19, 1942, he received the permanent residence permit with the "Alien Registration Card pink and yellow", which was again issued in his real name.

In 1944, Houghton Mifflin published his most highly regarded and widespread work: Der Führer - Hitler's Rise to Power . It found widespread dissemination through the Book of the Month Club in the USA and through the Left Book Club with its 57,000 members in Great Britain . It has not yet been published in German.

Last years

Konrad Heiden stayed in the United States after the end of Nazi rule and was granted US citizenship in the 1950s . From December 1951 to May 1952 Heiden returned to Germany for the first time since 1933, to which he traveled by plane. On behalf of the Süddeutscher Rundfunk in Stuttgart , he produced a weekly contribution from 1952 to 1961 for the 15-minute show Streiflichter aus Amerika . He made similar contributions for Radio Bremen . From 1954 Heiden wrote monthly audio reports for the Süddeutscher Rundfunk under the title Four Weeks America . He also wrote for US magazines such as Life Magazine .

During these years Heiden suffered from Parkinson's disease , which continued to worsen and noticeably restricted his ability to work. He now lived mostly in Orleans , Massachusetts , with his partner Margaret A. Van Weert, who died in April 1961. In 1962, Heiden became a nursing case after two brain operations. He was barely able to work himself. He died on June 18, 1966 at Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx , New York City. Heiden's final resting place is in Orleans Cemetery in East Orleans , Massachusetts. A small collection of Heiden's estate, which mainly contains material from his youth, is in the Zurich Central Library .

Aftermath and reception

After his death, Pagans and his writings were quickly forgotten. Since 2007, however, his works on Hitler and National Socialism have been reprinted or were published for the first time in German: In 2007 the Europa-Verlag published Heiden's Hitler biography of Adolf Hitler. The age of irresponsibility is redesigned, in 2013 Wallstein Verlag published Heiden's contemporary report on the Reichspogromnacht in German for the first time. Three years later, Stefan Aust published a biography about Konrad Heiden. The book, which was published under the title Hitler's First Enemy , has serious shortcomings, however, as Aust did not identify many literal copies of Heiden's own text about the life and rise of Hitler, but rather veiled them. A Heiden biography that meets scientific standards is still pending.

Fonts (selection)

The Fuehrer, Victor Gollanz, 1944
  • History of National Socialism. The career of an idea. Rowohlt, Berlin 1932.
  • Birth of the Third Reich. The history of National Socialism up to 1933. Europa Verlag , Zurich 1934.
  • Hitler races: June 30th: procedure, history and background. Volksstimme, Saarbrücken 1934 (under the pseudonym Klaus Bredow).
  • Are the Nazis Socialists? 100 documents from 14 months. Volksstimme, Saarbrücken 1934 (under the pseudonym Klaus Bredow).
  • Hitler biography:
    • (Volume 1 :) Adolf Hitler. The age of irresponsibility. A biography. Europa Verlag, Zurich 1936 (464 pages, distributed in 31,000 copies, published simultaneously with English, American and French editions), new edition ibid 2007, ISBN 3-905811-02-2 .
    • (Volume 2 :) Adolf Hitler. A biography. One man against Europe. Europa Verlag, Zurich 1937 (15,500 copies), new edition ibid 2007, ISBN 3-905811-04-9 .
    • Adolf Hitler. The age of irresponsibility. One man against Europe. The biography. Europa Verlag, Berlin / Munich / Zurich / Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-95890-117-9 (revised new edition of the complete edition of volumes 1 and 2).
  • European fate. Querido Verlag , Amsterdam 1937.
  • (Ed.): The pogrom: documents of the brown barbery. The judgment of the civilized world . Foreword by Heinrich Mann . Zurich 1939.
    • English: The new Inquisition. Introduction Hendrik Willem van Loon , translation: Heinz Norden . Starling Press, New York 1939.
    • French: Les Vêpres Hitlériennes. Nuits sanglantes en Allemagne . Paris 1939.
    • One night in November 1938. A contemporary report. Ed. V. Markus Roth, Sascha Feuchert and Christiane Weber. Wallstein, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1349-1 .
  • The leader. Hitler's Rise to Power. (Also: "The Fuehrer" or "The Fuhrer".) Haughton Mifflin, Boston 1944, translation: Ralph Manheim . The book was widely distributed via the Book of the Month Club in the USA and via the Left Book Club in England with 57,000 members (not yet published in German). Frequently reissued, most recently Castle, 2002, ISBN 0-7858-1551-1 .
  • Documentation of the Jewish Hanoverians arrested during the pogrom on November 10 and 11, 1938 , in Wolf-Dieter Mechler , Carl Philipp Nies (editor): The November pogrom 1938 in Hanover. Accompanying volume to the exhibition from November 5, 2008 to January 18, 2009 in the Historisches Museum Hannover (= writings of the Historisches Museum Hannover , Volume 33), Hannover: Landeshauptstadt Hannover, [2008?], ISBN 978-3-910073-34-0 , Pp. 67-91.

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literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors. Volume 10, 2002, p. 297.
  2. ↑ a b Stefan Aust: Hitler's first enemy. The fight of Konrad Heiden . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2016, ISBN 978-3-498-00090-5 , p. 147.
  3. ↑ Stefan Aust: Hitler's first enemy. The fight of Konrad Heiden . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2016, ISBN 978-3-498-00090-5 , pp. 155-165.
  4. ↑ Stefan Aust: Hitler's first enemy. The fight of Konrad Heiden . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2016, ISBN 978-3-498-00090-5 , p. 180.
  5. ↑ See Adolf Hitler , Vol. 1, 2007, p. 417.
  6. ^ Hannah Arendt: Elements and origins of total domination. Anti-Semitism, imperialism, total domination. Piper-Verlag, Munich / Zurich 1991, ISBN 978-3-492-21032-4 , p. 638 (English-language first edition 1951, German first edition 1955).
  7. ↑ Stefan Aust: Hitler's first enemy. The fight of Konrad Heiden. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2016, ISBN 978-3-498-00090-5 .
  8. ↑ Stefan Aust: He saw everything coming. In: The time . 40/2016, p. 19.
  9. ↑ Heiden's grave site on Find a Grave.com. Retrieved October 21, 2016.
  10. ↑ Review by Helmut Lohlöffel, Süddeutsche Zeitung , November 5, 2013.
  11. ↑ Markus Roth : Review , taz , June 27, 2017, p. 15.
personal data
SURNAME Heiden, Konrad
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bredow, Klaus (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 7, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH June 18, 1966
Place of death New York City