Curt Geyer

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Curt Geyer (ca.1920)
Group photograph on December 5, 1919 with members of the USPD party executive and other prominent representatives of the Independent Social Democrats. Curt Geyer in the middle in front of the door. Among those pictured: Arthur Crispien , Wilhelm Dittmann , Richard Lipinski , Wilhelm Bock , Alfred Henke , Fritz Zubeil , Hugo Haase , Fritz Kunert , Georg Ledebour , Arthur Stadthagen , Emanuel Wurm

Curt Theodor Geyer (born November 19, 1891 in Leipzig , † June 24, 1967 in Lugano ), also Kurt Geyer , pseudonym Max Klinger was a socialist politician, journalist and historian.

Life

The son of the social democratic politician Friedrich Geyer graduated from secondary school and, after studying history and economics at the University of Frankfurt , was awarded a doctorate in 1914. phil. PhD . Since 1911 a member of the SPD , he has worked for various social democratic daily newspapers since 1914, for example as an editor for the Franconian Daily Mail in Nuremberg and the Franconian People's Friend in Würzburg. Like his father, he rejected the truce policy of the SPD leadership and in 1917 joined the newly founded USPD . In the same year he began to work as an editor for the Leipziger Volkszeitung and married Anna Elbert .

During the November Revolution , Geyer was a member and from February 1919 chairman of the Leipzig Workers' Council , which he represented at the Reichsrätekongress in Berlin, he was also elected as its youngest member in the Weimar National Assembly and in 1920 in the Reichstag . As a supporter of the left wing of the party, he became editor-in-chief of the Hamburger Volkszeitung in 1920 and, after the USPD split up, a member of the board of the left wing, which merged with the VKPD to form the KPD at the end of 1920 , of which he was also a member until May 1921. In the spring of 1921 he was one of the supporters of chairmen Paul Levi and Ernst Däumig as part of the dispute over the March Action and was therefore expelled from the party in August 1921. Geyer now joined the Communist Working Group (KAG) and joined the USPD with a large majority in the spring of 1922, and with the majority of these he returned to the SPD at the end of 1922.

In the following years Geyer worked as a writer and journalist and was a member of the editorial team of the SPD central organ Vorwärts from 1924 to 1933 . After the seizure of power by the NSDAP Geyer fled - the member of the party executive (Sopade) was - in Prague , where he joined the editorial board of the organ of Sopade New Forward belonged. Within the social democracy in exile, Geyer and the editor-in-chief of the New Forward , Friedrich Stampfer , were opposed to cooperation with the KPD. In 1937 he moved to France , where in 1938 he took over the management of the New Forward . In 1941, after helping to organize the escape of German emigrants from Marseille, he fled to Great Britain via Portugal . He was - together with 5 other SPD members - excluded from the Union of German Socialist Organizations in Great Britain and a member of the group Fight for Freedom under the leadership of Walter Loeb. During this time he was close to the ideas of Vansittarts and assumed that there was no longer any significant resistance to National Socialism in Germany . Geyer, who also worked as an advisor to the British Foreign Office during the war , took British citizenship and worked from 1945 as a correspondent for various West German newspapers in London. Geyer died in 1967 during a spa stay in Lugano, Switzerland.

Works

  • Curt Geyer, Walter Loeb and others: "Fight for Freedom!" The legend of the "other Germany". ed. by Jan Gerber and Anja Worm. Ça ira, Freiburg i. Br. 2009
  • Political parties and public opinion in Saxony from the March Revolution to the outbreak of the May Uprising in 1848–1849. Leipziger Buchdruckerei, Leipzig 1914. (Dissertation Leipzig 1915)
  • Socialism and the council system. The guidelines of the faction of the USPD at the second council congress for the construction of the council system. Leipziger Buchdruckerei, Leipzig 1919.
  • with Ernst Däumig : For the 3rd International. The USPD at a crossroads. Publishing house “Der Arbeiterrat”, Berlin 1920.
  • The radicalism in the German labor movement. A sociological attempt. Thuringian Publishing House, Jena 1923.
  • Three spoilers of Germany. A contribution to the history of Germany and the reparations question from 1920 to 1924. JHW Dietz Nachf., Berlin 1924.
  • Leader and crowd in democracy. Berlin 1926.
  • with Julius Moses : Law to combat sexually transmitted diseases [of February 18, 1927]. Berlin 1927.
  • Revolution against Hitler. The historical task of the German social democracy. Graphia, Karlsbad 1933.
  • People in chains. Karlsbad 1934. (under the pseudonym Max Klinger )
  • The party of freedom. Self-published, Paris 1939.
  • with Walter Loeb : Gollancz in German wonderland. London 1942.
  • Hitler's new order - Kaiser's old order. Hutchinson, London 1942.
  • Power and mass. From Bismarck to Hitler. Küster, Hanover 1948.

literature

  • Jan Gerber , Anja Worm: The legend of the »other Germany« (preface). In: Curt Geyer, Walter Loeb and others: "Fight for Freedom!" The legend of the "other Germany". ed. by Jan Gerber and Anja Worm. Freiburg i. Br. 2009, pp. 9-31.
  • H. Naumann: Geyer, Curt Theodor. In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, p. 155 f.
  • Wolfgang Benz, Hermann Graml (ed.): The revolutionary history of the left wing of the USPD. Memories from Curt Geyer. (= Series of the quarterly books for contemporary history. 33). Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1976, ISBN 3-421-01781-6 .
  • Martin Schumacher (Hrsg.): MdR The Reichstag members of the Weimar Republic in the time of National Socialism. Political persecution, emigration and expatriation, 1933–1945. A biographical documentation . 3rd, considerably expanded and revised edition. Droste, Düsseldorf 1994, ISBN 3-7700-5183-1 .
  • Thomas Adam: Geyer, Curt Theodor. In: Manfred Asendorf, Rolf von Bokel: Democratic ways. German résumés from five centuries. JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1997, ISBN 3-476-01244-1 , pp. 206-208.
  • Short biography in: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. Dietz, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-320-02044-7 , pp. 243-244 (online) .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Geyer, Curt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Geyer, Curt Theodor; Geyer, Kurt; Klinger, Max (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD, USPD, KPD), MdR, journalist and historian
DATE OF BIRTH November 19, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH June 24, 1967
Place of death Lugano