Kurt Gossweiler

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Kurt Gossweiler (born November 5, 1917 in Stuttgart ; † May 15, 2017 in Berlin ) was a Marxist-Leninist German historian . In the GDR he mainly published on fascism , which he analyzed in terms of monopoly group theory. After German reunification , Gossweiler drew attention to himself through his defense of Stalinism .

Life

Gossweiler grew up in a communist family and attended the Karl Marx School (Berlin-Neukölln) from 1931 to 1933 . Together with his friend Werner Steinbrinck , he joined the Socialist Student Union . After the National Socialist “ seizure of power ”, Gossweiler was active in an illegal cell of the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD) from 1934 and participated, among other things, in smuggling illegal materials from Paris to Berlin .

After graduating from high school in 1937, Gossweiler began studying economics in Berlin. In March 1939 he was with the Reich Labor Service . From 1939 he took part in the Second World War as a soldier in the Wehrmacht . In 1943 he went over to the Red Army . During his captivity, he attended the Antifa school in Talizy, where he also worked as an assistant from 1944 to 1947. He also worked on the National Committee for Free Germany .

Gossweiler returned from captivity in 1947 and joined the SED . In Berlin he first worked as a teacher at the state party school, then from October 1948 to August 1955 as an employee of the district leadership of the SED .

From 1955 to 1958, Gossweiler had a scheduled academic traineeship at the Institute for History at Humboldt University . Between 1958 and 1970 he worked there as a research assistant. In 1963 he did his doctorate under Erich Paterna , Dietrich Eichholtz and Joachim Streisand on the role of monopoly capital in bringing about the Röhm affair . From 1970 until his retirement in 1983 he worked as a research assistant at the Central Institute for History of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR . In May 1972 he put the study Big Banks, Industrial Monopolies and State as a PhD B. Economics and Politics of State Monopoly Capitalism in Germany 1914–1932 .

Gossweiler received the Bronze Patriotic Order of Merit in 1973 and an honorary doctorate from Humboldt University in 1988 . As an unofficial employee of "IM Arno" he worked for the Ministry for State Security of the GDR, as the secret service was interested in his "Western contacts". After reunification he remained a member of the PDS until 2001 . Later he got involved in the splinter group Communist Initiative .

plant

Gossweiler was one of the leading historians of the GDR. His dissertation on the so-called " Röhm Putsch " from 1963 triggered a critical discussion in the GDR with its pointed theses and hypothetical conclusions. In 1968, together with Dietrich Eichholtz , in the journal Das Argument , he dealt with the criticism of the British historian Timothy Mason of the Dimitrov thesis of fascism as the dictatorship of finance capital. While Mason insisted that the National Socialist government had made itself increasingly independent of the interests and leadership of big business and emphasized the primacy of politics over economy, Gossweiler and Eichholtz referred to the high degree of scientific abstraction of Dimitrov's definition of fascism, which is essential for the history of the GDR was a binding guideline. They accused Mason of lack of knowledge of Lenin's theory of imperialism , through which he misunderstood the state-monopoly content of fascism. For them, the Nazi state was determined by struggles for direction within monopoly capital. A reality that corresponds to Mason's theses would "run counter to all of the 'natural laws' of society discovered by Marxism and would represent a complete refutation of the Marxist analysis of society through its very existence".

The controversy with Mason stimulated further research and documentation from GDR archives with which the "structure and organization of state monopoly capitalism" should be proven. At the same time, Eichholtz and Gossweiler warned in a dogmatic manner that neo-Marxists were “much more dangerous” than “bourgeois historians” because they represented “industrialists in the role of deceived fraudsters”.

In contrast to the monopoly group research represented by Jürgen Kuczynski , Gossweiler emphasized the central role of the big banks in German finance capital. He advocated the thesis that in monopoly capital a distinction must be made between camps within industry and finance capital. A camp that was more anti-Soviet and pro-American was opposed to an anti-Soviet and anti-American camp. Conflicts within the Nazi movement, such as Gregor Strasser's departure from all party offices in 1932, Gossweiler accordingly interpreted as an expression of struggles for direction between rival capitalist camps. His thesis that Strasser was a paid agent for IG Farben was rejected in research. Andreas Dorpalen points out that Gossweiler's theses were based on unsubstantiated assumptions and conclusions.

In a lecture at the International Seminar of Communist and Workers' Parties in Brussels in 1994, Gossweiler declared "anti-Stalinism" to be the "main obstacle to the unity of all anti-imperialist forces and the communist movement". He defended Stalinism and stated that the Stalinist purges of the 1930s had saved the Soviet Union from a “ fifth column ” and thus secured victory in World War II . The article was published in the Weißenseer Blätter , which had been disseminating "prostalinist history versions" since the end of 1990, and was also criticized by their readership.

Fonts

  • Big banks, industrial monopolies and the state. Economy and Politics of State Monopoly Capitalism in Germany 1914–1932 , Berlin 1971; Papyrossa, Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-89438-519-4 .
  • together with Dietrich Eichholtz (Hrsg.): Faschismusforschung. Positions, problems, polemics. Berlin 1980.
  • Capital, Reichswehr and NSDAP 1919–1924. Berlin 1982 (new edition: Cologne 2011), ISBN 978-3894384555
  • The Röhm affair. Background - connections - effects. Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1983. At the same time in 1963 as a dissertation at the Humboldt University under the title: The role of monopoly capital in bringing about the Röhm affair .
  • The putsch that wasn't: the Röhm affair in 1934 and the struggle for direction in German fascism , PapyRossa Cologne 2009. New edition of The Röhm affair from 1983.
  • together with Klaus Drobisch and Dietrich Eichholtz : Fascism in Germany, Fascism of the Present. Cologne 1983.
  • Essays on Fascism. Berlin 1986.
  • The Strasser legend. Dealing with a chapter of German fascism . Berlin 1994, ISBN 978-3-929161-10-6 .
  • Against revisionism. Munich 1997, ISBN 978-3-00-002404-7
  • The Taubenfuß-Chronik or Die Khruschtschowiade 1953-1964 (Vol. I), Munich 2002, ISBN 978-3000087738
  • The Taubenfuß-Chronik or Die Khruschtschowiade 1957-1976 (Vol. II), Munich 2005, ISBN 978-3000155178
  • together with Peter Hacks : Der Briefwechsel 1996–2003, in: Peter Hacks: In the end they understand it. Politische Schriften 1988–2003 , André Thiele (Ed.), Eulenspiegel, Berlin 2005.
  • Anti-Stalinism - the main obstacle to the unity of all anti-imperialist forces and the communist movement. Speech by comrade Dr. Kurt Gossweiler (Germany) at the international seminar of communist and workers' parties in Brussels on May 1, 1994 , Ernst-Thälmann-Verlag, Berlin 2005.
  • together with Dieter Itzerott : The development of the SED . In: Under fire. The counter-revolution in the GDR. , Offensiv, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-00-026316-3 .

literature

  • Erich Buchholz u. a. (Ed.): And what was it really? Festschrift for Kurt Gossweiler on the occasion of his 90th birthday. Independent publisher Frank Flegel, Hanover 2007, ISBN 978-3-00-022827-8 . ( Full text online )
  • Eike Hennig : Civil society and fascism in Germany. A research report . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1977.
  • Lothar Mertens : Lexicon of the GDR historians. Biographies and bibliographies on the historians from the German Democratic Republic . KG Saur, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-598-11673-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Georg G. Iggers (ed.): The GDR historical science as a research problem. Historical Journal, Supplement, NF, Volume 27, 1998, ISBN 3-486-64426-2 . at Google Books
  2. ^ Kurt Gossweiler: Farewell. In memory of Hanfried Müller. In: weissenseerblaetter.de. Retrieved April 2, 2015 (originally published in "offensiv 2/2009").
  3. ^ A b Ian Kershaw : The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation . 4th edition, Bloomsbury. London 2015, p. 59.
  4. ↑ Preliminary remark by the publisher . In: The Röhm Affair. Background - connections - effects. Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1983, p. 5.
  5. ↑ Richard Saage : Fascism: Conceptions and Historical Contexts. An introduction . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2007, p. 41.
  6. ↑ Richard Saage : Fascism: Conceptions and Historical Contexts. An introduction . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2007, pp. 41–47.
  7. ↑ Quoted from Heinrich August Winkler : Revolution, Staat, Faschismus. On the revision of historical materialism . Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1978, p. 85; Ian Kershaw : The Nazi State. An overview of historical interpretations and controversies. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1988, p. 94 f.
  8. ↑ Joachim Käppner: Frozen history. Fascism and Holocaust as reflected in the history of science and history propaganda in the GDR. Results Verlag, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-87916-055-4 , p. 291.
  9. ↑ Joachim Käppner: Frozen history. Fascism and Holocaust as reflected in the history of science and history propaganda in the GDR. Results Verlag, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-87916-055-4 , p. 172.
  10. ^ Dietrich Eichholtz: History of the German War Economy 1939-1945 . Volume 1. 1939-1941 . 3rd edition, KG Saur, Munich 2003, p. 153.
  11. ^ Andreas Dorpalen: German History in Marxist Perspective: The East German Approach . Wayne State UP, Detroit 1985, p. 333.
  12. ^ Andreas Dorpalen: German History in Marxist Perspective: The East German Approach . Wayne State UP, Detroit 1985, p. 387.
  13. ^ Henry Ashby Turner : German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler . Oxford UP, Oxford 1985, p. 459.
  14. ^ Andreas Dorpalen: German History in Marxist Perspective: The East German Approach . Wayne State UP, Detroit 1985, p. 406.
  15. ^ Rainer Eckert : Structures, surrounding organizations and history of the PDS . In: Horch & Guck 15 (1995), p. 3.
  16. ↑ Manfred Behrend: Weißenseer Irrwege . In: Christoph Jünke: The long shadow of Stalinism: Socialism and democracy yesterday and today . ISP, Cologne 2007, pp. 107-122.
personal data
SURNAME Gossweiler, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian
DATE OF BIRTH November 5, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart , German Empire
DATE OF DEATH 15th May 2017
Place of death Berlin , Germany