Kurt Landau (politician)

Kurt Landau (born January 29, 1903 in Vienna , † 1937 in Spain ) was a publicist, an Austrian communist and supporter of the International Left Opposition . He also published under the pseudonyms Agricola, Wolf Bertram and Spectator.

Life

Kurt Landau was born on January 29, 1903 in Vienna as the son of the wine merchant Abraham Simon (1872–1940 murdered in the concentration camp) and Rosa Feldmann (1878–1935) and had a brother Alfred (* 1914). He studied in Vienna and was a member of the Communist Party of Austria from 1921 to 1926 and chairman of the section in Währing . Since 1923 he was in a relationship with Julia Lipschutz (born 1895 or 1905, died after 1984), who became his wife under the name Katia Landau and remained his colleague until the end. He defended Leon Trotsky and his positions against those of the party line and became one of the central figures of the opposition to the slowly forming Stalinism . In 1927 he and his colleagues were expelled from the party. In the same year he published the brochure Essence and History of Anarcho-Communism in Austria . From 1929 he was in Berlin with Katia Landau and a member of the Lenin League . He became an employee of Trotsky, but soon distanced himself from him. The Landau couple went into exile in Paris on March 17, 1933 and were heavily involved in the Funke group , which was also known as the Landau group .

At the beginning of November 1936 Kurt and Katia Landau went to Barcelona, ​​where they worked for the POUM . Kurt Landau was the author of the brochure The German Revolution of 1918 and the Spanish Revolution of 1936 and worked for the party newspaper La Batalla and the German broadcasts of Radio POUM. He evaded arrest by the police and the Guardia de Asalto on June 17, 1937 and found refuge first in the headquarters of the CNT and then in the house of POUM sympathizer Carlota Duràn.

He was kidnapped in Barcelona on September 23, 1937 and has been considered missing ever since. He was probably kidnapped and murdered by NKVD agents or German Communist Party members on orders. However, there is no indication of exactly how and when he perished. There is a rumor that Walter Ulbricht was involved in the murder or gave the order for it. Katia Landau, who was also arrested, suspected that her husband had been deported to the Soviet Union . Katia Landau almost "disappeared" too, but Otto Bauer and Friedrich Adler protested to the Comintern , as did Marceau Pivert from Paris and obtained their release. At the same time, she went on a hunger strike in the Carcel de Mujeres women's prison in Barcelona .

Kurt Landau's brother Alfred Landau was a socialist student leader in Vienna and later a high functionary of the UN . Katia Landau will marry the Spanish naval officer Benjamin Balboa (1901–1976), who was instrumental in 1936 in preventing a large part of the Spanish navy from joining Franco's coup. Both will go into exile in Mexico in 1940 . Katia Landau will campaign for the memory of Kurt Landau until 1984. In 1984 Julia Katia Landau del Balboa is lost.

Fonts

• Nature and history of anarcho-communism in Austria. Concluding remarks on the factional struggles in the Communist Party of Austria . Workers' standpoint group, Vienna 1927.

literature

• Hans Schafranek : The short life of Kurt Landau. An Austrian communist as a victim of the Stalinist secret police. Publishing house for social criticism , Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-900351-90-2 .
• Hans Landauer in collaboration with Erich Hackl : Lexicon of the Austrian fighters in Spain 1936-1939. Theodor Kramer Gesellschaft , Vienna 2003 (improved and increased new edition 2008).
• Franz Menges:  Landau, Kurt. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 13, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-428-00194-X , p. 485 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Marcel Bois: Communists against Hitler and Stalin. The left opposition of the KPD in the Weimar Republic. Essen 2014. ISBN 978-3-8375-1282-3

Web links

• Literature by and about Kurt Landau in the catalog of the German National Library
• Landau, Kurt - Austrians for Spain's Freedom 1936-1939. Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance
• Kurt Landau by Hans Schafranek, published in the Cahiers Léon Trotsky N ° 5 (janvier-mars 1980) (French)
• Kurt Landau Also known as Agricola, Wolf Bertram, and Spectator by Pierre Broué (1988) (English)
• Kurt Landau in the Marxists Internet Archive (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Forsyth, Louise., Röder, Werner., Schneider, Dieter Marc., Strauss, Herbert A .: Politics, Economy, Public Life. Berlin, ISBN 978-3-11-097028-9 .
2. ^ Pierre Broué: Kurt Landau (1988). Retrieved June 21, 2020 . 
3. ↑ Katia Landau: Stalinism in Spain (Part 2) - RH. Retrieved June 21, 2020 . 
4. ^ Kurt Landau: Essence and history of anarcho-communism in Austria: concluding remarks on the factional struggles in the Communist Party of Austria (1927). Workers' standpoint group, Vienna 1989, OCLC 165520830 .