Lola Zahn

Helene "Lola" Zahn (born as Helene Golodetz August 9, 1910 in Hamburg ; died February 17, 1998 in Berlin ) was a German lawyer and economist who mainly dealt with socialist economic theories. Zahn, a communist since her school days , had an eventful life: in 1933 she fled from the National Socialists to France, and in 1940 to the USA. After her return to the German Democratic Republic after 1945, she worked as a professor at the University of Rostock and the Humboldt University in Berlin . However, after disputes with the SED regime, her employment relationship was terminated in 1957.

Life

Lola Zahn was born as Helene Golodetz on August 9, 1910 in Hamburg. She came from a Jewish family who immigrated to Germany from Tsarist Russia and was therefore stateless . Her father Lazar Golodetz was a chemist and businessman. She attended the left-liberal Lichtwark School in Hamburg. Already in her school days she was involved in the communist youth movement. Zahn studied law from 1929 to 1932 in Hamburg , Freiburg and Heidelberg . In 1932 she was not admitted to the legal traineeship examination due to her statelessness; an application for naturalization was rejected because of her political views. In 1933, after the National Socialists came to power , she emigrated to France in order to avoid both anti-Semitic and anti-communist agitation and persecution.

Even in exile, she continued to work for the KPD ; here she acted in a circle around the writer Anna Seghers and the journalist Egon Erwin Kisch . Her commitment brought her problems here too, however, and she only escaped expulsion through the engagement of a professor friend: Célestin Bouglé got involved with the interior ministry for the young student and made her his doctoral candidate. Despite this, she was briefly imprisoned in the Petite Rocquette women's prison in Paris. But she was able to continue her studies at the Sorbonne in Paris, where she received her doctorate in 1937 under the supervision of Maurice Halbwachs with a comparative study of the planned economy in the Soviet Union and the New Deal in the USA. Bouglé also owed her participation in discussions with intellectuals such as Jean-Richard Bloch , Georges Friedmann and Raymond Aron , which Bouglé regularly gathered around him in small groups. After completing her doctorate, Lola Zahn received two research grants from the University Council's Fund for Social Research in 1937 and 1938, which enabled her to continue studying at the Institute for Statistics in Paris.

After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Zahn's husband Ralph was interned in southern France; To begin with, Zahn remained alone in Paris with their son. When the Germans attacked in the west in 1940 and advanced to France, Zahn fled to southern France by bicycle in June 1940. From there she managed to escape to the United States with her husband in 1941, supported by Heinrich Mann , among others . In New York she moved in a committed circle around the communist journalist Gerhart Eisler . Zahn worked from 1942 to 1946 as the editor of the magazine The German American published by Eisler , to which the writer Grete Weiskopf also contributed. She then worked as a statistician in the social services of the psychiatric department at Bellevue Hospital in New York.

In December 1946, Zahn was finally able to remigrate to Germany . She came to the Soviet occupation zone , where she initially held lectures on political economy at the University of Rostock as a professor with a teaching position for economic planning . After completing an SED training course, she had held a teaching position at the Law Faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin from 1949 , where she was now given the opportunity to do her habilitation . In 1951 she was finally appointed to a professorship for political economy at the Humboldt University. In 1952 she was appointed vice dean at the Law Faculty of Humboldt University, and in 1955 she was given a full teaching position in political economy.

After the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), Nikita Khrushchev , on the XX. At the CPSU party congress condemned the crimes of Stalinism and thus tried to initiate a socialist reform policy, Lola Zahn was again in distress in the GDR. In the wake of the party congress, a discussion developed in East Germany about various measures of the SED regime, in which Zahn also participated. Her main concern was freedom of teaching and research, in which the SED had repeatedly intervened. However, the leadership of the GDR was neither ready for talks nor for reforms and tried to switch off the discussions as quickly as possible.

In this context, Lola Zahn also came under fire. The SED education functionary Kurt Hager accused her of “conciliatoryism” in 1957, whereupon she was reprimanded - allegedly for “insufficient information” in her lectures. Shortly thereafter, she submitted an application to relinquish her position as head of department, allegedly for “health reasons” and “in mutual agreement” with the university management. The request was granted. A short time later, Zahn's employment relationship with the university was terminated and her professor's salary was cut by half.

From then on, Zahn was denied a new position at a university. She remained a housewife for a year and then briefly worked for the Ministry of Finance. In 1961 she was employed at least at the Institute for Economics of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin , where she was able to continue her academic work. In 1970 she was even honored with the Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze. In 1971 she finally retired. Until her death in 1998, she participated in public discussions and published works on utopian early socialism and edited works by early socialist theorists Henri de Saint-Simon , Charles Fourier and Robert Owen .

Fonts

As an author:

• L'Economie planifiée en URSS et l'Economie dirigée aux États-Unis. Étude comparative . Paris 1937 (dissertation).
• Utopian socialism and economic criticism. An economic historical study of the theoretical sources of Marxism . Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1984.

As editor and translator:

• Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon : Selected Writings . Berlin 1977.
• Charles Fourier : Economic-Philosophical Writings: A Selection of Texts . Translated and edited with an introduction by Lola Zahn. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1980.
• Robert Owen : A New Approach to Society: Selected Texts . Edited and introduced by Lola Zahn. Translated by Regine Thiele and Lola Zahn. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1989.

literature

• Matthias Glasow: Helene (Lola) Zahn . In: Biographical Lexicon for Mecklenburg . Vol. 8, Schwerin 2016, ISBN 978-3-7950-3756-7 , pp. 332-335.
• Wolfgang Herzberg: Lola Zahn dies - the difficult life of a Jew and communist. From Lichtwark to Saint Simon . In: New Germany . February 26, 1998, p. 14.
• Robert Katzenstein : Lola Zahn (1910–1998). An eventful life has come to an end . In: Utopia creative . Issue 91/92, 1998, pp. 167-170 ( digitized version , PDF).
• Kristin Kleibert: The Law Faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin in transition - The years 1948 to 1951 . Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-8305-1824-2 , pp. 143-149 ( digitized version ).
• Ulla Ruschhaupt: Careers of women in teaching and research at the Humboldt University in Berlin 1945 . In: On the history of women's studies and the careers of women scientists at German universities (= Center for transdisciplinary gender studies : Bulletin. No. 23). Office of the ZiF, Berlin 2001, pp. 67–86, here p. 74 f. ( PDF ).
• Barbara Link: Tooth, Lola. In: Harald Hagemann , Claus-Dieter Krohn (ed.): Biographical handbook of German-speaking economic emigration after 1933. Volume 2: Leichter branch. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11284-X , pp. 762-764.
• Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.2. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 1273

Web links

• Literature by and about Lola Zahn in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry on Lola Zahn in the Catalogus Professorum Rostochiensium
• CV on the website of the Humboldt University of Berlin

Remarks

1. ↑ Kleibert, The legal faculty of the HU Berlin in transition , p. 144.
2. ↑ On Lola Zahn's exile in Paris until 1938, cf. Lola Zahn, my Paris professors. In: Die Weltbühne , May 23, 1989, issue 21, pp. 643–645.
3. ↑ On Flucht Kleibert, The Law Faculty of the HU Berlin in transition , p. 145.
4. ↑ On German American and Lola Zahn's collaboration on this journal, cf. "An office on Broadway". Conversation with Lore Krüger about emigration to the USA and the anti-fascist magazine The German American. In: Junge Welt , July 2, 2005 ( online ; PDF; 33 kB).
5. ↑ See entry in the Catalogus Professorum Rostochiensium .
6. ↑ On the habilitation, von der Ruschhaupt, Karrieren von Frauen , p. 74, note 15, nothing knows, cf. Katzenstein, Lola Zahn , p. 168, and the résumé  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the website of the Humboldt University.  
7. ↑ On the difficulties surrounding Zahn's appointment, Kleibert, The legal faculty of the HU Berlin in transition , pp. 146–148.
8. ↑ Quotations from Herzberg, Lola Zahn died , p. 14, and Ruschhaupt, Karrieren von Frauen , p. 75. Also Kleibert, The legal faculty of HU Berlin in transition , p. 148f.
9. ↑ Neues Deutschland , July 31, 1970, p. 2