Malke Schorr

Hertha Müller is a redirect to this article. The German writer see under Herta Müller without "h"

Malke Schorr (alias Hertha Müller ; December 27, 1885 in Lipsko , Austria-Hungary - October 15, 1961 in Vienna ) was a Jewish - Austrian communist activist . From 1925 she headed the Austrian Red Aid and lived in exile in Moscow during the Nazi era .

life and work

Schorr was born in a Jewish Orthodox family in Lipsko , Galicia , and grew up with ten siblings in the kitchen and back room. Their youth was marked by poverty. “Working from home from the age of eight. After the death of her father, the girl is to be married off by her family - according to the Grand Rabbi. But instead of getting engaged, she goes to Schiller's Robber ”. She came into contact with the labor movement in Lemberg when she was seventeen. Enthusiastic about the goals of socialism and convinced of the necessity of class struggle, she joined the Jewish socialist movement Poale Zion a year later . She created her own group of girls there: "Because I told myself that in the company of men, as I still felt myself back then, girls don't feel free enough to express their opinions."

Late in the evening, after work, she promoted the union, went from house to house, wrote essays on the Communist Manifesto or on one of the oldest demands of the labor movement , the eight-hour day .

During a demonstration for the Russian Revolution in 1905 , she became acquainted with the brutality of the Austrian law enforcement officers. Schorr emigrated from Lemberg not because of the police, but because of the conservative attitude of her family. She literally fled to Vienna. “In the suitcase a photo of Karl Marx . Two names in her notebook: Josef Kainz and Viktor Adler . "

In Vienna

Already in Lviv Schorr belonged to the revolutionary wing of the Poale Zion , in Vienna she cultivated contacts with revolutionaries from Russia and a personal friendship with a Russian student with whom she studied texts by Marx and Engels three times a week. She passed on her knowledge and attitudes to fellow hat workers whom she organized in a union. That kept costing them their jobs. In 1914 she was appalled by the Social Democrats' breach of word and their war-affirming policies and joined left-wing groups who fought against the war. Later she wrote about this time: "During the war I came repeatedly to the Favoritner workers' home, where many women opposed to the war came together, especially among the women." She was arrested and expelled from the January strike in 1918. However, comrades hid her from the police and even from hiding she organized help for arrested strike leaders. In the Jewish Workers' Party, the conflict between the social democratic and communist wings came to a head after the war, which led to a split in 1920. Schorr then stayed in the communist wing, which failed to join the Comintern in the following years . Together with Hersch Nagler, Alexander Serpow and Michael Kohn-Eber , however, she joined the KPÖ around 1919 , in which she remained politically organized from the end of the left wing of the Poale Zion in 1922.

Austrian Red Aid

She quickly became one of the leading cadres of the KPÖ, was elected to the Central Committee in 1923, took over the management of women's work and increasingly oriented her work towards the organization of solidarity . In 1925 she became co-founder and director of the Austrian Red Aid (ÖRH). This institution was quickly seen as an example of a nonsectarian alliance policy at a time of fierce factional disputes. The aim of the Red Aid was to support political refugees, especially from the Balkans and fascist Italy , who sought asylum in Austria. Because already in the 1920s there were fascist regimes in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Italy. She organized modest support for the refugees and fought for their right to asylum from the White Terror . Despite a temporary ban and official harassment, the Red Aid quickly developed into the most influential mass organization in the vicinity of the KPÖ. The communist lawyer Egon Schönhof , who himself fought several times for the right to asylum and against the threatened deportation of communists who had fled from the Balkans, played an essential role in the Red Aid .

The consequences of the Schattendorfer judgments , which led to spontaneous strikes and mass rallies, became a practical test for the organization . “After police attacks with bare sabers, the crowd stormed the Palace of Justice and set the hated symbol of class justice on fire. Now 600 police officers armed with Mannlicher rifles opened fire on the crowd on the orders of the Christian Social Chancellor, Prelate Ignatz Seipel. Fleeing workers were gunned down like chickens. 86 dead workers and four dead police officers as well as over 1,000 wounded were the result of two days of bloody massacres. Over 1,300 workers were arrested. “The Red Aid became the central collection point for eyewitness reports of the events and had to take care of the victims and their families legally and financially. 60 children, whose parents were killed or imprisoned in the Viennese fighting, found temporary refuge in children's recreation homes run by the German Red Aid in Elgersburg and Worpswede . Since the mayor of Vienna, Karl Seitz, forbade the organization from collecting donations, Soviet and German trade unionists helped.

“In 1928 the following were supported: 220 political prisoners and 68 families, in 1929 - 257 political prisoners and 58 families. The amount of 29,270 schillings was spent on these victims of class justice in the form of legal protection and support. At the same time, 1020 political emigrants were supported with the amount of 72,427 Schillings. "

"The office of the Austrian Red Aid was only located at Schlösselgasse 12 and in 1929 moved to Lerchengasse 13a, also in the 8th district of Vienna - right next to the district secretariat of the Josefstadt Social Democrats in number 13. [2] The number of members rose to 4,000 by 1931 and to 4,400 paying members by autumn 1932. ”In addition to 2,100 communists and 1,200 non-party members, 1,100 social democrats made up a quarter of the membership in 1932.

International Red Aid

Schorr quickly set up an international network of solidarity and was himself appointed to the Executive Committee of International Red Aid , which was founded in Moscow in 1922 as a political counterpart to the Red Cross . Subsequently, she also worked on the campaigns for the rescue of Sacco and Vanzetti , of Dimitrov and Thälmann .

A solidarity campaign by the RHÖ for the Scottsboro Boys and against state lynching and racial discrimination in the southern states of the USA met with great interest from the Austrian workers in 1931/1932 . Eight African Americans between the ages of 14 and 20 had been sentenced to death on false and extorted charges of allegedly raping two white prostitutes . Schorr organized information events and campaigns, for example on the occasion of a ceremony in the George Washington Hof , a community building, to which the US envoy appeared alongside thousands of participants: "We distributed illegal leaflets, and during the celebration, when the American envoy appeared, A truck drove up from which 8 young people masked as negroes shouted slogans for the release of the Scottsboro negroes. This lively agitation made a great impression. All Viennese newspapers and even foreign newspapers have reported on it, ”said Malke Schorr.

The organizational strength of the Austrian Red Aid , built up by Schorr, proved itself from 1933, when the corporate state was established in Austria and the Red Aid was banned on May 20, 1933, but still remained underground and was able to help numerous comrades and their families. However, all activities of the Red Aid were massively pursued by the Nazi judiciary and resulted in numerous death sentences. For example, six workers of the shipyard Korneuburg were sentenced to death for the collection of donations for the Red Aid and 1943 with the guillotine executed.

Return to Vienna

The Nazi regime survived Malke Schorr in Moscow. After the liberation of Vienna she returned to Austria and, now at the age of 60, took over the press service of the KPÖ . A memory report reads: “I can still remember when I was a little boy on many weekends with my mother, who knew Malke Schorr from the Volksstimme editorial team, to Hietzing with the former Stadtbahn (now U4) Villa made a pilgrimage and got a snack from the old lady and played cards with her. After a stroke, Malke Schorr could only communicate with us by playing dominoes. "

Appreciations

"A big heart and a clever head, that was what made this woman, who wasn't 'pretty' at all, so classy and attractive."

- Jenö Kostmann : Obituary in the popular voice

criticism

Herbert Wehner describes in his memoirs that a letter from Schorr, in which she described a conversation with the German KPD functionary Hermann Schubert , is said to have represented the starting point for his arrest, conviction and execution. Schorr is said to have strongly criticized Schubert: "Malke Schorr insisted that measures should be taken against Schubert who dared to put Lenin and Trotsky on the same level!"

Publications

• Austrian Red Aid . Appendix: How does the proletarian behave before E. Schönhof's court. - Vienna: Austrian Red Aid, 1926
• Workers murder in Voitsberg, Fascist acquittal in Graz , Vienna: Austrian Red Aid, 1932

Under the pseudonym Hertha Müller:

• The working people of the world defend the working class of Germany: 14 million red helpers on the solidarity front , Zurich: MOPR-Verlag, 1934
• Gallows in Austria: The heroic uprising of the Austrian proletariat , Zurich [u. a.]: MOPR-Verlag, 1934

Some pamphlets and posters published by the Red Aid under the direction of Schorr can be found in the Austrian National Library .

swell

• Nikolaus Brauns : The Red Aid of Austria. At the side of political prisoners and refugees , accessed April 19, 2015
• Ilse Korotin, Karin Nusko (ed.): “… Experienced enough history.” Hilde Koplenig (1904–2002). biography. New results in women's biography research, Vol 6. Vienna: Praesens Verlag, 2008. ISBN 978-3-7069-0460-5

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} KomInform ( Memento of the original from April 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Women of the KPÖ: Malke Schorr (1885–1961), accessed on April 17, 2015 
2. ↑ Mario Memoli: "... our lot is closely linked to that of the international proletariat!" - The Poale Zion in the Austrian council movement . In: Anna Leder, Mario Memoli, Andreas Pavlic (Hrsg.): The council movement in Austria. From social self-defense to concrete utopia . Mandelbaum, Vienna 2019, ISBN 978-3-85476-680-3 , p. 145-165 .
3. Jump up ↑ Walter Baier : Unentwegegt Bewegungste , The Communists 1918–2008, ed. by the national board of the KPÖ, accessed on April 18, 2015
4. ^ Nikolaus Brauns : The Red Aid Austria. At the side of political prisoners and refugees , accessed April 19, 2015
5. ^ Franz Wager: The International Red Aid. Your goals and tasks , Moscow 1931, 37. Here quoted. according to Brauns.
6. ^ Nikolaus Brauns : The Red Aid Austria. At the side of political prisoners and refugees , accessed April 19, 2015
7. ^ Nikolaus Brauns : The Red Aid Austria. At the side of political prisoners and refugees , accessed April 19, 2015
8. ↑ Camera Humana: What have they done !? Why six Korneuburgs were murdered by the Nazis ( Memento of the original from April 27, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , March 7, 2013
9. ↑ Michael Graber: Heart and Brain of the Red Aid , website of the KPÖ , December 27, 2010
10. ^ Herbert Wehner: Memories , Bonn 1957, 159
11. ^ Austrian National Library , keyword Malke Schorr, accessed on April 19, 2015
12. ^ Austrian union catalog , keyword Malke Schorr, accessed on April 19, 2015