Max Kahane (journalist)

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Max Leon Kahane (code name: Maximilian Kohn ; born January 31, 1910 in Hanover ; † August 21, 2004 in Berlin ) was a German journalist ( Berliner Zeitung , Neues Deutschland and Horizont, etc.).

The communist , who emigrated in 1933, fought against fascism at a young age with the International Brigades and the Resistance .

In the Soviet occupation zone and later in the GDR , he made a journalistic career as an SED member. He was u. a. Rapporteur at the main war criminal trial (1945/46) in Nuremberg, editor-in-chief of the General German Intelligence Service , special correspondent at the Eichmann trial (1961) in Jerusalem and foreign correspondent in Eastern Europe, South Asia and Latin America.

He has received several awards for his services in the GDR, most recently with the honor bar for the Patriotic Order of Merit .

Life

Origin and education

Max Kahane came from a Jewish family in the Galician region of Lemberg ( Austria-Hungary ). He was born in 1910 as the son of the businessman Jakob Kahane and his wife Krainzi, b. Litower, born in Hanover in the Prussian province of the same name , grew up in Berlin from 1911 . Kahane first attended an elementary school or the Jewish boys' school there .

As a youth in the Weimar Republic (1925) he became a member of the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD). After initially completing an apprenticeship as a goldsmith , he passed his A- levels at the Karl-Marx-Gymnasium in Berlin-Neukölln in working class courses . From 1931 he began to study law at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin .

Emigration and Spain fighters

In 1932 he became a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and did illegal political work after the National Socialists came to power . In July 1933 he was at the University expelled and emigrated in September 1933 in Czechoslovakia to Prague , where he made further political work. He was u. a. Editor of a book about the "Prison in III. Rich".

From January 1938 to February 1939, Kahane fought as an anti-aircraft soldier in the Spanish Civil War as an interbrigadist on the side of the Spanish Republic . Like other former Spanish fighters (including Kurt Julius Goldstein , Erich Henschke , Georg Stibi ), he occupied key positions in the state media in his later journalistic career. The promotion of veterans by the GDR was also visible in other cultural areas, for example with Willi Bredel , Walter Janka and Erich Weinert .

Internment and Resistance

After the victory of Franquism in 1939, Kahane fled to France . There - before the Second World War - he was interned in various camps (including Gurs and Le Vernet ) from February 1939 as a communist, from September 1939 as an enemy foreigner and from May 1940 as a Jew . He managed to escape from the Valery August deportation camp in 1942, and then from Uriage after being detained again.

Propaganda work for the KPD followed in 1943/44 . a. in Vichy France, he wrote leaflets and worked for the German-speaking Resistance newspapers Soldat am Mediterranean and Unser Vaterland . Kahane joined the French Resistance in the Bouches-du-Rhône department . He initially worked for Mouvement Ouvriers International (MOI) and then for the Forces françaises de l'intérieur (FFI). As "Capitaine" (captain) he took part in 1944 in the liberation of the southern French city of Marseille . In 1944/45 he was commissioner of the Comité "Allemagne libre" pour l'Ouest (Committee Free Germany for the West, CALPO) in German prisoner-of-war camps .

GDR and journalistic activity

In June 1945 he returned to East Berlin in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ). There "the occupying power paved [him and others] the way for a journalistic career". He became an employee of the Soviet News Office (SNB) in Berlin-Weißensee , was a. a. Rapporteur in the Nuremberg trial against the main war criminals (1945/46) and was "always under the supervision of a Soviet superior" who was responsible for the release of reports. The German employees were subsequently taken over by the General German Intelligence Service (ADN), which Kahane co-founded in 1946: Kurt Koszyk sees a school effect here. Besides Otto Schreiber, Kahane was deputy editor-in-chief of ADN in East Berlin. All leadership positions around Georg Hansen were filled with members of the SED at the time. In the course of the opening of three correspondent offices in friendly socialist countries in 1948 (Romania, Hungary and Czechoslovakia) he went to Prague for a short time. Then he returned to his original position. Around 1950 he stepped "more to the fore" due to the harassed editor-in-chief Hansen. Kahane subsequently rose to editor-in-chief with Günter Siemund , later also Heinz Schindler , and became deputy director of ADN in 1950. Michael Minholz and Uwe Stirnberg assume that leaders like Kahane were "in important cases the direct contact [of the editorial staff] and were in contact with" the press office or the central committee of the SED ; the management could, so to speak, “reinsure” itself. In 1952, Kahane was denounced in connection with the Prague Slansky trial because of contacts with Otto Katz and was later replaced.

Kahane, who was a member of the SED from 1946 , attended a course at the party college "Karl Marx" in 1952/53 . From 1953 to 1955 he was Otto Schreiber's successor and a member of the board of the GDR professional organization, the Association of the German Press .

From 1955 to 1957 he was deputy editor-in-chief of the Berliner Zeitung , which was subordinate to the Central Committee (ZK) of the SED .

As the permanent foreign correspondent of the central organ of the SED, Neues Deutschland (ND), he worked from 1957 to 1960 at the request of editor-in-chief Hermann Axen and following a decision (1956) by the secretariat of the Central Committee of the SED in New Delhi (India). According to the historian Johannes H. Voigt , Kahane was a brief "reinforcement" for the "GDR foreign propaganda". Kahane communicated with the Central Committee through Kurt Hager and Peter Florin and delivered the “ideologically 'correct' background reports” there. In some cases, during interviews with communist functionaries, agreements were made among the socialist journalists in order to avoid accusations of partiality. In the course of the border conflict between India and the People's Republic of China , Kahane spoke out internally to the Central Committee in 1959 for the interests of Red China. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the GDR was interested in copies of Kahane's political reports at this time.

In 1961 he was together with Gerhard Leo ND special correspondent at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem (Israel). In an ND article published at the time, he expressed the assumption that the head of the Federal Chancellery, Hans Globke , whose Nazi past was also discussed in the former Federal Republic, "deliberately" because of supposed economic-military "obligations" (Peter Krause) Israel would be kept out of the process vis-à-vis the Federal Republic. Furthermore, he criticized the reparations payments made by the FRG, which he indirectly placed in the context of bribery . In the same year he was also a special correspondent in Belgrade (Yugoslavia). In 1962/63 he became ND correspondent for Latin America in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). From 1965 to 1968 he was chief commentator of the ND.

From November 1968 to 1980 he was chief commentator and member of the board of the weekly foreign policy newspaper Horizont . In 1985 he became a freelancer. In 1987 he retired.

family

Max Kahane, who last lived in Berlin, was the second marriage to the painter and graphic artist Doris Kahane (1920–1976), b. Machol, married, whom he met in France. Their children are the graphic designer André Dominique Kahane (* 1948), the film director Peter Kahane (* 1949) and the journalist Anetta Kahane (* 1954).

Awards

literature

Web links

  • Max Kahane. (PDF; 286 kB) In: Searching for traces: fellow students from 1933. October 15-20, 2001 at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, October 5, 2001, pp. 38–39 .;

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Knut Bergbauer, Stefanie Schüler-Springorum : We are young, the world is open. P. 121.
  2. ↑ Max Kahane. (PDF; 286 kB) In: Searching for traces: fellow students from 1933. October 15-20, 2001 at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, October 5, 2001, p. 38 , accessed on August 13, 2016 .
  3. ^ Arnold Krammer : The Cult of the Spanish Civil War in East Germany . In. Journal of Contemporary History 39 (2004) 4, pp. 531-560, here: p. 550.
  4. ↑ See Dietrich Briesemeister : Spain from a German perspective. German-Spanish cultural relations yesterday and today (= supplements to Iberoromania . Vol. 20). Edited by Harald Wentzlaff-Eggebert , Niemeyer, Tübingen 2004, ISBN 3-484-52920-2 , p. 127.
  5. ^ Josie McLellan : Antifascism and memory in East Germany. Remembering the International brigades 1945–1989 . Clarendon Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-927626-9 , pp. 47 f.
  6. ↑ Kurt Pätzold : The fairy tale of anti-Semitism in the GDR: with the book that accompanies the traveling exhibition “We didn't have that! - Anti-Semitism in the GDR ”begins a new chapter in anti-GDR propaganda . Edition Ost, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-360-02033-8 , p. 34.
  7. ↑ a b c Peter Strunk : Censorship and censors. Media control and propaganda politics under Soviet occupation in Germany (= Edition Education and Science . Vol. 2). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-05-002850-5 , p. 119. [1]
  8. ↑ Michael Minholz, Uwe Stirnberg: The General German Intelligence Service (ADN). Good news for the SED (= communication and politics . Vol. 27). Saur, Munich a. a. 1995, ISBN 3-598-20557-0 , p. 80.
  9. ↑ See Kurt Koszyk : Press Policy for Germans 1945–1949 (= History of the German Press . Part 4). Colloquium-Verlag Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-7678-0663-0 , p. 346.
  10. ↑ Michael Minholz, Uwe Stirnberg: The General German Intelligence Service (ADN). Good news for the SED , p. 96.
  11. ↑ Michael Minholz, Uwe Stirnberg: The General German Intelligence Service (ADN). Good news for the SED , p. 281.
  12. ↑ a b Karin Hartewig: Returned. The history of the Jewish communists in the GDR. Böhlau, Cologne a. a. 2000, ISBN 3-412-02800-2 , p. 234, fn. 143 (short curriculum vitae).
  13. ↑ Michael Minholz, Uwe Stirnberg: The General German Intelligence Service (ADN). Good news for the SED , p. 101.
  14. ↑ Michael Minholz, Uwe Stirnberg: The General German Intelligence Service (ADN). Good news for the SED , p. 111, fn. 14
  15. ↑ a b Annette Leo . Bernd-Rainer Barth :  Kahane, Max Leon . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  16. ↑ Michael Minholz, Uwe Stirnberg: The General German Intelligence Service (ADN). Good news for the SED , p. 64.
  17. ↑ Michael Minholz, Uwe Stirnberg: The General German Intelligence Service (ADN). Good news for the SED , p. 171.
  18. ^ A b Johannes H. Voigt : The India policy of the GDR. From the beginning to the recognition (1952–1972) (= Stuttgart historical research. Volume 5). Böhlau, Cologne a. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-412-18106-2 , p. 207.
  19. ^ Johannes H. Voigt : The India policy of the GDR. P. 164.
  20. ^ Johannes H. Voigt : The India policy of the GDR. P. 162.
  21. ^ Johannes H. Voigt : The India policy of the GDR. P. 300.
  22. ^ Johannes H. Voigt : The India policy of the GDR. P. 213.
  23. ↑ Peter Krause: The Eichmann process in the German press (= scientific series of the Fritz Bauer Institute. Volume 8). Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main u. a. 2002, ISBN 3-593-37001-8 , p. 242.
  24. ↑ Helmut Caspar: Risen from the ruins and facing the future: a foray through the coin history of the German Democratic Republic 1949 to 1990, Money Trend, 2007, p. 138 [2]
personal data
SURNAME Kahane, Max
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kahane, Max Leon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH August 21, 2004
Place of death Berlin