Mojzes Grzyb

Mojzes Grzyb , also Moses Grzyb (born July 11, 1896 in Tarnów , Galicia , Austria-Hungary , † November 30, 1941 in Shandong , China) was a Galician journalist and economist. He published under the pseudonym Asiaticus .

In addition to this author's name, which was intended for German periodicals (such as Die Weltbühne and Die Neue Weltbühne etc.), Grzyb also had a number of aliases: Heinz Grzyb, Heinz Möller (in Germany), Hans Shippe (in English-language newspapers) and Xi Bo (in Chinese ) u. a. m. Grzyb stayed in China for a long time, from the Northern Campaign to the civil war between the Guomindang (the National People's Party) and the Gongchandang (the Communist Party) to the Second Sino-Japanese War as a correspondent and informed mainly Western readers about the political situation there.

Life

Grzyb was born in Tarnów, Galicia in 1896 as the son of a Jewish merchant . From a young age he was politically active in the communist movement and was imprisoned as a war opponent during his three years of military service in the Austrian army. From 1918 he worked as a journalist in Germany under the name ›Heinz Möller‹ and belonged to the KPD from the founding party congress at the turn of 1918/19 . However, his leading article for the 'Northwest German Echo', which referred to the fifth anniversary of the October Revolution on November 7, 1922, ensured his expulsion from Germany to Soviet Russia, in which Grzyb was appointed secretary of the delegation to the Executive Committee of the Communist International (Comintern) the KPD was employed. In the fall of 1923 Grzyb returned to Germany and since then has been writing for the 'Rote Fahne', for example, before he was also like this one in 1925 in connection with the indictment brought by the Russian Communist Party against the previous leadership of the KPD, Heinrich Brandler and August Thalheimer received severe reprimand. After he was banned from working in the KPD, Grzyb set out for China for the first time.

During this first stay in China (1925-27) Grzyb experienced first hand the revolutionary events of the early Chinese Republic - such as the anti-imperialist movement of May 30th in Shanghai and the northern campaign organized by the national government - and reported on them in various organs such as the People's Tribune ',' China Correspondence 'or' Chinese Correspondence '. As a studied philosopher and economist, he occasionally dealt in detail with questions of the history and economic situation of China. During this period he began to draw his contributions with ›Asiaticus‹. After his return to Germany he was asked as an eyewitness to the Chinese revolution, and in 1928 his book From Canton to Shanghai 1926–27 was published in Vienna and Berlin. This collection of articles and documents, which he also published under the pseudonym ›Asiaticus‹, was then published in Japan in 1929.

In Germany, Grzyb worked as editor-in-chief for 'Der Kämper', a press organ of the KPD, until his criticism of the party leadership in the leading article on September 29, 1928 resulted in his dismissal and also his expulsion from the party. After the KPD split off in 1929, Grzyb joined the newly formed KPD opposition and worked as an editor for its press organ, Volksrecht. However, he published not only there, but also in 'Arbeiterpolitik' and 'Gegen den Strom' or even in (left-) bourgeois periodicals such as 'Wirtschaftsdienst' and 'Weltbühne' a large number of articles related to China.

In the middle of 1932 Grzyb returned to Shanghai and joined the other "Shanghai" people. He stayed in China until his death in 1941 and reported on the one hand for the left and revolutionary press from the 'New World Stage' to 'Pacific Affairs', 'Voice of China' and 'China Today' to 'Izvestija' Country. At the same time, Grzyb formed in Shanghai together with foreign and Chinese like-minded people such as his partner Trude Rosenberg , the German business journalist Ruth Weiß , the American journalist Agnes Smedley and the German-American sociologist and sinologist Karl August Wittfogel u. a. m. a circle in which (occasionally heated) debates were held in relation to the political and political-economic problems of China.

After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Grzyb supported the Communist Party of China on the one hand together with Rosenberg and the German and Austrian anti-fascists who immigrated to China from the National Socialist regime, for example by maintaining a radio link from the Shanghai line to the New Fourth Army or medication via Hong Kong tried to procure. As a journalist, however, Grzyb mainly traveled to anti-Japanese base areas to report on armies close to the Communist Party. On one of these trips he came to Shandong in September 1941 to join the Eighth March Army, which was facing Japanese campaigns. Despite the difficult military situation, Grzyb stayed with the last unit of the army, which was now surrounded by Japanese troops. During this fight Grzyb was killed on November 30th of the same year.

Works

Article collection

• From canton to Shanghai 1926–27, Vienna / Berlin: Agis-Verlag 1928

Japanese: ア ジ ア チ ク ス （別 府 重 夫 訳） 『廣東 か ら 上海 へ ―― 支那 革命 記』 上 野 書店 、 1929 年。 [Ajiachikusu: Canton kara shanhai e. Shina kakumei ki (Asiaticus: From Canton to Shanghai. Notes on the Chinese Revolution), translated by Shigeo Beppu, Tokyo: Ueno-shoten 1929].

Articles (selection)

• "Yen Hsi-Shan". Die Weltbühne, Berlin, XXVI. Volume, No. 44 of October 28, 1930, pp. 644–647
• "The Chinese Riddle". Die Weltbühne, Berlin, XXVII. Volume, No. 17 from April 28, 1931, pp. 603-606
• "Manabendra Nath Roy". Die Weltbühne, Berlin, XXVII. Volume, No. 49 of December 8, 1931, pp. 850–852
• "In the bloodstains of the Kokuhonsha". Die Weltbühne, Berlin, XXVIII. Volume, No. 22 of May 31, 1932, pp. 810–813
• "From the dying League of Nations". Die neue Weltbühne, Prague-Vienna-Zurich, Volume II, No. 15 of April 13, 1933, pp. 458–461
• “The Reds in Szechuan”. Die neue Weltbühne, Prague-Zurich-Paris, No. 24 of June 13, 1935, pp. 753–758
• "English Imperialism and the Japanese Attack Plans in the Far East". Our time, Paris-Basel-Prague, year 8, issue 6–7, July 1935, pp. 10–14
• "Second Manchukuo". Die neue Weltbühne, Prague-Zurich-Paris, No. 28 of July 11, 1935, pp. 870–874
• "Japan and Mongolia". Die neue Weltbühne, Prague-Zurich-Paris, No. 16 of April 16, 1936, pp. 497–500
• "Japan swallows China". Die neue Weltbühne, Prague-Zurich-Paris, No. 41 of October 8, 1936, pp. 1279–1281
• "Hitler in Tokyo". Die neue Weltbühne, Prague-Zurich-Paris, No. 48 of November 26, 1936, pp. 1513–1515
• "Japan and china". Die Neue Weltbühne, Prague-Zurich-Paris, No. 8 of February 18, 1937, pp. 238–240
• "Cruiser Emden". Die Neue Weltbühne, Prague-Zurich-Paris, No. 9 of February 25, 1937, pp. 271–272
• "China in a defensive war". Die Neue Weltbühne, Prague-Zurich-Paris, No. 35 of August 26, 1937, pp. 1092-1094
• "England in Shanghai". Die Neue Weltbühne, Prague-Zurich-Paris, No. 38 of September 16, 1937, pp. 1192–1195
• "Where does America intervene?" Die neue Weltbühne, Prague-Zurich-Paris, No. 43 of October 21, 1937, pp. 1348–1351

literature

• Wolfram Adolphi: Asiaticus, China 1937. UTOPIE Kreativ, Berlin, issue 200 (June 2007), pp. 513-527.
• Wolfram Adolphi: China fever. Roman, Berlin: NORA-Verlag 2004.
• Wolfram Adolphi: More about ›Asiaticus‹. Die Weltbühne, Berlin, No. 14/1989 of April 4, 1989, pp. 427-429.
• Alfred Dreifuss: Shanghai - An Emigration on the Edge. In: Middell, Eike (ed.): Exil in den USA, Leipzig: Reclam 1979 (= art and literature in anti-fascist exile 1933-1945, III), pp. 560-562.
• Helga Scherner: Asiaticus - a non-person ?. Bochumer Jahrbuch zur Ostasienforschung, Volume 25, 2001, pp. 243-256.
• Ruth Weiss: On the verge of history. My life in China, Osnabrück: Zeller 1999.

Web links

• 'Homepage Asiaticus' by Wolfram Adolphi