Nathan Steinberger

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Nathan Steinberger (born July 16, 1910 in Berlin ; died February 26, 2005 there ) was a German economist and communist .

Life

Nathan Naphtali Steinberger was born in 1910 into a poor Jewish Orthodox family in Berlin. In 1928 he graduated from the Kaiser-Friedrich-Realgymnasium Berlin-Neukölln. At the age of 14 he became a member of the Communist Youth Association and took part in the development of the Communist Pennal Group and the Socialist Schools League. In 1927 he and his local group were excluded from the Communist Youth Association because they were close to Karl Korsch . Two years later he joined the KPD .

Steinberger began studying medicine in 1929, but switched to economics and specialized in agricultural science . In 1932 he was given the opportunity to work at the Institute for Agricultural Science of the Communist International in Moscow as an assistant to Karl August Wittfogel . Against the advice of his friend Arthur Rosenberg , he took this opportunity. After the transfer of power to the National Socialists, returning to Germany became impossible. In 1934 he was stripped of his German citizenship. In 1935 he received his doctorate in Moscow with studies on the agricultural policy of National Socialism. In 1936 he received citizenship of the USSR. During the Great Terror , Steinberger was arrested in April 1937 and his wife Edith (born June 21, 1908; died 2001 in Berlin) in 1941. Nathan Steinberger was sentenced to camp in Kolyma (until 1946). His wife was in Central Asia in the Karaganda camp in Kazakhstan until 1946 . In 1952 she received permission to move to Kolyma / Siberia with her husband. Only after Stalin's death were both rehabilitated (non-publicly) in 1955 and were able to return to Germany and moved to the GDR, whose citizenship he received in 1956. In the same year his party membership (now in the SED) was restored. Immediately after his return he joined the Berlin Jewish Community .

One of Steigenberger's brothers was murdered during the National Socialist era , and a second survived in Brussels .

In the GDR, Steinberger initially worked for the State Planning Commission through Grete Wittkowski . In 1960 he became professor of economics at the LPG University of Meißen , in Potsdam and in 1963 at the University of Economics in Berlin-Karlshorst. After his retirement, he spoke to students at the invitation of Heinrich Fink at the Humboldt University , including about his imprisonment in the Soviet Union. He held fast to the goal of a liberal, non-Stalinist socialism . He saw the extermination of the peasants in the course of " de-kulakization " and forced collectivization as the starting point of the Stalinist terror . Fritz Behrens and Ernst Engelberg were among his confidants in the GDR . He was in close contact with Ernest Mandel , who was not allowed to enter the GDR.

Works (selection)

  • The Agricultural Policy of National Socialism. Dietz Berlin, 1960. Moscow dissertation 1935.
  • (As co-ed.): Edwin Hoernle - a life for the liberation of the peasants. Berlin 1965.
  • Berlin - Moscow - Kolyma and back. A biographical conversation about Stalinism and anti-Semitism with Barbara Broggini. Ed. ID archive, Berlin / Amsterdam 1996, ISBN 3-89408-053-1 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mario Keßler: Nathan Steinberger. In: The paper. Berlin March 28, 2005.
  2. ↑ Mario Keßler: Nathan Steinberger. In: The paper. Berlin March 28, 2005.
  3. ↑ Mario Keßler: Nathan Steinberger. In: The paper. Berlin March 28, 2005.
personal data
SURNAME Steinberger, Nathan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Steinberger, Naftali
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German economist and communist
DATE OF BIRTH July 16, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH February 26, 2005
Place of death Berlin