Robert Naumann (economist)

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Robert Naumann (born December 18, 1899 in Berlin ; † April 10, 1978 there ) was a German political economist and professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin . In the 1950s he had a decisive influence on the basic social sciences courses at the university.

Life

Naumann was born on December 18, 1899, the son of a worker in Berlin. After attending elementary school from 1906 to 1914, he hired himself as a housekeeper for a few months until he began an apprenticeship as a toolmaker in 1915, which he completed in 1919. During his apprenticeship, Naumann was a member of the SAJ between 1915 and 1917 and joined the union in 1917. After the turmoil of the November Revolution , he joined the Interest Group of Emigrant Organizations to Soviet Russia (IGAO) in 1919 , which was very popular at the time, as the Soviet Union was extremely fascinating with its new society. Naumann obviously belonged to a group of emigrants who moved to the Soviet Union in the early summer of 1920 and was assigned a factory site near Kolomna . As a result, he got a job as a toolmaker in the well-known Kolomna locomotive factory , where he worked until 1921. During this time Naumann joined the RKB (B) . In contrast to many disappointed emigrants who quickly returned to Germany because of the living conditions they found in Kolomna, Naumann stayed in the Soviet Union and began to get involved in politics. In 1921 he completed a four-month course at the German Party School in Moscow , which was followed by an internship in Odessa . He then worked as a seminar leader at this school. In 1922 he moved to the recently founded Communist University of the National Minorities of the West (KUNMS) in Moscow, where he worked as a seminar leader for political economy in the German sector until 1926. During this time he married his wife Pascha, a Soviet citizen, in 1924.

From 1926 to 1930 Naumann studied at the Institute of the Red Professorship , a cadre forge of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . At the same time, he continued to work at KUNMS as a seminar leader, lecturer and ultimately as professor of political economy until 1937. In addition, during this creative phase he was temporarily a course director at the Anglo-American section of the International Lenin School and the Communist University for the Peoples of the East . Naumann thus taught at all three important Communist teaching institutions for foreigners in Moscow and thus taught a number of later top Communist officials. After studying at the Institute of the Red Professorship, Naumann switched full-time to the Executive Committee of the Communist International (EKKI). There he went through various stations until 1943. At times he worked in Dimitri Manuilski's secretariat, later in the department for agitation and propaganda . From 1935 he worked in the Anglo-American secretariat of the EKKI. After founding the NKFD and the targeted development of antifa schools , Naumann moved to the administration of the antifa schools in 1943, where he worked as a lecturer, section head and deputy at the three large central antifa schools in the village of Talizy, in Ogre and Krasnogorsk until 1950 Headmaster was responsible. In these schools, too, he taught many students who later worked as top officials in their countries.

With the dissolution of the Antifa schools, Naumann had to look for a new field of activity. In early 1950, he asked the Soviet party leadership to return to Germany, which for the staunch communist could only be the GDR . This request was granted in April 1950 and Naumann returned to his hometown Berlin in July 1950. After his membership in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was converted into an SED membership , the secretariat of the SED Central Committee decided to appoint him from August 1950 as editor for political economy at the SED magazine Einheit . As part of the second university reform in 1951, the party leadership appointed Naumann as a professor with his own chair for political economy of socialism at the economics faculty of Humboldt University , without having obtained a doctorate by then, which caused a stir among academic colleagues. In addition, he was appointed director of the Institute for Political Economy, succeeding Joseph Winternitz , and he was appointed Vice-Rector for Social Sciences . This meant that Naumann was responsible for all faculties except for the natural sciences and medicine. With this personality, the guidelines of Marxism-Leninism should be incorporated into the structure of research and teaching at the university and compliance with them should be monitored, as Naumann will also support the development of the university-wide social sciences foundation course and thus the Marxist- Leninist character of the student body was responsible. In this function he was also a member of the scientific advisory board at the State Secretariat for higher education and technical schools .

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Not least because of Naumann, political economy came to the fore as the leading ideological science of the economics faculty, while the influence of economic history under the direction of Jürgen Kuczynski decreased. Kuczynski, who played a key role in the Marxist reorganization of the faculty and was its dean from 1951 to 1954, was seen as an emigrant from the West as the complete counterpart to the Soviet socialized Naumann. He also knew how to network well in terms of party politics. In 1952, Naumann became a member of the SED district leadership in Berlin and from 1953 he also represented his party in the East Berlin city council. In 1954 he was elected to the Central Committee of the SED at the IV SED Party Congress , of which he remained a member until 1963. From 1956 he was a member of the university party leadership until his retirement . In 1959 Naumann finally received his doctorate. rer. oec. with the dissertation Theory and Practice of Neoliberalism . From 1960 he belonged for some time to the ideological commission of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED . In 1964, Naumann was relieved of his position as prorector. In 1965 he retired, from then on the former university professor, who had spent almost 30 years in the Soviet Union, devoted himself even more intensively to his offices in the Society for German-Soviet Friendship (DSF). For many years, Naumann was district chairman of DSF in Berlin-Mitte and a member of the Berlin district board of DSF.

Naumann died on April 10, 1978. His urn was buried in the Pergolenweg grave of the socialist memorial in Berlin's Friedrichsfelde central cemetery.

Honors

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ New Germany of July 13, 1957 p. 2
  2. ^ New Germany of October 7, 1957, p. 4
  3. ↑ Neues Deutschland, September 4, 1958, p. 3
  4. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of December 19, 1959 p. 2
  5. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of November 12, 1960 p. 1
  6. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of January 22, 1965 p. 2
personal data
SURNAME Naumann, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political economist. Professor and member of the Central Committee of the SED
DATE OF BIRTH December 18, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH April 10, 1978
Place of death Berlin