Siegbert Kahn

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Siegbert Kahn (* 23. September 1909 in Berlin , † 15. October 1976 ) was a German Communist Party - functionary , Marxist economist and director of the German Economic Institute .

Life

Siegbert Kahn was born into a Jewish family. His father was an employee. Kahn attended elementary school and then high school in Berlin. In 1925 he joined the German Metal Workers' Association (DMV) and became a member of the Red Aid and International Workers Aid (IAH) . From 1925 to 1929 he trained as a goldsmith . In 1926 he became a member of the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD) and in 1928 of the KPD . From 1929 Kahn worked in the M-Apparat , the KPD's intelligence service . In 1929 he became a functionary of the Red Young Front in the Berlin district. From 1929 to 1931 he worked as a locksmith and transport worker in Berlin, at the same time he was a functionary of the KJVD Berlin from 1930 to 1932. From 1932 he was there as a member of the district management responsible for "police dismantling". In 1931/32 he worked for an advertising publisher in Berlin, in 1932/33 he was employed as a messenger for the Soviet Derop AG (German sales company for Russian oil products). From 1933 he worked illegally for the technical imperial apparatus of the KPD. As early as 1933 he was briefly arrested several times and in November 1933 sentenced to 31 months imprisonment for “preparing for high treason”, which he served from 1934 to 1936 in the Brandenburg-Görden prison. He then worked from 1936 to 1938 for the Jewish Community and the Jewish Winter Aid Berlin. He made contact with Hans Fruck (1911–1990) in order to form an illegal resistance group. Since he operated a reproduction machine in the Jewish community, he was also able to reproduce illegal writings there for the resistance .

In 1938 Kahn emigrated to the ČSR , to Prague . There he worked for the Jewish Refugee Committee and then the KPD cadre school . He was a co-founder of the Free German Youth (FDJ) in the ČSR and its second chairman. After German troops invaded Czechoslovakia in 1939, he fled to Great Britain via Sweden . There he was head of organization of the KPD in London , from 1942 to 1944 political secretary of the KPD in Great Britain and co-editor of the magazine “ Inside Nazi Germany ”. At the same time he was a member of the overall management of the KPD's foreign organization in Great Britain from 1939 to 1946. From 1943 he was also a member of the Free German Movement in Great Britain. In 1940/41 Kahn was interned as an " enemy alien " on the Isle of Man .

In August 1946 he returned to Germany and became a member of the SED . First he was the personal assistant to the President of the German Central Administration of the Fuel Industry , Gustav Sobottka (1886–1953). In 1947/48 he was the main consultant in the economics department of the Central Secretariat of the SED and in 1949 became head of the press department of the German Economic Commission . From May 1949 he built the German Economic Institute together with Jürgen Kuczynski (1904–1997) and was then director of the institute until 1965. In 1952 he became a professor of political economy . From 1963 Kahn was a member of the Western Commission at the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED . In 1965 he retired, but continued to work as a freelance journalist for the “ Weltbühne ”.

He wrote numerous papers on American and English imperialism and on the economic development of the Federal Republic of Germany ( FRG ). His urn was in the grave conditioning Pergolenweg the memorial of the socialists at the Berlin Central Cemetery Friedrichsfelde buried, where his wife Rosa born Hütterer is buried.

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ New Germany of June 18, 1959
  2. ^ New Germany of August 28, 1969
  3. ↑ Berliner Zeitung , September 13, 1974, p. 4
personal data
SURNAME Kahn, Siegbert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sieke
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German KPD functionary, Marxist economist and director of the German Economic Institute
DATE OF BIRTH September 23, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH October 15, 1976
Place of death Berlin