Theo Pinkus

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Paul Theodor "Theo" Pinkus (born August 21, 1909 in Zurich ; † May 5, 1991 ibid) was a Swiss publicist , publisher and bookseller .

Life

Paul Theodor "Theo" Pinkus was the son of the banker and writer Lazar Felix Pinkus and the actress Else Flatau (1888–1942) . He attended private school until his father's bank went bankrupt. In 1923 he joined the Freibund , a Swiss student movement that discussed Marxism and Christian socialism.

In 1927 Theo Pinkus began an apprenticeship as a bookseller at Rowohlt Verlag in Berlin , which he successfully completed in 1929. In his residential area Rote Insel , he joined the Communist Youth Association (KJVD) and was accepted into the KPD by Wilhelm Pieck in 1929 . After work , he taught his comrade Willi Stoph the technical skills to produce leaflets in the publishing press. After his apprenticeship with Rowohlt, he worked from 1930 for the international workers' publishing house and for the New German publishing house of Willi Munzenberg .

In February 1933 he was briefly arrested by the SA . After his release, the Swiss ambassador urgently advised him to return to Switzerland: “ Jew , communist and foreigner - that's a little bit. Drive away."

Back in Switzerland, he became the editor of the Swiss edition of Inprekorr (international press correspondence, organ of the Communist International ) and founded the book search service in 1940 with start-up capital of 1,000 francs .

From 1973 to 1975 he and a Zurich study group worked on an exhibition and a documentation volume on the history of the Swiss Federation of Trade Unions. A publisher was sought for the history of the Swiss labor movement . The book should first appear at Huber-Verlag in Frauenfeld , which tipped the "left-wing work" out of the program before it was published. After that, the newly established Swiss Suhrkamp branch stepped into the breach, and there too, pressure from above, no publication was made. This led to the establishment of the cooperative Limmat publishing house in Zurich.

Pinkus had when flying up the Fichenaffäre in 1989 with 252 pages the most comprehensive of all Fichen the Swiss intelligence agencies, but also had the terrorism supporter Petra Krause briefly worked in his shop.

He was married to the Swiss suffragette Amalie Pinkus ; the couple had three sons.

Time service

Pinkus had published Zeitdienst magazine since the 1940s . He wrote several books and worked as a publicist on the work of Frans Masereel , whose books he co-edited. With Amalie Pinkus , with whom he had been married since 1939, he founded the 50,000-book study library on the history of the labor movement based on his private library . The focus of their collection was on the communist movement of the 20th century, early socialism , Marxism , anti-fascist resistance, exile, books from and about real socialism , the student movement of 1968 and new social movements ( women's movement , environmental movement , student movement ) in Switzerland and Germany.

Parties and Initiatives

Theo Pinkus was expelled from the Communist Party of Switzerland together with Jules Humbert-Droz in 1943 and from the Social Democratic Party in 1950 . Later he was a member of the Labor Party .

In 1971, Pinkus was one of the co-founders of the Salecina Foundation Holiday Center in Maloja . Through his diverse contacts and ideas, Pinkus became a mentor of the history workshops in the 1980s .

Works (selection)

  • Six years that determined my life. 1927-1933 in Berlin. In: The Roaring Twenties. Weimar and the world 1919-1933. Elefanten Press, Berlin (West) 1986, ISBN 3-88520-194-1 , pp. 148-149.
  • (Ed.): Letters to Switzerland ( Gustav Landauer , Erich Mühsam , Max Hölz , Peter Kropotkin ). Limmat, Zurich 1972, DNB 572528485 .
  • (Ed.): Conversation with Georg Lukács (editor). Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1967 DNB 456 747 834 (= Rowohlt-Paperback , Volume 57).
  • (Ed. With Konrad Farner): The way of socialism: Sources and documents from the Erfurt program in 1891 to the declaration of Havana. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1962 DNB 455403686 (= rowohlts deutsche enzyklopädie, volume 189/190).

literature

Movies

  • Communist youth in Schöneberg. Memories of Theo Pinkus and Gerhard Birkholz. Documentary by Pim Richter. MedienOperative Berlin 1983.
  • The truth is reasonable . Film talk with Thomas Grimm 1991
  • Theo Pinkus 1909-1991. Interview film by Ona Pinkus and Benjamin Weiss. CH, 2009.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Communist and book fanatic. A portrait of the Zurich antiquarian Theo Pinkus , by Fritz J. Raddatz , Die Zeit , issue 40, 1980
  2. ^ Marc Tribelhorn: The voracious state. In: nzz.ch . Aktiengesellschaft für die Neue Zürcher Zeitung, November 22, 2014, accessed on October 8, 2017 : “If you take the amount of material in a fiche as an indicator, then the 252-page public enemy of the Zurich Theo Pinkus was public enemy number 1 - a bookseller and communist. "
  3. ↑ Marcel Gyr: The terrorist who accused Switzerland of torture. In: nzz.ch . Aktiengesellschaft for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, September 15, 2017, accessed on October 8, 2017 : "She even found work temporarily in Theo Pinkus' bookstore"
  4. ↑ Study library on the history of the labor movement
personal data
SURNAME Pinkus, Theo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pinkus-DeSassi, Theo; Pinkus, Paul Theodor (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss publicist and bookseller
DATE OF BIRTH August 21, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich
DATE OF DEATH May 5, 1991
Place of death Zurich