Walter Fabian

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Walter Max Fabian (born August 24, 1902 in Berlin , † February 15, 1992 in Cologne ) was a socialist politician, anti-fascist resistance fighter , journalist and translator . Since 1924 he was with the writer and journalist Dora Fabian geb. Heinemann married, later to Anne-Marie Fabian .

Life

Weimar Republic

Hailing from a liberal Jewish family Fabian took in 1920 to study philosophy, education, history and economics on which he at the Universities of Berlin , Freiburg , Giessen and Leipzig graduated and in 1924 with a thesis on the problem of authority at Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster graduated . Writing for social democratic newspapers since 1920 , after completing his doctorate in 1924, he became a committed member of the German Peace Society (DFG) and the Federation of Decided School Reformers (BESch) and joined the SPD . He also worked as a lecturer, in the educational work of the SPD and from 1925 as editor of the Social Democratic People's Voice in Chemnitz, where he was also a member of the party's district executive; from 1928 he edited the social democratic press correspondence of Sachsendienst in Dresden . As a staunch opponent of the war and a critic of the SPD's coalition policy, Fabian belonged to the left wing of the party and had been publishing the Socialist Information circular since 1928 and began to gather left-wing critics of the party executive , especially among the Young Socialists and the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ). For his criticism of the party line and the refusal, the Socialist information set, Fabian was from the SPD in September 1931 ruled and entered 1000 1200 East Saxon SAJ members of a little later founded the Socialist Workers Party of Germany (SAPD) at. Belonging here to the left wing of the party, he was elected district chairman for East Saxony and in March 1932 also to the party executive committee. a. together with August Enderle the party organ Socialist Workers' Newspaper .

Underground and exile

At the party congress of the SAPD in March 1933, which had already been held illegally after the transfer of power to the NSDAP , Fabian was re-elected to the board. Since the Reichstag fire , living clandestinely under the code name Kurt Sachs , Fabian was the head of the SAPD's domestic administration, which had been weakened by arrests in the summer of 1933, until his escape in January 1935. Fled to Paris via Prague, Fabian became a member of the exile leadership of the SAPD and was mainly active as a journalist. Initially supporting the popular front policy, he developed together with Erwin Ackerknecht and Peter Blachstein to the center of the internal party opposition to what he saw as the prostalinist politics of the party leadership around Jacob Walcher and criticized the Moscow trials and the suppression of the POUM . Together with Blachstein and Ackerknecht, Fabian was expelled from the SAPD in 1937 and founded the Neuer Weg group , whose magazine of the same name he edited.

Temporary internment in France after the start of the war in 1939, Fabian joined the Foreign Legion under pressure . After demobilization in 1940, he worked as a refugee helper in southern France until he fled to Switzerland in 1942. In Switzerland, after a brief internment in the Adliswil refugee camp near Zurich, he resumed his journalistic work at the beginning of 1943 and worked for the German exile PEN , the protection association of German writers , whose Swiss group he temporarily chaired, in trade union education and refugee organizations. In addition, during this period Fabian worked professionally as a translator of literary works from French, including works by Romain Rolland , François Mauriac , Charles Baudelaire and Matéo Maximoff . Since the end of the war he has also written articles for various newspapers in Germany such as the Frankfurter Rundschau and the Weser-Kurier .

Return to the Federal Republic

In 1957 Fabian moved to the Federal Republic of Germany, where he became editor-in-chief of the DGB organ, trade union monthly books (GMH) at the instigation of Otto Brenner , which he headed until 1970. From 1958 to 1964 he was also chairman of the German Union of Journalists (dju). The cooperation with the DGB leadership turned out to be difficult because Fabian, unlike many other former SAPD members, had adhered to his decidedly left-wing socialist , "Luxemburgist" views, had not (re) rejoined the SPD and the DGB had "edited in" Refused to join the GMH. In 1970, as a result of these differences, Fabian was relieved of his functions by DGB Chairman Heinz Oskar Vetter . Since his return to Germany, Fabian has also been involved in the peace movement , against the Vietnam War , for German-Polish understanding and against the emergency laws . After leaving the GMH, Fabian u. a. He was a leader in the Humanist Union (which he headed from 1969 to 1973), the German-Polish Society (Fabian became its honorary president in 1977) and the PEN Center , and since 1966 he has held an honorary professorship for education at the University of Frankfurt . In 1970 he was awarded the Carl von Ossietzky Medal of the International League for Human Rights , and in 1991 he received the Bert Donnepp ​​Prize - German Prize for Media Journalism .

Fabian died in 1992 at the age of 89. The common grave with his wife Anne-Marie is in the Melaten cemetery in Cologne .

Quotes

"I, too, sometimes dream that it may be Germany's destiny to bridge the gap between East and West by connecting the socialist economic base of the East with the political democracy of the West."

- 1985

Works

  • The Peace Movement: A Handbook of Contemporary World Peace Movements. Berlin 1922. (together with Kurt Lenz)
  • The war guilt question. Fundamental and factual about their solution. Leipzig 1925
  • Class struggle for Saxony. A piece of history 1918–1930. Löbau 1930
  • Harro Kieser [ed.] / Dagmar Schlünder [edit.]: The press of the Socialist Workers' Party in Germany in exile: 1933–1939; an analytical bibliography. With a foreword by Walter Fabian. Munich 1981. ISBN 3-446-12980-4
  • With gentle persistence. Selected articles 1924–1991. Frankfurt / Main 1992 ISBN 3-7638-0187-1 (Ed. And incorporated by Anne-Marie Fabian and Detlef Hensche )

Items:

In The Socialist Doctor :

Under construction :

  • Letters to the Editor. Vol. 12, 1946, No. 24 (June 14, 1946), p. 18
  • On the work of Bernhard Seidmann. Born 15, 1949, No. 22 (June 3, 1949), p. 14

In The Other Germany :

  • A Swiss refugee parliament. Born 7. 1945, No. 106 (November 15, 1945), p. 5
  • French voices on the German question. Born 7th 1945, No. 108 (December 15, 1945), p. 6

In socialist perspective :

  • A Mozart biography. Vol. 15, 1940, No. 1 (January 4, 1940), p. 23
  • Doeblin's November novel. Vol. 15. 1940, No. 3 (February 2, 1940), p. 83
  • A writer's diary. Vol. 15. 1940, No. 11 (May 9, 1940), p. 319

literature

  • Detlef Oppermann: Walter Fabian (1902-1992): journalist - educator - trade unionist. In: Union monthly journal . Vol. 54 (2003), no. 7, pp. 409-420 ( library.fes.de PDF).
  • Anne-Marie Fabian (Ed.): Labor movement, adult education, press. Festschrift for Walter Fabian on his 75th birthday in Cologne 1977 ISBN 3-434-00341-X
  • Manfred Flügge : Paris is difficult. German CVs in France. Das Arsenal, Berlin 1992 ISBN 3-921810-20-5 (therein: Die Arche and others a conversation with his 2nd wife Ruth Fabian about him and their joint work in Paris in the Bureau International de Documentation and others, p. 226 ff.)
  • Heinrich Bleicher-Nagelsmann: Walter Fabian 1902-1992. In: From the printing association to the unified union. 150 years of ver.di. Berlin 2016, pp. 106-107.
  • Fabian, Walter. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 6: Dore – Fein. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-598-22686-1 , pp. 451-462.
  • Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Hrsg.): Biographical manual of the German-speaking emigration after 1933. Volume 1: Politics, economy, public life . Munich: Saur, 1980, p. 164 f.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ burial place. In: findagrave.com. Retrieved June 9, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Fabian, Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fabian, Walter Max; Sachs, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD, SAPD), anti-fascist resistance fighter and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH August 24, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1992
Place of death Cologne