Walter Loewenheim

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Walter Loewenheim (born April 18, 1896 in Berlin ; † March 31, 1977 in London ), also Walter Lowe , pseudonyms Miles , Kurt Berger and Kurt Menz was a socialist politician, founder and theoretician of the group New Beginnings and resistance fighters against National Socialism .

Life

Loewenheim, who came from a Jewish merchant family in Berlin, worked as a merchant after graduating from high school and was involved in the Jewish Youth Association , the Wandervogel and the Free German movement. Soldier during the First World War , Loewenheim joined the Spartakusbund and the Free Socialist Youth (FSJ) in 1918 and was active in the KPD and KJVD organizations that emerged from these in the following years , from which he was repeatedly excluded and re-established in the 1920s has been recorded.

Temporary member of the leadership of the Communist Youth International , Loewenheim finally left the KPD in 1927 and began to gather around a clandestine group of like-minded people who criticized the KPD's immobilism and sectarianism, but also the bourgeoisisation of the SPD . From this circle, initially called the Miles group , the Leninist Organization (ORG) emerged in 1929 , the theoretical head of which was Loewenheim, who became a member of the SPD in the same year. The covertly working ORG recruited selectively (and without tearing them out of their previous organizations) cadres from the KPD, SPD, SAJ , KPO and SAPD and grew to around 100 members by early 1933. Loewenheim's conception in this context consisted in gathering cadres from the organizations of the labor movement for the purpose of building a new Marxist and revolutionary party.

After the NSDAP came to power , Loewenheim belonged to the illegal domestic leadership and wrote the ORG's programmatic declaration published in exile in September 1933 under the title New Beginning , which from then on operated under the name of this manifesto. In 1934/35 there were controversies within the organization between parts of the domestic management around Loewenheim and his brother Ernst and a current around Richard Löwenthal and Karl Frank, which now represents the majority of the group, which now has around 500 members . Against the background of the stabilization of the Nazi regime, Loewenheim took the view that the resistance activity of the group was not very promising and that the majority of the cadres (up to about 30, mainly acting as observers and reporters) should emigrate. In the course of this dispute, Loewenheim and his supporters were removed from the organizational management in June 1935; in return, he declared Neubeginnen dissolved and urged his followers to join the Sopade as individual members.

Loewenheim himself fled to the Czechoslovak Republic in September 1935 and from there to London in 1936 . Here he took the name Walter Lowe and founded and ran an engineering office together with his brother. During the Second World War Loewenheim was interned from 1940 to 1941, and after 1945 he also worked as a publicist.

Fonts

  • Start over . Carlsbad 1933
  • A world in upheaval. To the discussion about the crisis of our time . Zurich 1961. Under the pseudonym 'miles'.
  • History of the Org 1929-1935. A Contemporary Analysis. Edited by Jan Foitzik . Berlin 1995 ISBN 3-89468-111-X

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Loewenheim, Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lowe, Walter (after emigration); Miles (pseudonym); Berger, Kurt (pseudonym); Menz, Kurt (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German socialist politician, resistance fighter against National Socialism
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH March 31, 1977
Place of death London