William S. Mud

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William S. Schlamm (born June 10, 1904 in Przemyśl , Galicia , Austria-Hungary as Wilhelm Siegmund Schlamm , † September 1, 1978 in Salzburg ) was a journalist and writer. He wrote for communist organs until the 1930s and switched to conservatism while in exile in the United States .

Communist phase

Schlamm was the son of a wealthy Jewish merchant, one sister was the writer Rusia Lampel . As a high school student in Vienna , he joined the youth organization of the Communist Party of Austria . As a member of the KPÖ, while still a student of political science , he advanced to the position of editor of the Wiener Rote Fahne , the central organ of the party.

In 1920 he met the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich in the Wiener Jung-Wandervogel . The latter wrote at the time that he had “deeply adored” the seven-year-old boy. Both became close friends, and the married couples Willy / Stefanie Schlamm and Wilhelm / Annie Reich remained close friends in the 1920s. Schlamm und Reich experienced the events that led to the Vienna Justice Palace fire on July 15, 1927, as biographically decisive. Schlamm saw in them signs of an uprising which "had to be carried forward to the victorious proletarian revolution, to the dictatorship of the proletariat". While Reich joined the KPÖ in 1929, Schlamm was expelled from it as a "legal deviator" at the same time. Although their ways parted in the years of exile after 1933 at the latest, they touched again in 1937 in what was at the same time a final break with Soviet communism due to the Moscow trials . Willi Schlamm made this break publicly with his book Dictatorship of Lies. A statement published in Zurich in 1937 . Reich reviewed this book in 1937 in his Zeitschrift für Politische Psychologie und Sexualökonomie .

Exile in Prague

In 1933 Schlamm became editor of the Weltbühne , which had moved from Berlin to Vienna. From 1934 the magazine was published in Prague under the name “New World Stage”. There, Hermann Budzislawski pushed mud out of the editorial team. Schlamm founded the European magazine and advocated pacifist and socialist positions. During his time in Prague, Schlamm developed a confidential relationship with Milena Jesenská , Franz Kafka's friend . It was she who helped Schlamm to leave Czechoslovakia and emigrate to the USA in 1938.

Exile in the USA

During the war years he wrote mainly for the magazines Time and Life of Henry Luce . More and more, Schlamm said goodbye to his original positions. In 1942 he was named senior editor for Fortune magazine . Through Whittaker Chambers and James Burnham , Schlamm had relationships with the Congress for Cultural Freedom and the New York Partisan Review . Schlamm went on to become a conservative, including Russell Kirk , a leader in American neoconservatism, and the anti-communist John Birch Society .

Joseph McCarthy , chairman of the Committee on Un-American Activities founded in 1947, helped Schlamm get a career in the United States. Schlamm's attacks were not only aimed at Soviet communism, he also criticized left-wing America. He wrote for the Freeman . In 1955 he urged the young, strictly conservative millionaire Buckley to found an expressly conservative and strictly anti-communist weekly magazine. The first edition of the National Review appeared on November 19, 1955 . Schlamm was an associate editor. As its job - as it was said in an editorial - the newspaper knew how to cut across the story and scream “stop” loudly. The paper quickly became the central organ of the conservative movement. Buckley succeeded in persuading well-known representatives of all conservative tendencies to cooperate. In the early years, the editorial team included thinkers such as Schlamm, James Burnham , Willmoore Kendall , Whittaker Chambers and Frank S. Meyer . Russell Kirk contributed a column for 25 years. Most of the writers were from Christian (Catholic) backgrounds.

Back in Europe

In 1959 he returned to Europe. First he tried to set up a German-language journal from Switzerland. At the end of the 1950s, the German publisher Axel Springer engaged him as a commentator for Die Welt . Schlamm had also adopted his pacifist positions and regarded the threat of war as a legitimate means of diplomacy. Pacifists and opponents of nuclear war deserve "nothing but contempt and the Soviet boot on the neck". He represented this position on lecture tours.

In 1968 Schlamm criticized Die Welt , “that the left-wing media were courting a disgraced youth with a grin.” In 1972, Schlamm founded the Zeitbühne with Otto von Habsburg .

In 1971 he was awarded the Konrad Adenauer Prize of the Germany Foundation .

Fonts (selection)

  • Dictatorship of lies. A settlement . Der Aufbruch publishing house, Zurich 1937.
  • This second war of independence: a call to action . Dutton, New York 1940.
  • Germany and the East-West Crisis: The Decisive Challenge to American Policy . Mc Kay, New York 1959 ( online ).
  • The limits of wonder. A report on Germany , Europa Verlag, 1959.
  • The young masters of the old earth. From the new style of power. Seewald, Stuttgart 1962.
  • Who is jew A self-talk. Seewald 1964
  • On the misery of literature. Pornography and convictions , Seewald, 1966.
  • On the verge of the civil war , Zeitbuch-Verlag, Berlin 1970.
  • Glory and misery of a century. Europe from 1881 to 1971 . Ravensburg 1971. Also anniversary gift from L. Merckle KG, Blaubeuren.
  • Anger and laughter - contemporary history from a pointed pen . Langen-Müller, Munich 1977.

literature

  • Walter Bredendiek : Dam against mud. An argument with William S. Schlamm . Published by the German Peace Council , Berlin 1959.
  • Alexander Gallus : home to the world stage. An intellectual story in the 20th century . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8353-1117-6 .
  • Alexander Gallus: The most amusing among the renegades. William Schlamm's changes from communist to conservative . In: Michael Hochgeschwender: Epoch in Contradiction . Bouvier, Bonn 2011, pp. 52–73.
  • Susanne Peters: William S. Schlamm. Ideological frontier worker in the 20th century. be.bra Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-95410-007-1 .
  • Caspar von Schrenck-Notzing : Schlamm, William S. (Willi Schlamm) . In: ders. (Ed.): Lexicon of Conservatism. Leopold Stocker Verlag , Graz 1996, p. 481.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wilhelm Reich: Passion of the youth. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1994, p. 138.
  2. ↑ Karl Declining: Wilhelm Reich in Vienna. Geyer Edition, Vienna 1988, p. 174.
  3. ^ Franz Krahberger: Doomsday, Cold War and ice cold publicists . In: e.journal. Baden near Vienna, undated , ISSN  1026-0293 .
  4. ↑ Rez. Schlamm: Dictatorship of Lies. In: Journal for Political Psychology and Sexual Economics. Volume 4, 1937, Issue 3, pp. 230-231.
  5. ^ The boundaries of the miracle , p. 184. Quoted from Hoimar von Ditfurth , Innenansichten eines Kindgenossen , DTV 1991, p. 282.
  6. ↑ Der Spiegel : Chutzpah (picture of mud on the cover picture)
  7. ↑ Review
personal data
SURNAME Mud, William S.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schlamm, Wilhelm Siegmund; Mud, Willi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION political publicist
DATE OF BIRTH June 10, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Przemyśl
DATE OF DEATH September 1, 1978
Place of death Salzburg