Münzenberg, Wilhelm Willi

Münzenberg, Wilhelm Willi
(1889-1940)
   publicist; organized and led Germany s most powerful Communist propaganda empire. Born in Er-furt, he passed a childhood marked by paternal brutality and poverty. In 1904, after a failed apprenticeship, he took a job in an Erfurt shoe factory. Joining a socialist youth club in 1906, he soon led the group and affiliated it in 1907 with Karl Liebknecht s* Free Youth Union. After a brief imprisonment for trying to organize Erfurt s apprentices, he traversed Germany as an itinerant worker. Set-tling in Zürich in 1910 as a pharmacist's assistant, he avoided World War I and through his youth work formed a friendship with Lenin. A participant in the 1917 International Socialist Congress at Stockholm, he joined the Spartacus League* upon returning to Germany. He settled in Berlin* and helped form the Communist Youth International, but at Lenin s urging he abandoned youth work to organize the Internationale Arbeiterhilfe (International Workers' Aid, IAH) in August 1921. Elected in 1923 to the KPD's Zentrale, he represented the Party during 1924-1933 in the Reichstag.*
   Münzenberg, often praised for his amiable disposition, directed so many Com-munist concerns—including publishing houses, newspapers,* and magazines— that people labeled him the "Red Press Tsar." The IAH, founded initially to organize international relief for famine-stricken regions of the Soviet Union,* enlisted the aid of such personalities as Maximilian Harden,* Kathe Kollwitz,* Albert Einstein,* George Grosz,* and the pacifist author Leonard Frank. Im-pressive in its relief efforts, IAH mutated into an international propaganda net-work. Münzenberg reported that by 1930 the IAH sponsored over 5,000 activities and had a membership of more than 100,000 people organized into 930 local chapters. His key publications, printed by the Neue deutsche Verlag (managed by his wife, Babette Gross), were Mahnruf (a bimonthly), Der rote Aufbau (a monthly theoretical journal), and the Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung (AIZ, a weekly with half a million readers). Münzenberg organized a League against Imperialism in 1927 and a League against War and Fascism in 1932. While he was faithful to Moscow s program, he retained an ambiguous editorial policy that set him apart from the austere rigidity of the KPD and helped him enlist collaborators not sympathetic to communism.
   After the Reichstag fire (February 1933), Münzenberg emigrated to Paris and established an antifascist propaganda enterprise. During exile he staged a coun-tertrial that discredited Germany's Reichstag-fire trial and indicted the NSDAP (incorrectly) for setting the fire. A trip to Moscow in 1936, amidst Stalin's show trials, led to his disillusionment. When Russia signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939, he accused Stalin of treason. Briefly interned by the French in May 1940, he fled to southern France. In October 1940 his body was found inexplicably hanging from a tree.
   REFERENCES:Deak, Weimar Germany's Left-Wing Intellectuals; Babette Gross, Willi Munzenberg; Gruber, "Willi Münzenberg's German Communist Propaganda Empire"; Koestler, Invisible Writing.

A Historical dictionary of Germany's Weimar Republic, 1918-1933. .

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать курсовую

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Wilhelm Münzenberg — Willi Münzenberg Titelblatt der von Münzenberg redigierten jungsozialistischen Zeitschrift Die Freie Jugend vom Sept. 1914 Willi Münzenberg (Wilhelm Münzenberg) …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Willi Münzenberg — Titelblatt der von Münzenberg redigierte …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Münzenberg — I Mụ̈nzenberg,   Stadt im Wetteraukreis, Hessen, in der nördlichen Wetterau, 202 m über dem Meeresspiegel, 5 600 Einwohner.   Stadtbild:   Die Ruine (»Wetterauer Tintenfass«) ist eine der größten und b …   Universal-Lexikon

  • Wilhelm Hahnemann — Pas d image ? Cliquez ici. Biographie Nationalité …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Willi Richard Sachse — Willy Sachse, eigentlich Willi Richard Sachse (* 7. Januar 1896 in Leipzig; † 21. August 1944 in Brandenburg Görden) war ein deutscher Sozialist und Kommunist, der als Matrose im Ersten Weltkrieg politischen Widerstand organisierte und als… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Willi Sachse — Willy Sachse, eigentlich Willi Richard Sachse (* 7. Januar 1896 in Leipzig; † 21. August 1944 in Brandenburg Görden) war ein deutscher Sozialist und Kommunist, der als Matrose im Ersten Weltkrieg politischen Widerstand organisierte und als… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Wilhelm Herzog — Gedenktafel für die deutschen und österreichischen Flüchtlinge in Sanary sur Mer, unter ihnen Wilhelm Herzog Wilhelm Herzog (* 12. Januar 1884 in Ber …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Liste der Biografien/Han–Hap — Biografien: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung — Die Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ) war eine zwischen 1921 und 1938 in Berlin und Prag erschienene Wochenzeitschrift. Begründer und verantwortlicher Redakteur war der deutsche kommunistische Verleger Willi Münzenberg. Inhaltsverzeichnis 1 Die …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Мюнценберг, Вилли — Вильгельм (Вилли) Мюнценберг Wilhelm (Willi) Münzenberg Дата рождения …   Википедия

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”