Remmele, Hermann

(1880-1939)

   politician; served on the Zentrale of the KPD during 1921-1932. Born in Ziegelhausen am Neckar to a miller's family, he was among the generation that joined the labor movement and the SPD just as both were evolving into mass organizations. Upon completing an apprenticeship as a lathe operator in Ludwigshafen, he joined the metalworkers' union and the SPD in 1897. He entered the nascent youth movement in 1906 and attended the SPD's party school in Berlin* in 1907-1908. Thereafter, until the outbreak of war, he was an SPD functionary in Mannheim. Although he served at the front, he also participated in the founding of the USPD in 1917.

   As the USPD leader in Mannheim at war's end, Remmele aspired to create a Raterepublik and played a key role in Mannheim's Workers' and Soldiers' Council.* Elected to the Reichstag* in June 1920 (he remained in the assembly until 1931), he was among those who separated from the USPD in November 1920 to join the KPD. Although his loyalties were with the KPD's left wing, his political profile remained blurred; never initiating actions on his own, he displayed ample flexibility to remain in the Party's politburo during 1924-1932 and serve on the Comintern's executive during 1926-1932. In 1924 he was briefly Party chairman. He also served as an editor, first for the Party's flagship newspaper,* Rote Fahne, and then for the theoretical journal, Internationale.

   In 1925 Remmele supported Ernst Thalmann,* Stalin's most trusted adjutant, in opposition to the KPD's radical Left leadership. Thalmann became Party leader, and from 1928 Remmele joined him in a leadership triumvirate that included Heinz Neumann.* His fatal 1932 decision to unite with Neumann in opposition to Thalmann cost him his political influence. Tiring of the policy of maligning the SPD as the party of "social fascists," a line emanating from Moscow, Neumann and Remmele redirected their attacks on the NSDAP. Both were stripped of their KPD offices. Remmele moved to Moscow before the end of 1932. He was arrested in 1937 and apparently died in a Soviet concentration camp in 1939. He was survived by an older brother, Adam Remmele, who represented the SPD in the Reichstag during 1928-1933 and served briefly as Baden's Interior Minister.

   REFERENCES:Angress, Stillborn Revolution; Benz and Graml, Biographisches Lexi-kon; Fowkes, Communism in Germany; Schumacher, M.d.R.; Ward, 'Smash the Fas-cists' "; Hermann Weber, Kommunismus.