Thalheimer, August

(1884-1948)

   politician; a leading intellectual in the KPD during the early 1920s. Born to a middle-class Jewish family in the Württemberg village of Affaltrach, he joined the SPD in 1907, soon after he took a doctorate in linguistics. Linked before World War I with the radicals who formed the nucleus of the subsequent Spartacus League,* he was friendly with Karl Liebknecht,* Rosa Luxemburg,* and Franz Mehring. In 1915 he helped found the SPD opposition circle, Gruppe Internationale, and then was among those who organized the Spartakusgruppe in March 1916. Two months later he was sent to the Western Front.

   A founder of the KPD in December 1918, Thalheimer was elected to the Zentrale, where he devised a revolutionary blueprint. Rebuking the Republic at the November 1920 Party congress, he introduced the slogan "Initiative! Rev-olutionary Offensive that launched (with Moscow s blessing) the KPD s dis-astrous "March Action" of 1921. Unmoved by failure, he held to the concept of revolutionary action and, as an ally of erstwhile Party chief Heinrich Brandler, wielded considerable force in the Zentrale in favor of a United Front* with the SPD. He insisted that the Bolshevik example must be duplicated in Germany; his standing was finally undermined by failure of the October 1923 uprisings in Saxony* and Thuringia.* In 1924 he and Brandler were expelled from the KPD as "rightists.

   Thalheimer went to Moscow in 1924, joined the Soviet Party (CPSU), and became an instructor at the Marx-Engels Institute. Against Comintern wishes, he returned to Germany in 1928. Declining an offer to work as a KPD journalist, he helped Brandler form a splinter group, the KPO (Kommunistische Partei-Opposition), in December 1928; a futile endeavor, the KPO chiefly opposed Moscow s control of German communism. His writings on fascism, which ap-peared in 1930-1932, were the best antifascist commentaries coming from the Marxist camp. Thalheimer fled to France in 1933 and reached Cuba in 1941. Still deemed a Communist, he was denied entry to West Germany after World War II; he died in Havana.

   REFERENCES:Angress, Stillborn Revolution; Benz and Graml, Biographisches Lexikon; Fowkes, Communism in Germany; Stachura, Political Leaders.