Die Rote Fahne (German: [diː ˈʁoːtə ˈfaːnə], The Red Flag) was a German newspaper originally founded in 1876 by Socialist Worker's Party leader Wilhelm Hasselmann,[1] and which has been since published on and off, at times underground,[2] by German Socialists and Communists. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg famously published it in 1918[3] as organ of the Spartacus League.[4]
 Die Rote Fahne header from 23 November 1918 | |
| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Founder(s) | Wilhelm Hasselmann, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Paul Frölich |
| Founded | 1876 |
| Political alignment | Communist |
| Language | German |
| Country | Germany |
Following the deaths of Liebknecht and Luxemburg during the chancellorship of the Social Democratic Party of Germany's Friedrich Ebert,[5][6] the newspaper was published, with interruptions, by the Communist Party of Germany.[7][8] Proscribed by the National Socialist Worker's Party government of Adolf Hitler after 1933,[9] publication continued illegally, underground.[10]
History
edit1876
editWilhelm Hasselmann of the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (now SPD) and member of the German Reichstag founded a short-lived, weekly newspaper called Die rote Fahne.[1]
1918–1933
edit
Using the newspaper's subtitle as indicator of its political allegiance, Die Rote Fahne was successively the central organ of:
- Spartacus League: 9 November 1918[11] to 30 December 1918[8]
- Communist Party of Germany: 1 January 1919[11] to 19 September 1920 (reflecting the KPD's submission to the Comintern on
- Communist Party of Germany: 19 September 1920 to roughly 23 March 1933 (date of passage of the Nazi Enabling Act)
The publication was proscribed from October 1923 to March 1924, as part of the ban on the German Communist Party. The newspaper continued in illegal production and distribution, sometimes renamed "Rote Sturmfahne" ("Red Storm Flag") or "Die Fahne der Revolution" ("The Flag of the Revolution"). In 1926, the newspaper moved into the Karl Liebknecht House, to which it added in July 1928 a rotary press. On 23 February 1933, Nazi police occupied Karl-Liebknecht-Haus and closed it the following day, anticipating the Nazi ban on all communist and socialist press after the Reichstag fire a few days later (28 February 1933).
Many prominent Germans and others worked on the newspaper:
- Founders included: Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht,[8] Paul Frölich[12]
- Publishers included: Hans Marchwitza[13] and Johannes R. Becher[14]
- Editors included: Ernst Meyer[15] (1918–1919), August Thalheimer[16] (1919–?), Julian Gumperz[17] (1920? – later, second husband of Hede Massing), Werner Scholem[18] (1920--?), Gerhart Eisler (1921–?? already, first husband of Hede Massing), Arkadi Maslow[19] (1921-?), Heinz Neumann[20] (1922–1928?), Max Matern (1925-?), Hans Lorbeer[21] (1928--?), Erika Heymann (1930–1933), Albert Norden[22] (1930–1933), Lutz Łask[23] (1930s and husband of Franz Kafka's lover Dora Diamant), Franz Koritschoner,[24] György Lukács,[25] Wolfgang Harich
- Contributors included: Emil Barth (1918?), Lilly Becher[26] (1921–?), Willi Schlamm[27] (1923–?), Albert Hotopp (1923–1926), Hanns Eisler (1927),[28] Erich Mielke (1928–1931), John Sieg (1928–1933?), Jürgen Kuczynski (1930–1933), Max Zimmering (1935–1938?), Thomas Ring
- Artists included: John Heartfield[29]
1933–1942
editOutlawed after the end of the Weimar Republic and the Reichstag fire in 1933, it was illegally distributed during the Nazi regime by underground groups close to the Communist Party[30] until 1942. Wilhelm Guddorf was known to have been an editor of the newspaper in the late 1930s.[31]
1970 and afterwards
editFollowing the events of 1968, several projects of ideologically divergent groups of the so-called old and the new left arose in the Federal German Republic to build a new communist party. In addition to the German Communist Party (DKP), which is widely known as the West German KPD successor party and publishes the newspaper Unsere Zeit as a party organ, various competing small communist parties, the so-called K groups, were founded, each of which was associated with different ideological concepts of communism (from Maoism to Stalinism to Trotskyism). Out of these groupings, there were several newspaper projects in the 1970s called Rote Fahne.
The Communist Party of Germany (KPD), a fringe party founded in 1990 by disgruntled members of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, publishes its own version of Die Rote Fahne.
References
edit- ^ a b Messer-Kruse, Timothy (2012-07-26). The Haymarket Conspiracy: Transatlantic Anarchist Networks. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252037054.
- ^ Marrus, Michael Robert (2011-08-02). The Nazi Holocaust. Part 5: Public Opinion and Relations to the Jews in Nazi Europe. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 9783110970449.
- ^ To the Masses: Proceedings of the Third Congress of the Communist International, 1921. BRILL. 2015-02-13. ISBN 9789004288034.
- ^ Weitz, Eric D. (1997). Creating German Communism, 1890-1990: From Popular Protests to Socialist State. Princeton University Press. pp. 91–92. ISBN 0691026823.
- ^ Habbe, Christian (2009-01-09). "Luxemburg und Liebknecht: Dauerfehde um einen Doppelmord". Spiegel Online. Retrieved 2019-06-27.
- ^ Kellerhoff, Sven Felix (2019-01-14). "Märtyrer der KPD: So starben Karl Liebknecht und Rosa Luxemburg". Retrieved 2019-06-27.
- ^ Sewell, Rob (2018-11-12). Germany 1918-1933: Socialism or Barbarism. Wellred Books. ISBN 9781900007986.
- ^ a b c Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Zeitungsabteilung. "Zeitungsinformationssystem ZEFYS - Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin". zefys.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de (in German). Retrieved 2019-06-27.
- ^ "Münchner Rote Fahne, 1919 – Historisches Lexikon Bayerns". www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de. Retrieved 2019-06-27.
- ^ Marotta, Alina. "Ein Tanz auf Messersschneide- Kommunistische Tätigkeiten vom Ende der Weimarer Republik bin in die frühe Bundesrepublik anhand ausgewählter Karlsruher Beispiele" (PDF). ns-ministerien-bw.de. Retrieved 27 June 2019.
- ^ a b Hardwig, Florian (2019-01-15). "Die Rote Fahne, #1 (9 Nov 1918) and #16 (16 Jan 1919)". Fonts in Use. Retrieved 2019-06-27.
- ^ Altieri, Riccardo. "Paul Frölich, American Exile, and Communist Discourse about the Russian Revolution" (PDF). publishup.uni-potsdam.de. Retrieved 27 June 2019.
- ^ "Biographische Datenbanken: Marchwitza, Hans". bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de. Retrieved 27 June 2019.
- ^ ZEIT (Archiv), D. I. E. (1981-08-07). "Unvermutete Verwandtschaft zwischen Bert Brecht und Johannes R. Beches: Über das hartnäckige autoritäre Denken". Die Zeit (in German). ISSN 0044-2070. Retrieved 2019-07-02.
- ^ Wilde, Von: Dr Florian (2011-01-17). "Ernst Meyer, Weggefährte Rosa Luxemburgs in der Weltkriegszeit und sein Kampf um ihr Erbe in der KPD". Wilde Texte (in German). Archived from the original on 2019-07-02. Retrieved 2019-07-02.
- ^ Haible, Wolfgang. "August Thalheimer- Zur Erinnerung an einen revolutionären Kommunisten" (PDF). rosalux.de. Retrieved 2 July 2019.
- ^ Wiggershaus, Rolf (1994). The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance. MIT Press. p. 31. ISBN 9780262731133.
Julian Gumperz rote fahne.
- ^ "AUSSTELLUNG im Haus der Geschichte des Ruhrgebiets in Bochum erinnert an den früheren Reichtstagsabgeordneten WERNER SCHOLEM und die Ehefrau EMMY". Lokalkompass (in German). Retrieved 2019-07-02.
- ^ "Biographische Datenbanken- Maslow, Arkadi". bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de. Retrieved 2 July 2019.
- ^ Müller, Reinhard. "Heinz Neumanns Bußrituale- auch ein Nachtrag zum Protokoll der Brüsseler Konferenz der KPD". kommunismusgeschichte.de. Retrieved 2 July 2019.
- ^ "Biographische Datenbanken- Lorbeer, Hans". bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de. Retrieved 2 July 2019.
- ^ "Biographische Datenbanken- Norden, Albert". bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de. Retrieved 2 July 2019.
- ^ Grieser, Dietmar (2018-06-06). Was bleibt, ist die Liebe: Von Beethovens Mutter bis Kafkas Braut (in German). Amalthea Signum Verlag. ISBN 9783903217188.
- ^ Wolf, Norbert Christian (2018-08-13). Revolution in Wien: Die literarische Intelligenz im politischen Umbruch 1918/19 (in German). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ISBN 9783205200789.
- ^ Vosskamp, Wilhelm (2016-02-17). Klassik im Vergleich: DFG-Symposion 1990 (in German). Springer-Verlag. ISBN 9783476055583.
- ^ Danzer, Doris (2012). Zwischen Vertrauen und Verrat: deutschsprachige kommunistische Intellektuelle und ihre sozialen Beziehungen (1918-1960) (in German). V&R unipress GmbH. ISBN 9783899719390.
- ^ "HEILSKÜNDER / SCHLAMM: Chuzpe". Spiegel Online. Vol. 20. 1960-05-11. Retrieved 2019-07-02.
- ^ "Object Metadata @ LexM". www.lexm.uni-hamburg.de. Retrieved 2019-07-02.
- ^ Harth, Dietrich. "Die Photomontage Heartfields: das ist Photographie plus Dynamit" (PDF). archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de. Retrieved 2 July 2019.
- ^ Marotta, Alina. "Ein Tanz auf Messers Schneide- Kommunistische Tätigkeiten vom Ende der Weimarer Republik bis in die frühe Bundesrepublik anhand ausgewählter Karlsruher Beispiele" (PDF). ns-ministerien-bw.de. Retrieved 11 July 2019.
- ^ Shareen Blair Brysac (23 May 2002). Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra. Oxford University Press. p. 206. ISBN 978-0-19-992388-5. Retrieved 6 February 2019.
External sources
edit- Die rote Fahne Archived 2018-12-15 at the Wayback Machine - Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin
- Rote Fahne News
- Rote Fahne Magazine