Reflections on the Life of a Communist Publisher

Gross, Babette. Willi Münzenberg: A Political Biography. Translated by Marian Jackson. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1974.

As part of what seems to be becoming a study of historical parallels, I’ve reread Babette Gross’ biography of the Communist publisher Willi Muenzenberg.

Muenzenberg and his work

Muenzenberg was an important figure whose influence is not widely understood. Muenzenberg, as one of the inventors of modern mass media propaganda, shaped the Western understanding of communism in the 1920s and 30s. The outage over the Sacco and Vanzetti trial? His work. Alternate trials of accused German Communists in the 1930s? His work. Promulgation of the claim that the Nazis set the Reichstag fire? His work. 1930s anti-fascism? Largely Muenzenberg’s work.

I am uncertain in dealing with this material, much as I am in dealing with records of religious movements. The strength of belief in Communism is the early 20th century beggars my imagination, much as medieval Christianity does. Communism moved and shaped lives and was utterly betrayed by its leaders.

So, Muenzenberg. He started as a German Communist youth leader, met Lenin as a young man, grew into a great publisher of Communist propaganda, ultimately broke with the Third International as the Soviet Union dominated and betrayed it, continued his career as a critic of fascism, especially Nazism, and was ultimately assassinated, most likely by Soviet agents, but possibly Nazi agents.

Gross was Muenzenberg’s wife¹ and was sympathetic to him; other commentators are much less so. I do not know enough about his life to form my own opinion. By Gross’ account, Muenzenberg became a committed Communist as a teenager, and remained so through his life. The impression I take from Gross (and once I reread Koch² and read McMeekin³ I may alter it) is that Muenzenberg was a committed Communist who was, like so may Communists, betrayed by the leaders of the Soviet Union.

There is little here on the propaganda that Muenzenberg produced and published; for that I must turn to other sources, but there is a great deal of what it meant to be a committed German Communist in the 20th century preceding World War II. Muenzenberg was not central to the Communism of his time, but he worked with its leaders, knew Lenin personally. Gross, as she presents herself, was an observer of the movement. It is, as such a primary source document, though one written decades after the fact and informed by other period records. Like any primary source author, she had her own viewpoints and biases.

Gross devotes an entire chapter to Muenzenburg’s participation in the Communist Youth International of the early 20th century. A familiar theme: the conflict of the old guard with young activists. And this colossal error:

A few weeks after Münzenberg’s return to Switzerland, Gavrilo Princip’s shots in Bosnian Sarajevo abruptly aroused the world. The news of the attempt on the lives of the Austrian Crown Prince Francis Ferdinand and his wife led to excited discussions between Münzenberg and his friends. But not one of them could at first believe that war between the nations of Europe was now inevitable. War in Europe? In 1914? A serious conflict between Austria and Serbia was conceivable, but not a European war.

Muenzenberg’s role in outreach to intellectuals:

Münzenberg’s later activities, which were of extreme importance to the Communist Party, were wholly directed at bringing under Communist influence a group that was always regarded as politically unstable, the intellectuals. Motivated by emotion instead of reasoned political opinions they remained uncommitted, frequently filled by a desire to participate actively in the struggle for what depending on their particular political views, they regarded as right or wrong, as justice or oppression. Rarely did they realize that the calculating–or fanatical-functionary, the cynical manipulator of political calculations, the Marxist “expert,” the conservative or fascist-namely, the type who on the right and the left but particularly among the extremist groups formed the nucleus of a political party, usually viewed them with disapproval or at best an ironical superiority feeling. Apart from a few, if notable, exceptions these writers, artists and scientists were romantics who at times were capable of grotesquely quixotic acts, although they were almost always imbued with good will–idealists who lacked the basis of solid political knowledge. But they were also people who had influence, whose word was listened to–and not only in the sphere in which they were known to be authorities. The poet, the painter, the musician can be as sure of an attentive audience when pronouncing on politics as when he speaks about his art. The more extreme his utterances the more likely this is to be true. Because of the all pervading sense of crisis, the “golden” twenties and early thirties in which Münzenberg’s activity reached its peak provided a particularly suitable climate for political dilettantism.

Moving forward in history we have bits of the failure of Russian Communism, intertwined with its betrayal of the German communists:

On 23 January 1933 the SA, protected by the Prussian police, demonstrated outside the Karl Liebknecht house, the KPD’s headquarters on the Bülowplatz, and the Communists did not lift a finger. On 20 January the party leadership had received a telegram from Moscow ordering the German Politburo ‘to see that there were no clashes between National Socialists and Communists during this demonstration.’

On the popular support for the Nazis in Germany. Unlike the current US situation, the economic pain was real:

Only a few days previously he had had a discussion in Frankfurt with former members of the Rote Frontkämpferbund [Red Struggle]. They had gone over to the SA and had told him frankly that, although there was nothing wrong with the Communists and although at heart they were on his side, Hitler made things happen more quickly, and they just could not bear to wait any longer. Many of them had been unemployed for over three years. They had no proper shoes, no warm coats. They were starving and they had reached the limits of endurance. Desperation had driven them into Hitler’s arms.

On the response of the non-German press to the Nazi takeover:

Habit had not yet blunted people’s minds or closed their ears to the terrible tales which hordes of German refugees brought across the frontiers.

A Swedish pacifist supporting the USSR:

Georg Branting was a Socialist deputy and a pacifist by conviction. Even in 1933 he saw in the National Socialists’ recent rise to power a new threat of war. He did.not know the Soviet Union nor had he ever had any personal contacts with the Bolsheviks but he regarded them as the only power strong enough to guarantee the peace.

Muenzenberg, becoming disillusioned with the Soviet Union:

Münzenberg looked at the teeming mass of humanity and commented beneath his breath that this reminded him of the building of the pyramids by the pharaohs. He was depressed by the reality of “socialist reconstruction.” He said less and less while Eiduck, the old Bolshevik, the worthy civil war fighter prometed to concentration camp supervisor, proudly showed us his camp.

This bespeaks Muenzenberg’s own ignorance of the Bolsheviks and the Soviet Union; Aleksandr Eiduk was a long-time member of the Cheka, the brutal hated Soviet Secret police (he wrote poetry in praise of its brutality.)

A moment:

During this period Münzenberg ran into the Dutch ex-Communist and co-founder of the Comintern, Sneevliet on a street in Brussels. Sneevliet blocked his path shouting: “Cain, where is thy brother Abel-Zinoviev?”

There is an extensive bibliography of anti-fascist works by Muenzenberg as publisher of Editions du Carrefour; this is part of it.

Between 1933 and 1937, before Münzenberg was forced to terminate his association with the Editions du Carrefour because of his break with the Comintern, he was responsible for the production of about fifty German pamphlets and books–an impressive list–many of which were translated into French or English. After the Brown Books, each of which was followed up with a supplement, there came more political literature in 1934. The output included a collection of thirty-three biographies from the Third Reich, Naziführer sehen Dich an (Nazi Leaders Look at You), written by Walter Mehring but published anonymously; Walter Schönstedt’s novel Auf der Flucht erschossen (Shot While Trying to Escape); the Weissbuch über die Erschiessungen des 30.Juni (White Book on the Shootings of 30 June); a political novel by Gustav Regler, Im Kreuzfeuer (Under Cross-fire), published on the occasion of the forthcoming Saar plebiscite; and a book of almost five hundred pages documenting Hitler’s secret rearmament which, to make it more effective, was ascribed to the English journalist Dorothy Woodman. In the same year Editions du Carrefour published Lieder, Gedichte und Chöre by Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler, and Egon Erwin Kisch’s political novel Eintritt verboten (No Entry). The documentation on the Third Reich was continued in 1935 with Das braune Netz (The Brown Net) which described the work of National Socialist suggestion which Otto Katz had made. In 1937 Münzenberg made his most significant personal contribution to anti-Fascist literature, the book Propaganda als Waffe (Propaganda as Weapon⁴), a comprehensive analysis of National Socialist propaganda.

And so?

It is sobering to reflect how many of the ideas and practices of the left continue to be influenced by this propaganda.

There are no parallels, now, to the European intellectuals of a century ago. Still, reflections on how these people were seduced are unsettling. We are not as smart as we think we are.

This account also highlights the differences between the historical rise of the Nazis and the current situation. There is no current analog of the Soviet Union, no great red hope to which modern activists look and also, no great betrayer like Stalin. Keynesian economic policies have also made the brutal poverty of economic cycles a thing of the past. Instead, modern fascists seem focused, oddly, on bringing back the problems of the past.

There seems more to say, and perhaps as I get on in my reading I will have more to say about this. I feel strongly that I have only skimmed the surface of this account which, perhaps, is as it should be; it is not my goal to be a historian of Communism.

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1. They lived together as a married couple though, like many socialists of their generation, did not marry under law or in church. ↩︎

2. Koch, Stephen. Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Münzenberg, and the Seduction of the Intellectuals. Completely rev. and Updated. New York: Enigma Books, 2004. ↩︎

3. McMeekin, Sean. The Red Millionaire: A Political Biography of Willy Münzenberg, Moscow’s Secret Propaganda Tsar in the West. 1st ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. ↩︎

4. American author Annalee Newitz has recently published a book entitled Stories Are Weapons on propaganda. I wonder if she is aware of this precedent. ↩︎