Heinrich Laufenberg
Heinrich Laufenberg | |
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Communist Workers Party of Germany (Apr–Aug 1920) |
Heinrich Laufenberg (19 January 1872 – 3 February 1932) was a leading German communist and one of the first to develop the idea of National Bolshevism. Laufenberg was a history academic by profession[1] and was also known by the pseudonym Karl Erler.[2]
SPD activism
Initially a member of the Centre Party, Laufenberg joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the early 1900s. He became associated with a faction on the left of the party led by Wilhelm Schmitt and Peter Berten and when this group gained the upper hand within the Düsseldorf party in 1904 Laufenberg was appointed editor of the party organ Volkszeitung.[3] Laufenberg also worked as an educationalist within the party, offering basic courses on socialism to party members of Düsseldorf.[4] At this point in his career Laufenberg endorsed orthodox Marxism and supported Clara Zetkin in her ideological struggles with revisionists like Gerhard Hildebrand.[5] He left the city in 1908 when he moved to Hamburg, leaving the Düsseldorf group without their leading intellectual.[6]
Hamburg leadership
In Hamburg Laufenberg continued to work on the left of the SPD before becoming a member of the
On 30 November 1918, during the
National Bolshevism
Laufenberg was part of the faction within the USPD which left to establish the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and before long the local party had come under the control of Laufenberg and his ally Fritz Wolffheim. The pair had been strong critics German imperialism: in 1915 they had produced a pamphlet against German expansionism and attacking the SPD for being, as they saw it, complicit in such aggression.[13] Following the war, in October 1919, the pair made contact with Karl Radek and suggested a policy to him that they were already calling 'National Bolshevism'[13] (although it has also been suggested that it was Radek who coined the term for Laufenberg and Wolffheim's policy[14]). They sought a dictatorship of the proletariat which would harness German nationalism and place the country back on a war footing against the occupying Allied armies in alliance with the Soviet Union.[13] Within such an ideology the need for class war was to be placed to one side in favour of cross class co-operation in a war of national liberation.[15] The idea initially met with some enthusiasm amongst members of the Spartacus League.[16]
Such support soon ebbed however when Vladimir Lenin publicly denounced the policy, claiming that Laufenberg was seeking a war coalition with the German bourgeoisie, before branding him as "absurd".[2] Soon Laufenberg and Wolffheim were expelled from the KPD after they attempted to resist the leadership of Wilhelm Pieck.[17] Radek, after showing initial enthusiasm, soon also denounced Laufenberg's National Bolshevism vehemently.[18]
Later years
Laufenberg went on to become a founder member of the
References
- ^ Pierre Broué, Ian Birchall, Eric D. Weitz, John Archer, The German Revolution, 1917-1923, Haymarket Books, 2006, p. 66
- ^ a b Vladimir Lenin, Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder
- ^ Mary Nolan, Social Democracy and Society: Working Class Radicalism in Düsseldorf, 1890-1920, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 95
- ^ Nolan, Social Democracy and Society, p. 136
- ^ Stanley Pierson, Marxist intellectuals and the working-class mentality in Germany, 1887-1912, Harvard University Press, 1993, p. 227
- ^ Nolan, Social Democracy and Society, p. 131
- ^ a b Chris Harman, The Lost Revolution: Germany 1918-1923, Haymarket Books, 2008, p. 121
- ^ Richard A. Comfort, Revolutionary Hamburg: labor politics in the early Weimar Republic, Stanford University Press, 1966, p. 45
- ^ Comfort, Revolutionary Hamburg, p. 46
- ^ Comfort, Revolutionary Hamburg, p. 48-49
- ^ a b Comfort, Revolutionary Hamburg, p. 54
- ^ Harman, The Lost Revolution, p. 122
- ^ a b c d Ruth Fischer, John C. Leggett, Stalin and German Communism: A Study in the Origins of the State Party, Transaction Publishers, 2006, p. 92
- ^ Broué, Birchall, Weitz, Archer, The German Revolution, 1917-1923, p. 326
- ^ Harman, The Lost Revolution, p. 192
- ^ Fischer & Leggett, Stalin and German Communism, p. 93
- ^ Fischer & Leggett, Stalin and German Communism, p. 96
- ^ Harman, The Lost Revolution, p. 251
- ^ Harman, The Lost Revolution, p. 193
- ^ Harman, The Lost Revolution, p. 313
- ^ Harman, The Lost Revolution, pp. 250-252
External links
- entry of Heinrich Laufenberg in Rostock Matrikelportal
- Zwischen der ersten und zweiten Revolution. 1919 (online (Archive.org)
- Newspaper clippings about Heinrich Laufenberg in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW