Beaten But Not Defeated

by Merilyn Moos

  I grew up with the strike. Never, my father told me when I was still quite young, stand on a picket line with Nazis. My mother explained: ‘Would you believe it, there were Nazi pickets standing alongside the Communist pickets during the transport strike. The Communists allowed that to happen. Can you believe it?’ In contrast, the KPD refused to call out the RFB to help with the Berlin transport (Rosenhaft, 1983: 85)

  The infamous events of the Berlin strike illustrate the CC’s emphasis on the desirability of drawing members of the Nazi movement towards the KPD, rather than attacking them.71 Carr (1982) refers to Neumann, on the CC’s ‘left’ putting to the 16th Party Congress in June 1930, in almost the first reference ever to German fascism, that the KPD should try to draw away ‘the toiling masses’ from fascism. (Ironically, Neumann, though he took the Nazis seriously, saw the SPD as the more dangerous.) In 1931, in Munich, a ‘fascist general’, in Berlin, Hitler himself were invited to public debates with KPD leaders (Carr, 1982). Both refused. Carr (1982) sees as one of the most significant examples of the KPD collaborating with the NSDAP against the SPD, when the KPD finally uncritically backed the plebiscite in 1931 for a new election to unseat the coalition government in Prussia, headed by the Social-democrats; Trotsky too condemned the KPDs participation in this plebiscite, arguing that the KPD had entered into a united front with the Nazis against the Social Democrats (Trotsky, 25.8.31. See Appendix for extracts from this article).

  LaPorte (2002, drawing from Weber’s Hauptfeind) also refers to the KPD 1932 Party Conference whose policy clearly promoted joint activity: ‘Joint actions must be carried out with the Nazis’ working-class supporters in the factories against cuts in pay and unemployment benefits and against the Papen dictatorship’. Another intriguing illustration, in LaPorte (2002:371), with implications for Siegi’s work, is that at an agitprop conference, it was even suggested that the slogan: ‘Anti-Fascist Action’, the 1932 CC’s official position, should be changed to ‘United Action’ to avoid deterring Nazi workers.

  The KPD’s intermittent emphasis on street cells (especially during periods of high unemployment when work placed cells were less useful), vital in areas such as Wedding (where Rudi lived, and judging from one of Siegi’s letters, he at one point also lived), was also tied in with the role of the RFB. LaPorte brings out that left-wing KPD members submerged themselves in the RFB to ‘avoid the political paralysis induced by the internal factional struggle’ and the Third Period line. Even by 1929, the RFB was ‘regarded by the ZK [CC] as a reservoir of potential opposition to the party line.’ Indeed, when the RFB was banned after the May events of 1929, Thälmann’s reaction, at the CC on the 10 May, was that the KPD no longer considered it appropriate to organise ‘non-party’ RFB members into the KPD. Instead, the CC created alternative defence organisations, including organisations which could function during a period of illegality (see earlier endnote). This was not presented as a response to the rise of the NSDAP, which in 1929 remained on the periphery of the internal Party discussion. The CC’s aim was to control the RFB more closely. (LaPorte, 2002). Far from the RFB being the KPD’s armed wing, it was seen rather more as a wayward teenager.

  It is unlikely that Siegi’s level of participation in the RFB will ever be known. This is not an organisation that its members proclaimed they belonged to. The fact that he was allowed to hold his own gun (if we trust what Lotte said) marked him out as a reliable, long-standing and trusted member. As suggested earlier, the probability is that he represented and tried to get others to hold to the Party line (a difficult task as it kept changing).

  Siegi’s participation in the RFB suggests that he was more keyed in to seeing the fight against the Nazis as a priority than did the Party. The RFB, as we have seen, was far more committed to taking on the SA than the KPD leadership. For the KPD CC, the SA were just another form of fascist, like the social fascists, and their real task was the overthrown of capitalism -which would stop all forms of fascism anyway. Indeed I do wonder how Siegi, the man from the KPD, the man with a Bavarian accent and a slightly haute-bourgeois manner, related to these turbulent and angry youths, who wanted to take on the SA and defend their homes, their communities and their places of work? Siegi had been at the heart of the earlier Bavarian maelstrom and witnessed Nazi tactics. My guess is that he felt a profound sympathy with the young Berliner working-class anti-Nazis, though he would also have tried to moderate their more adventurous behaviour. I suspect he suited his role well.

  Siegi once told me that before he fled i.e. in the lead up to the Nazis taking power, he could never trust anybody, even people who had been his long-standing friends. (He would never have used ‘comrade’ to me). Rudi also talked about not trusting anybody at all, even friends and comrades in noticeably similar terms. ‘I would wait in the shadows, where nobody would see me,’ he told me, as I listened, captivated and terrified. ‘That way I would see whether the man I was meeting (it was always a man) had a tail. I used to wait for hours out of sight just to be sure. But even if he was alone, I could never be sure he could be trusted.’ The RFB was an illegal organisation from 1929 onwards. It had to be run as far as possible on a disciplined basis. My father adapted to working as a conspirator ‘underground’.72 In the longer run, this method of working probably saved his life.

  Berlin Proletarische Freidenker (BPF)

  Papers obtained from the Bundesarchiv, confirm that Siegi was on the committee of the ‘Berlin Proletarische Freidenker’ (BPF). Significantly, Siegi’s membership alone connects the BPF with the RFB.

  While there is a level of uncertainty over the exact structure and role of the BPF, it is worth noting that this humanist organisation was banned in 1932. While banned three years later than the RFB, the Government’s April 1932 ban under the Emergency Laws of 1932, introduced by Chancellor Brüning, was in theory against para-military organisations, which the Freethinkers would not appear to be. Von Papen, the subsequent Chancellor, reversed the ban on the SA and SS when he took over a few months later. But the BPF remained banned. The suspicion has to be that the BPF was seen, not so much as a humanist organisation, but as a front for anti-fascist activity and even street fighting; maybe the BPF’s involvement with sports clubs closely associated with the KPD (discussed below) fuelled a suspicion that members pursued fitness as much for quasi-military purposes as for its own sake.

  The BPF has no real parallel in British society - it developed originally from ‘The Union of Freethinkers for cremation’, which was founded in the iconic year of 1905, and became the Central Union of German Proletarian Freethinkers in 1908. By 1914, there were 6400 registered members of the Proletarian Freethinkers (Volker Berghahn, 200573 ). Both these organisations, particularly the Proletarian Freethinkers, were part of the extensive network of social and cultural organisations linked to the SPD in pre-WWI Germany. The two groups merged in 1927, becoming the German Freethinkers Association in 1930.

  These groups, which were very popular in a period when the bourgeois left had been discredited, campaigned particularly around the issues of the secularisation of elementary schools and with great effect for Germans to disaffiliate from their Churches, as well as around typical “humanist” issues such as rights to divorce and abortion.

  An International of Proletarian Freethinkers was formed at a congress in Czechoslovakia but conflict broke out at an international level between the forces associated with the USSR and with the Social Democrats. No doubt associated with the Third Period, in 1930 the pro-Soviet delegations took over from the Social Democrats. Whether the BPF in Germany came under the sway of the Communists at that point or earlier is not clear, though it seems likely that with the Third Period, the KPD leadership would have encouraged some sort of break with the Social Democrats.

  Though, at an official level, the BPF had become a part of the Freethinkers Association in 1930, a letter (discussed in a couple of paragraphs) from Fomferra (a leading member of the KPD) refers to a Proletarian Freethinkers group up till 1933.
What may have happened is that there was a ‘faction’ within the Freethinkers Association which retained the name of Proletarian Freethinkers, almost certainly made up of KPD members and therefore including Siegi. Or it could be that, from April 1932 when the Freethinkers Association was banned, the ‘Proletarian Freethinkers’ name was used for the underground group - after all, the KPD tactics at the time was theoretically that some members had to be prepared for going illegal. From talking to various people and documents gained from the Bundersarchiv, there is evidence that there was a cell within the BPF, certainly in Berlin, which operated illegally, at least from April 1932, which may have been used by Communist Party members operating ‘underground’. (It is as yet not clear whether this cell existed prior to April 1932.) It has not been possible to find out how large this shadowy grouping was. But there is another possibility. Hans, a KPD member, was a member of the Youth section of the Proletarian Freethinkers in Leipsig and here it was clearly separate from any ‘social Democratic’ Freethinkers. So the relationship between the two groups may have varied according to locality and local politics. Bodek (1996: 6374 ) refers to a ‘Freethinkers-opposition’ - who were once the ‘League of Proletarian Freethinkers - as attending a Cultural exhibition, organised by the KPD in 1930. This also suggests the existence of a faction within the League itself, surely Siegi’s.

  What I do know is that Siegi told me he was the Secretary of the Berlin group of the Freethinkers, indeed telling me a ‘funny’ story about taking a tram to bury the Freethinkers’ funds, carefully wrapped up, under a tree outside Berlin - and musing, forty years later, whether it would still be there! (I would now surmise this took place in April 1932.) Maybe, Siegi was the secretary of the official branch of the Association, though we do know from Fomferra’s letter that he was also a member of the Proletarian ‘cell’ (see below) and it is therefore also possible that this is what he was referring to. There is no record of the activities of either ‘organisation’, so we can only surmise what Siegi’s role involved.

  Fomferra [see Appendix for fuller information] was also active in the BPF and we know from his letter that he was at some level responsible for the illegal cell in the BPF between 11.1932 - 6.1933. We do not know whether this was as the responsible KPD official for the illegal cell or as an ‘ordinary’ member of the cell. Little is known about Fomferra other than what he tells us in a couple of documents, which he has signed for submission to the SED in 14.2.1947 in E Germany (obtained from the Bundesarchiv).

  Based on the list of names of the committee that Fomferra provided the SED, the committee members of the illegal cell were Walter Weidauer, the secretary until his arrest in March 1933, when he was replaced by Hans Mainz. Other committee members were Walter Jopp (though there is a question mark by his name), Fritz Bischoff and ‘siggi’ Moos. (For the ‘careers’ of these remarkable anti-fascist fighters, see Appendix. Siegi/Siggi was the only one to flee, though some others survived.)

  So Siegi at the time of his involvement seems to have been on a committee/cell probably composed of only four people (all men, all youngish). One noticeable feature is that, insofar as there is information, the committee was composed of trusted and long-standing Party comrades: these committee members all held significant positions in the KPD as well as the BPF, many over a long period of time. Again, though the comparison with the other men cannot be conclusive, it does strongly suggest that Siegi had been in the Party for significant period of time and was a well-recognised cadre.

  Siegi is the only comrade in this group that we know was based in Berlin. Walter Weidauer, who had joined the KPD in 1922, and became a city councillor in Zwickau, in 1932, became the ‘election leader’ of the KPD Proletarian Freethinkers in Saxony. (Arrested soon after the Reichstag fire, he continued his work with the Proletarian Freethinkers after his release some months later.) In 1930, Bischoff was the head of the group of the Proletarian Freethinkers in Hessen, Frankfurt. Indeed, of the four people for whom we have details, two were from Saxony, confirming the strength of left and the Proletarian Freethinkers there.

  Though one is again only dealing in ‘may-be’s’, it is possible that Siegi may have been the BPF Secretary before Weidauer, who was its secretary only from November 1932 after the BPF was made illegal. But Weidauer as we know, was not based in Berlin and it is possible that Fomferra, reporting to the SED after Siegi had left the KPD and Germany, may have preferred to give Weidauer, who by 1948 was the major of Dresden, that honour. It is also possible that Siegi actually was the Secretary of the ‘parent’ body of the Freethinkers, which maybe in Berlin was dominated by the KPD. Maybe I have remembered it wrong, for he rarely repeated such information, and Siegi said he was the Chair. In any event, Siegi held a position of responsibility and trust in this layer of the movement.

  Certainly, Siegi was expressing humanist beliefs: included in his writings for the Journal for Theatre (discussed in next section). He regularly attacked religion, in particular the Catholic Church. In the February 1931 edition, he railed against the Church’s oppression of women, their opposition to abortion and contraception. Siegi took his atheism seriously at this point, even if it was against the form that religion took.

  To leap ahead of ourselves briefly, we know that out of the five people Fomferra lists as members of the cell, at least three were arrested in March 1933 (see Appendix for further details) The SS and SA, following the earlier arrests on the night of the Reichstag fire, then swooped on the next level of lefties, both political and cultural, in March of 1933. This was more a dreadful game of cat and mouse however, than the arrests a few years later - its purpose was to intimidate, not yet to destroy.75

  Hans linked the Proletarian Freethinkers with sports activities in a way which I have not seen elsewhere. Hans, when interviewed, was insistent on the importance of the ‘Fichte’, sports organisations which were, he suggested, connected to the KPD, and were of some importance. Hans who was very much into various sporting activities, left the SPD dominated Free Thinkers, to join the sporting facilities offered by the Proletarian Free Thinkers, because he had felt uncomfortable in the regimented atmosphere of the SPD dominated FT clubs. He also said that the SPD dominated Free Thinkers were all mouth and no action. He stated he would only belong to a KPD sports organisation, not one dominated by the SPD. It appears that because of the dominance of the SPD in Saxony, who were strongly anchored in the subculture of sporting and cultural organisations, the SPD continued to dominate the Fichte and Red Sports units, and often to exclude KPD members, whereas in Berlin, the Fichte and Red Sports were dominated by the KPD (Copper, 198876 ).

  Siegi’s going underground and subsequent flight can be partly understood within the context of his part in the Free Thinkers. Not only had membership of the Free Thinkers become illegal, he was also one of only a handful of members of a leading cell. Fomferra’s papers help make sense of a piece of family ‘folklore’: Siegi, according to Lotte, had originally gone to hide at Lotte’s very bourgeois aunt’s home, Tante Klara, who took him in on the night of the Reichstag fire and hid him for two weeks. Fomferra’s papers reveal that their group was subject to persecution after the Reichstag fire.77 Siegi, one can surmise, got to hear that the other members of the Freethinkers cell had been arrested, that the cell had been broken and that he too would be under threat and this, one can reasonably guess, contributed to his decision to flee Germany.

  The importance of left sporting organisations

  While there is no evidence that Siegi was involved in a personal capacity with any sporting organisations, he became centrally involved in performances for a Sports Revue.

  Sports organisations in Germany held a place which has no parallel in Britain. Workers’ sport associations were first formed in Central Europe in the late nineteenth century as a reaction to the increasing conservatism of the traditional gymnastic societies, and by 1900 the strongest workers’ sport organizations were built up in Germany.

  For millions of workers, sport was
a vital aspect of the revolutionary movement The ‘Fichte’ were established in the C19th as a radical alternative to the deeply reactionary sports clubs of the time, aimed at drawing in working class children and adults and which, like Woodcraft Folk today, also offered a variety of holiday activities. The First World War disrupted organised international workers activities but afterwards, there was a successful campaign by the Lucerne Sports International (LSI) which was to become the Socialist Workers Sports International (SWSI) representing the SPD, to relaunch the national workers sports movement. It is worth listening briefly to goals so dissimilar to anything ever associated with sport in the UK. The basis or aims of the movement were proclaimed to be antimilitaristic, to develop as part of a proletarian sub-culture, to inoculate the workers against bourgeois culture and the bourgeois clubs and educate them in a socialist spirit. The founders of the organisation, believing that sport could be revolutionary, wrote that the ‘workers’ sport movement is no less important than the political, trade union and cooperative movements of the working class.

  In all countries the sport movement played an important role in the struggle against ‘capitalist nationalism and militarism’, which pervaded the so-called ‘politically neutral’ bourgeois sport organizations seen as corrupting working youth. Fritz Wildung, one of the social-democratic ideological leaders of the workers’ sport movement, declared that while capitalism fostered mistrust among people in order to keep workers around the world apart, the LSI would strive to create international brotherhood. To preserve the socialist character of the LSI in the face of the necessary cooperation with bourgeois governments, it was decreed that no one could be a member unless he shared the view that the goals of the organization could only be achieved in a socialist society and no member of an organization associated with the LSI could participate in a bourgeois sport organization.