by Merilyn Moos
My parents brought me up in an atmosphere of never-ending suspicion. This can be better understood given how afraid they were of being betrayed. A feature of life amongst these small émigré groups of Communist and other lefties was the fear of informers. Thanks to the researches by Brinson (1998) and Dove (2011), frequently based on now open MI5 files, we have new evidence about this. One example of an MI5 agent in the early/mid 1930s is Claud W. Sykes. As files recently released by the Security Service confirm, Sykes was charged with penetrating German refugee circles in London (Dove, 2011). MI5’s operations centred on the surveillance of ‘communists and suspected communists’, a task which assumed great importance for MI5 after January 1933 (Dove, 2011) Indeed, members of the German exile group, such as Otten were themselves turned into ‘watchers’ by and for the Security Services though remaining one of the ‘watched’ (Dove, 2011). Another sort of informer was Wesemann, a former Social Democrat and editor of Vorwarts, and himself a refugee, who informed on the German exiles, non-Communist and Communist, Jewish and non-Jewish to the Gestapo159 (Brinson, 1998). Fear of informants can only have acerbated Siegi’s (and Lotte’s) fear both of being politically involved and any incipient fear of other ‘comrades’. Siegi had learnt in Berlin never to trust his comrades, a tendency which his experiences here can only have reinforced.
Siegi’s leaving of the exile group and the KPD represented a fundamental turning point in his life. His time in this grouplet was already not a happy one. Given much of the left’s tendency to pacifism and the right’s to appeasement, one can guess how difficult it must have been for many of these highly politicised refugees from Nazi Germany, like Siegi, to only be able to watch as events in the UK unfolded. Indeed, I imagine my father’s frustration and despair at discovering that the nearest thing to his previous politically engaged life was to be had in this small, fractious and ultimately ineffective exile group. But leaving the group marked a break with what his life had until then been about. The political nature of the USSR, the show trials, Brian’s disappearance and the role of the ‘Communist’ forces in Spain will all have contributed to his departure.
It is intriguing to look for signs of dissidence in his pre-UK ‘career’ to assess whether he had earlier misgivings about the KPD. Certainly, he seems to have been a trusted Party comrade during his Berlin days, when many members, as we already know, either drifted away, left because of political differences or were pushed out. Yet, as suggested earlier, while they should not be overstated, differences in emphasis between his position and that of the Party do appear in Siegi’s 1929-33 days: in his earlier writings on agit-prop, where he appears to distance himself slightly from the sectarianism of the Third Period, or in his deep involvement in the Red Front. They represented the first glimmerings of a dissidence which, given the totality of circumstances, ended up with this final rift with the KPD.
It would, I suggest, have been more surprising if he had stayed in. In the tiny faction ridden exile group, he would have had a forced knowledge of the impact of Stalinist bureaucracy as it increasingly turned on its old comrades (‘ate its own children’). Siegi had after all collected the papers from the left and right opposition while still in Berlin, not a sign he did not support the Centre, but that he was interested in the debates and had a critical awareness of the issues.160 He, more than many, will have followed what was happening in the USSR in 1936 and 1937 and the persecution (and sometimes State murder) of dissidents and loyal Bolsheviks. In addition, if he shared Lotte’s support for POUM, he would have been critical of the Communists for failing the Spanish Republicans as well as turning on the POUM.161 Nevertheless, to break with the Communist movement after he had dedicated the past ten years to its cause must have turned his world upside down, especially when he did so alone.
The effect on Siegi of leaving will have been personally as well as politically profound. For Siegi to leave this group, however fractious it might have been, must have been to tear his last link with the struggle and with his comrades who, however much he disagreed politically with some of them, would have shared some emotional understanding of the highs and lows of resistance to the Nazis and of being a political refugee. It must have torn him to bits. I do not think he ever recovered from this loss of his past self, though he, far more than my mother, held onto an eternally optimistic view of the world.
An unlikely corroboration comes from Jürgen Kuczynski’s memoirs (1981), quoted in Merson (1986). Although Jürgen is referring to the illegal struggle rather than the secret but not life-threatening world of the London exiles, he writes of how the effect of such work is to make the comrades closer to each other, even though not always better people. Jürgen continues, as if he were describing Siegi when I knew him as my father that such comrades become more distrustful in daily life but more confident about the world at large, with unlimited expectations for the world’s future.
It was not just leaving the KPD which will have left Siegi increasingly adrift. By 1937, the Nazi regime, far from collapsing, had instead adopted increasingly systematic and brutal measures against the left and oppositionists. Siegi’s and Lotte would have followed events in the Spanish Civil War, closely aware of their political significance and of Brian’s involvement. Siegi would have watched as the fascists pushed back the Republicans. By late 1936, the French Popular Front government under Blum had ceased providing the Spanish Republicans with arms. In April 1937, the nationalists bombed Barcelona at the end of 1936; early in 1937, the bombing of Guernica was immortalised by Picasso. By the mid-1937, Bilbao had fallen. The USSR held tightly onto its purse strings and arms and turned its fire power against POUM. As if this was not all bad enough, in the UK, people on the left whom Siegi might have looked to, were uncritical of the USSR’s role in Spain. Kingsley Martin, editor of the New Statesman, supported the Comintern’s tactics; Laski, a leading left theoretician, condemned those who criticised the USSR’s tactics in Spain as being no better than the fascists. Orwell, outraged by such a slur on the POUM, wrote a rebuff in ‘Homage to Catalonia’, only to find his CP leaning publisher, Gollanz, refusing the book. Siegi will have known Spain was a dress rehearsal and feared for the future.
What will also have increased Siegi and Lotte’s sense of insecurity was the fear of Nazi agents working in the UK (and elsewhere). Although never proved, the deaths of Dora Fabian, a political activist and former member of the German Socialist Workers Group, and Mathilde Wurm, an ex-SPD member of the Reichstag, was understood by most on the left as murder. Many leading left figures some of whom have already crossed these pages and were known by Siegi, such as Ernst Toller, whom Fabian had worked for and knew well, Fenner Brockway and James Maxton all were involved in a campaign to establish the real cause of death. What they suspected or feared was that a German agent had murdered the women, especially as Fabian was actively involved in campaigning for SAP prisoners in Germany. They had grounds for their fears: there had already been evidence of Nazi activity, including abductions and murder, outside Germany; of particular relevance here is the case of Hans Wesemann who had been passing himself off as a socialist exile here but who had been unmasked as a Gestapo agent and who was suspected of having a hand in the women’s deaths. The British state however though seriously concerned about Nazi agents in the UK, took the Communist threat more seriously. Siegi and Lotte will have known of the women’s deaths/murders, indeed Siegi probably knew Dora Fabian, and it will have made them even more anxious about participating in activity which could draw them to the attention of the Nazis, never mind the British state. (Anybody interested in this terrible but fascinating story, please refer to Brinson and Dove, 2014, from whose book most of this paragraph is based.)
Siegi must have felt alone and dispirited. He was living in a foreign land which threatened him with deportation if he was caught doing political work. He had no family here and will have become increasingly concerned about what might befall Hermann and Lotte’s family far away in Germany. His Party had betrayed his id
eals and, even if he did not think of it as counter-revolutionary, he no longer wanted anything to do with it or his erstwhile comrades. He had nobody here he felt he could trust or turn to. He was having to think and speak in a second language. And his relationship with Lotte, deeply strained as a result of his emotionally exhausting flight from Germany, had not yet recovered and never might.
1934-1938 Siegi’s status as a refugee
Thanks to the MI5 files, partly confirmed by Siegi’s correspondence, a limited record of Siegi’s other activities during this period exist. MI5 kept records on all refugees entering the UK, through initial registration at the port of entry – as appears the case with Siegi, when they registered at Bow Street, by observing them in demonstrations (Edith Tudor-Hart, who will feature again, was picked up this way) or through MI5 agents (Brinson and Dove, 2014). Siegi – and Lotte – had reason to be anxious about being watched and the possibility of expulsion if they broke the known and less known rules.162
The Home Office was indeed playing a game of ‘cat and mouse’ with him (just as with Reimann). Siegi, who was not sponsored through the Jewish community but by the ILP MP, Maxton, had to apply for the right to remain in the UK every three months. According to his MI5 records, which we shall assume here are reliable, Siegi, who arrived here in the February, applied for permission to stay till 19.5.35, then was granted permission to stay till 15.9.35, then reapplied again for permission to stay till 31.12.35 (only granted on the 26. 9. 35) and then reapplied again. Each re-application had to be cleared by both the Home office and MI5 on each occasion. That alone would make for a sense of insecurity (and we can also assume that he knew what had happened to people who had returned to Germany). Moreover, these extensions were far from automatic. Siegi and Lotte’s letters to each other - for they were living apart regularly during this period - are full of angst.
Siegi became a part-time student of Economics at the LSE between April 1934 and April 35.163 He worked his way from doing research work for Gayer there to being appointed as a Research Assistant, where he worked on trade cycles. In 1936, he got a job with The New York Times, a job he lost because of the refusal of the Ministry of Labour to renew his work permit (letter from L. Wohlfell, NY Times, 20.10.36, in personal possession).
Siegi’s job at the New York Times had to be revoked because of the problems he was having with work and residence permits. There is an open reference from the NY Times, 20.10. 1936 which states: ‘The only reason we are dispensing with Mr Moos’ services is because the British Labour Ministry has declined to issue a permit for his further employment with us…[as] he is a German national. We have found Mr Moos to be intelligent, loyal, honest and industrious.’ Even his work as a Research Assistant at the LSE had to be cleared on a monthly basis by the Home Office (I have the letter relating to the period between 18th July and 18th August 1937).
Siegi writes to Albert Einstein on the 21st October 1936 in the hope Einstein could help get him into the US. He writes: ‘My uncle, Rudolph, recommended I address a request directly to you…Your wife, Mrs Einstein, knew my family and my father well. [Siegi then explains the circumstances of his leaving Germany and the failure of the British ‘Ministry of Works’ to extend his work permit so he could not continue with the New York Times.] ‘I have once more been forced to look around for another country and another life…I would be very grateful if you could invite me for a visit…I am in a hopeless situation.’ Despite a double relationship to Siegi, through his wife but also as a distant blood relative, Einstein does not appear to have replied. Siegi was not a person to beg and this last shot of a letter suggests a level of real desperation.
Siegi is clearly concerned. There is other fragmentary but convincing evidence of a variety of references/testimonials from the great and the good, including from his friend Ronald Wood in 1936, the American economist Gayer in 1937, and Bowen, the Director of the Oxford Institute of Statistics in 1939 (all in personal possession) supporting Siegi’s attempts to get into the US. Lord Hirst, a not-that-distant relative, who had earlier come out of Germany and had co-founded GEC, according to a 1937 letter from Hermann, recommended Siegi for a job at the New York branch of GEC.
Siegi’s insecurity is reflected in a series of his letters to Lord Hirst, requesting his support for his applications to the Home Office. Hermann was closely related to Hirst: they came from the same (secular Jewish and highly bourgeois) family in Bavaria. Something could not have gone quite right. Hermann’s letter to ‘my darlings’ [Lotte and Siegi] from January 1934 reads: ‘Your reception at Hirst’s showed me quite clearly how English this great gentleman has become, so different from when he was a truly Bavarian (sic) and family orientated youth.’ Siegi however must have persisted. It seems he was very excited about the New York Times job, seeing it as a way into the USA and its relative safety. But as Siegi wrote to Hirst (dated 11. 10.1936 and the last letter written in German), the Ministry of Labour ‘in its correct policy of filling free posts with English staff…has refused me a work permit….There is the possibility of being allowed the work permit if an influential personality intervenes for me.’ Otherwise, Siegi states, he will be penniless. We do not have the reply but as we already know, Siegi did not get his permit and lost the job - and, as it turned out, his chance to go to the USA.
In Siegi’s next letter (22. 10. 1936) to Lord Hirst, he writes, in English: ‘I have been asked by the Home Office to continue my studies if I want to stay in this country. I will now leave for the USA as soon as possible provided I get the visa which to obtain is extremely difficult for Germans.’ Then we have Siegi’s reply to Lord Hirst’s reply, thanking him for agreeing to let his name be mentioned in his application to the Home Office. His permission to stay (though not to work) was granted. Christmas greetings were still being exchanged into the early 1940s between the comrade and the Lord!
The precariousness of Siegi’s finances is highlighted by a further comment to Hirst in his letter of 11.10.1936: his situation had been made critical because his uncle, Hermann, was now forbidden by German law to send him money. Hermann’s financial support till then had clearly been crucial.
In May 1937, Siegi’s German passport ‘expired’. I now have a chilling set of SS, police and German Home Office papers, thanks to the help of Dr Weber, which show that in February 1937, Siegi went to the German Embassy in London to renew his passport. It seems unlikely he believed his passport would be renewed, but the Nazi’s policy of removing citizenship from their undesirables was still new and Siegi must have thought it was worth the risk. However, the reality, according to these Nazi documents, is that Siegi (along with many other refugees, including Lotte) had their German citizenship revoked at the end of October 1937, following a lengthy bureaucratic process. The German State police provide an explanation: Siegi was a convinced and active member of the KPD and the Red Front. Moreover, when the police searched Siegi and Lotte’s flat in Berlin, they had found a considerable library of KPD literature (Thus ended my fantasies about latterly finding this collection of opposition and Party literature under the floorboards). Although Siegi did not have a police record for criminal-political activities and there was no case for treason, nevertheless, because ‘of his conduct…the Jew had lost his right to German citizenship.’164 (Lotte also lost her citizenship, it was stated, simply because of her marriage to Siegi; there was nothing untoward in her conduct, according to the same records.) It is also of note that not all German Communist refugees lost their passports-this distinction may have been based on whom the German State saw as the activists on the ground and the more dangerous (rather than based on their prestige within the KPD or elsewhere) or it could instead be a consequence of German bureaucracy’s irrationality.
MI5 note that Siegi no longer has a passport at the end of 1937, though they do not record any details. While it is impossible to know how important this was in Siegi’s decisions, it will have made it almost impossible for him to travel abroad. This alone would have affected his de
cision not to go to Spain but also limited his ability to travel to the US, as he - and Lotte - at points hoped.
What is also of interest is what does not appear in these - undoubtedly limited - MI5 records. Anti-fascist organisations continued to hold meetings and mobilise in London and elsewhere in the UK. By late 1936, there was an antifascist organisation made up largely of liberals and radicals: the British anti-Nazi Boycott Group and the British anti-Nazi Council. In 1937, there was an attempt at a unity campaign, to include the ILP, the CP and the Socialist League (Pennybacker, 2009). But by 1937, I suspect, Siegi and Lotte were taking ‘a rest’ from politics.
Fortunately, in 1938, unlike so many of the refugees, Siegi finally got a ‘proper’ job, attached to Oxford University. Finally, in July 1939, both Siegi and Lotte received British certificates of identity to travel and were given the right to stay in the UK. The period of intense insecurity over the right to stay in the UK - and stay alive - abated.
Lotte, Brian, the USSR and Siegi
Lotte is evidently intertwined with Siegi’s life, though this is not the place to go into the details of Lotte’s trajectory during the period 1934-1939.165 Lotte had been active on the revolutionary left in Germany. But she had met Siegi through an agit-prop group, not through direct political activity and there is nothing to suggest she was concealing the truth when she told me that she had not been a member of the KPD in Germany. She always denied with great force whenever I asked, that she had ever belonged to the Communist Party. Yet if we trust what she put in her CV when interned on the Isle of Man, from the transcript found in her MI5 files, it appears that she had been in the KPD from 1934 to 1936. But is this reliable? A question is raised by her absence from every list of members of the German KPD exiles in London. Not only is she not listed by name, she is not even referred to as Siegi’s wife, as some other ‘wives’ were. Maybe, as she protests in her letters to Siegi, as she does not know whether she is being accused of spying for Germany or the USSR when she is in Holloway prison, connecting herself to the Communist Party seemed like a good idea at the time. (Lotte never had any difficulty concealing the truth, political or personal, if necessary.) Maybe she associated herself with the exile KPD group because of Siegi, without actually being a recognised member. Lotte certainly knew about the internal debates within the communist movement in Germany, presenting a Brandlerite position about the USSR, which showed a detailed level of knowledge of the debates about the USSR’s bureaucratic and class character.