The Aesthetics of Resistance Volume 2
Page 38
Spartacus League. Revolutionary left-wing group that split off from the Social Democratic Party of Germany over its support for World War I. Founded by Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Klara Zetkin, and others, it transformed itself into the Communist Party of Germany on January 1, 1919.
Stahlmann (Richard, 1891–1974). Trained as a carpenter and was a prisoner of war in Britain during World War I. He joined the Communist Party of Germany in 1919, went to the Soviet Union in 1923, and attended military school in Moscow. He was sent by the *Comintern to China, participated in the Spanish Civil War, and was sent to Stockholm by the leadership of the Communist Party of Germany to organize the illegal entry of resistance fighters into Germany. After the arrest of his colleagues *Wehner and *Mewis, Stahlmann went into hiding and returned to the Soviet Union. After the war he worked for the Stasi in the GDR.
Steffin (Margarete, 1908–1941). Writer and translator; a member of the Communist Party of Germany and the Young Communist League; a key collaborator of *Brecht, with whom she went into exile in Denmark, Sweden, and Finland; died of tuberculosis in Moscow while awaiting a visa for the United States.
Strindberg (August, 1849–1912). Swedish author and painter. Tegnérlunden, a park in Stockholm, features a sculpture of Strindberg by Carl Eldh. The protagonist mentions this artwork in this volume although the sculpture was not erected until 1942.
Ström (Fredrik, 1880–1948). Party secretary of the Swedish Social Democrats from 1911 to 1916; greeted Lenin in Stockholm during his return journey to Russia in 1917; party secretary of the Communist Party of Sweden from 1921 to 1924. Following Höglund’s split with the Communist International, Ström also returned to the Social Democratic Party and served as a member of parliament from 1930 to 1948.
Sue (Eugène, 1804–1857), French writer, author of The Mysteries of Paris (1842).
Toller (Ernst, 1893–1939). Writer and member of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany; one of the leaders of the Bavarian Soviet Republic; imprisoned from 1919 to 1924. Toller engaged in various forms of antifascist activity and was involved in the efforts to support Spain during the civil war; he went into exile in Switzerland in 1933, then continued on to France and to the United States. He committed suicide in 1939.
Tombrock (Hans, 1895–1966). Sailor and vagrant, one of the initiators of the International Fraternity of Vagrants; painter and graphic artist; went into exile in 1933 and moved to Sweden in 1936, where he met *Brecht in 1939. In 1946 he moved to East Germany, where he taught art. He moved to the West in 1953, where he died in 1966.
Ulbricht (Walter, 1893–1973). Trained as a carpenter; joined the *Spartacus League; founding member of the Communist Party of Germany and in 1927 became a permanent member of its Central Committee; in 1928, a member of the Reichstag; after 1933, a leading member of the Party in exile in France; in Spain during the civil war; after 1938, in exile in Moscow; returned to Germany after World War II; founding member of the East German Communist Party (SED); 1960–73, president of the German Democratic Republic.
van Gogh (Vincent, 1853–1890). Dutch painter; lived with his brother Theo in Montmartre, Paris, from 1886 to 1889; died in extreme poverty in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise after shooting himself with a revolver.
Warnke (Herbert, 1902–1975). Trained as a metalworker; joined the Communist Party in 1923; a member of the Reichstag from 1932 to 1933; moved to Sweden in 1938 and was interned from 1939 to 1943.
Wehner (Herbert, also known as Kurt Funk, Svensson, 1906–1990). Son of a shoemaker, joined the Communist Party of Germany in 1927; after 1933, engaged in antifascist activities in Germany; after 1935, in exile in the Soviet Union; member of the Central Committee of the exiled Party; after 1940, in exile in Sweden; expelled from the party as a “traitor”; after the war, joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany; in 1949, became a member of the Bundestag (West German Parliament); 1966–69, cabinet minister.
Weigel (Helene, 1900–1971). Austrian actress; married to *Brecht; after World War II artistic director of the Berliner Ensemble Theater in East Berlin.
Wigforss (Ernst, 1881–1977). Swedish Social Democrat and minister of finance.
Zimmerwald. Small central Swiss town that was the site of a conference held by Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks, as well as other left-wing revolutionaries, in September 1915.
Zinoviev (Grigory, 1883–1936). Met Lenin in 1903 in Switzerland; a member of the Bolsheviks. Zinoviev moved to Switzerland in 1914, was involved in the *Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences, and returned to Russia in a sealed train with Lenin in 1917. During the Revolution he expounded positions that clashed with Lenin’s. In 1919 he was involved in the founding congress of the Communist International and was elected to lead the organization. He broke with Stalin in 1925, was expelled from the Party in 1927 and then readmitted in 1928 after capitulating to Stalin. He was expelled again in 1932, and after being readmitted in 1934, was expelled for the third time in 1935 and condemned to ten years in prison. In 1936, Zinoviev was sentenced to death along with Kamenev at the first of the *Moscow trials and executed. He was rehabilitated in 1988.
This glossary is heavily indebted to the work of Robert Cohen in his Bibliobiografisches Handbuch zu Peter Weiss’ “Ästhetik des Widerstands.” The majority of the entries are more or less direct translations from this source, or are taken from the glossary that Cohen prepared for the translation of Volume I. As Cohen pointed out there, many of the names, events, organizations and works of art that figure in The Aesthetics of Resistance would be unfamiliar not only to English-language readers, but also to its original German-language readership. Cohen’s detailed work aimed to facilitate the process of acquiring the knowledge, the history, that lies under the surface of this work. More recently, Jürgen Schutte has published a Register zur Ästhetik des Widerstands, which also includes comprehensive information on the artists and artworks mentioned in the novels, as well as a concordance of the page numbers of the three main editions. I have maintained the structure of Cohen’s glossary, in which first names (since they are almost completely absent from the book) are added in parentheses and cross-references to other entries are indicated by asterisks.