Kurt Landau
Kurt Landau ( born January 29, 1903 in Vienna, † 1937 in Spain) was a journalist, an Austrian communist and supporter of the International Left Opposition. He also published under the pseudonyms Agricola, Wolf Bertram, and Spectator.
Kurt Landau ( 1872-1940 murdered in a concentration camp ) on 29 January 1903 in Vienna, the son of the wine-merchant Abraham Simon and born of Pink Feldmann ( 1878-1935 ) and had a brother Alfred (* 1914). He studied in Vienna and was from 1921 to 1926 a member of the Austrian Communist Party and Chairman of the Section in Waehring. Since 1923, he was with Julia Lipschutz ( born in 1895 or 1905, died after 1984 ) liiert that his wife was under the name Katia Landau and to the end remained his running mate. He defended Leon Trotsky and his positions against those of the party line and is one of the central figures of the opposition to the slowly forming Stalinism. 1927 are excluded from the party he and his comrades. In the same year he published the brochure nature and history of anarcho - communism in Austria. He was from 1929 with Katia Landau in Berlin and a member of the Federal Lenin. He was an employee of Trotsky, however, soon distanced himself from him. The couple Landau went on March 17, 1933 into exile in Paris and was very active in the group Funke, who was also called the Landau group.
Beginning of November 1936 were Kurt and Katia Landau to Barcelona, where she worked for the POUM. Kurt Landau was the author of the booklet The German Revolution of 1918 and the Spanish Revolution of 1936 and employees of the party newspaper La Batalla and the German Radio broadcasts POUM. He escaped on June 17, 1937 arrest by the police and the Guardia de Asalto and initially found refuge at the headquarters of the CNT and then in the house of the POUM sympathizer Carlota Duràn.
He was kidnapped on September 23, 1937 in Barcelona and has since been regarded as lost. He was probably abducted by NKVD agents or of German Communist Party members on command, tortured and murdered. However, there is no evidence of how and when exactly he died. There is a rumor that Walter Ulbricht was involved in the murder, and gave the order to this. Katia Landau, who was also arrested, however, suspected that her husband had been deported to the Soviet Union. Katia Landau also would be almost "disappeared", but protested Otto Bauer and Friedrich Adler, as Marceau Pivert from Paris to the Comintern and obtained their release. At the same time, she joined the women's prison Carcel de Mujeres in Barcelona on a hunger strike.
Kurt Landau's brother Alfred Landau was a socialist student leader in Vienna and later a high official of the UN. Katia Landau is the Spanish naval officer Benjamin Balboa (1901-1976) married, who was instrumental in 1936, that a large part of the Spanish Navy did not join Franco's coup. Both will go to Mexico in 1940 into exile. Until 1984, Katia Landau is used for the memory of Kurt Landau. 1984 loses track of Julia Katia Landau del Balboa.
Works
- Nature and history of anarcho - communism in Austria: final [ sic] comments on the factional struggle within the Communist Party of Austria ( 1927)