Ernst Meyer (German politician)

Ernst Meyer ( * July 10, 1887 in Prostken, East Prussia, † February 2nd 1930 in Potsdam ) was a German communist politician and temporary chairman of the KPD.

Life

Originally from a religiously oriented working-class family Meyer, who studied (PhD 1910) in Königsberg and Berlin philosophy, psychology and economics, 1908, the SPD joined, was sponsored by Hugo Haase and was from 1913 a member of the editorial board of the party organ forward. During this time he received several months of imprisonment for high treason because of an article. To the left wing of the SPD and counting the truce policy of the party was hostile Meyer in 1915 removed from the forward - editing and counted among the participants of the conferences in Room Forest and Kiental and was co-founder of the Spartacist League and the Communist Party. After the Spartacist uprising, he was temporarily detained.

From 1919 to 1923 Meyer was part of the party leadership in 1921, he served as editor in chief of the Red Banner and the successor of Paul Levi temporarily until the fall of 1922 as party chairman and was after the Central German uprising partly responsible for the united front policy of the subsequent years. From 1921 to 1924, 1928 to 1930, he represented beyond the KPD in the Prussian Landtag. After 1923 no longer elected due to the ultra-left reversal of the Communist Party under the leadership of Ruth Fischer and Arkadi Maslow in the party line, took his influence in the years 1926 to 1927 again, so was Meyer, who within the party along with Arthur Ewert and Gerhart Eisler belonged to the leadership of the group of conciliators, the company responsible for a pragmatic, to working with the SPD targeting policy, for example in the campaign to Prince expropriation. 1927 re-elected in the line, the influence of Meyer suffering from tuberculosis in the same year decreased rapidly after it came to a new ultra-left, that is pro-Moscow Stalinist turn of the party under the leadership of Ernst Thalmann 1928.

As of 1927, Meyer had to stop several times in Lungensanatorien in the Soviet Union and Switzerland, in his last major public appearance at the KPD Party Congress in June 1929, he once again took to the policies and Thalmann, Heinz Neumann's position. A short time later, Meyer had to be stationary admitted to the sanatorium the Hoff Bauer Foundation in Potsdam- Hermannswerder, where he died six months later.

Since 1922, Meyer was married to the communist politician and author Rosa Meyer Levine, Eugen Levine's widow.

Works

  • The political oppression. Berlin 1926
  • Spartacus in the war. The illegal leaflets of the Spartacus League in war. Berlin 1927
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