Fritz Wolffheim
Fritz Wolffheim ( born October 30, 1888 in Berlin, † March 17, 1942 at Ravensbrück concentration camp ) was a national communist politician, writer and trade unionist.
Life
Originally from a wealthy Jewish merchant family Wolffheim trained as a shop assistant ( accountant ) and was from 1909 a member of the SPD, where he worked for several party newspapers.
From 1910 to 1913 he stayed in San Francisco, was a member of the Socialist Party of America and edited the forward of the Pacific Coast - a publication founded in Chicago on June 27, 1905 Unionist Labour Federation of Industrial Workers of the World ( IWW ) its member Wolffheim was. 1913 was Wolffheim in Hamburg down where from the outbreak of war in 1914 to him and Heinrich Laufenberg, the opponents of " civil peace policy" of the SPD began to group. Closely modeled on the International Communists of Germany, gave the two the newspaper out the fight and were 1915-1918 repeatedly imprisoned for anti - war activities. 1918 belonged Wolffheim first to the leaders of the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council in Hamburg, but had to go to May 1919 in a sanatorium because of a nervous suffering from mid-November 1918.
In 1919 Wolffheim of the Communist Party of Germany ( KPD), where he initially counted alongside Laufenberg and Otto Rühle to the main spokespersons of the parliamentary anti -left wing. In October 1919, he and Laufenberg were excluded because of the allegation of syndicalism from the KPD. Laufenberg and Wolffheim indeed believed but a unionism which considered the parallel existence of an economic organization of struggle as a mass base and a predominantly theoretical and propagandistic working party necessary. This concept was within the council communist movement to about 1922 consensus, but was then abandoned by the majority in favor of a unitary organization.
Wolffheim founded together with Laufenberg after the KPD exclusion of the " Communist Party of Hamburg / section of the IWW " ( KPH / IWW) and was also instrumental in the founding of the AAU. In April 1920, the KPH went to the Communist Workers Party of Germany ( CAPD ), in which he and Laufenberg were part of the so-called National Bolshevik wing and were asked a few months later in August because of bourgeois- nationalist views under the leadership of Arthur Goldstein to leave the party. Basis of this dispute was, among others, the establishment of the "Free Association for the Study of German communism ," tried in the Wolffheim and Laufenberg, bourgeois middle -sized companies in the wake of the peace treaty of Versailles a common interest in an alignment Germany to Soviet Russia to mediate. Founded by two after leaving the KAP " Communist League " was Wolffheim prior to 1925, but it sank shortly after its founding in sectarianism. After the separation of Laufenberg in 1922 to Wolffheim had in the time from 1925 to 1929 several times endeavored to resume in the KPD, which previously fought vigorously under the influence of " Schlageter " speech by Karl Radek, who Wolffheim and Laufenberg and the term " National Bolshevism " was coined, began a short time clearly " National Bolshevik " to apply theses. Wolffheim developed, unlike Laufenberg, ideologically always further from Marxism and toward nationalist- socialist ideas and joined the group in 1930 Social Revolutionary Nationalists ( GSRN ) by Karl Otto Paetel at.
The end of 1936 Wolffheim was arrested and died in 1942 in the Ravensbruck concentration camp.