August Thalheimer

August Thalheimer in Havana, Cuba

August Thalheimer(18 March 1884 – 19 September 1948) was a GermanMarxistactivistandtheorist.

Early life

He was born in 1884 in Affaltrach, now calledObersulm,Württemberg,Germanyin to a Jewish working-class family. His sister wasBertha Thalheimer.He studied at the universities of Munich, Oxford, London, Strasbourg and Berlin.

Political career

He was a member of the GermanSocial Democratic Partyprior to theFirst World War.He editedVolksfreund,one of the party newspapers, and from, he 1916 worked onSpartakusbriefe,the official paper of theIndependent Social Democratic Party(USPD). Thalheimer became a founder member of theCommunist Party of Germany(KPD), and he was recognised as its main theorist. He editedRote Fahneand the manuscripts thatFranz Mehringleft unpublished at his death.

Thalheimer was part of the local government in Württemberg serving as Minister of Finance during the crisis of 1923. He andHeinrich Brandlerwere blamed for the consequences and summoned to Moscow in 1924. There, he worked for theCominternand theMarx-Engels Institute.In 1927, Thalheimer gave a series of lectures at theMoscow Sun Yat-sen Universitythat were then published as a textbook in philosophy (the English translation appeared asIntroduction to Dialectical Materialism,New York, 1936). He also worked withNikolai Bukharinon the draft programme of theComintern.Unease with the leadership ofErnst Thälmannmade him return to the KPD in Germany in 1928. However, a year later, he and Brandler were expelled from the KPD and they went on to form theCommunist Party Opposition(KPO).

The KPO criticised the foreign policy of the Soviet Union but not its domestic policies. Thalheimer stated: "We do not want to draw the conclusion that as the politics of the Comintern are wrong, it must follow that the politics of Russia are also wrong". (Gegen den Strom,4/1931) Thalheimer supported bothforced collectivizationandStakhanovism.

Thalheimer went into exile inParisfrom 1932.

Beginning at the start of 1935 Thalheimer began writing a regular column on international news forWorkers Age,the official newspaper of theCommunist Party of the USA (Opposition),headed byJay Lovestone.

Thalheimer went toBarcelona,Spain,in 1936. Here he became involved in an argument withAndrés Ninover the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification's (POUM) condemnation of thefirst Moscow Trial.He soon returned to France again to work with the KPO in exile. In July 1937, when six members of the KPO in Barcelona were arrested by the Stalinists, he issued a joint statement with Brandler:

"We take upon ourselves any political and personal guarantee for our arrested comrades. They are anti-Fascists and revolutionaries, incapable of any action that could be construed as high treason to the Spanish Revolution."

Later life

In 1940, after the German conquest of France, Thalheimer fled toCuba.He died inHavanain 1948.

Works

• "1923: A Missed Opportunity? The German October Legend and the Real History of 1923."(1931) Mike Jones, trans. London: Marken Press, 1993.
• “On Fascism”.Telos40 (Summer 1979). New York: Telos Press.

Sources

• Theodor Bergmann: August Thalheimer - ein kommunistischer Ketzer. Zu seinem 60. Todestag, in:Jahrbuch für Forschungen zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung,No. III/2008.

External links

• August Thalheimer Archive (in German)
• August Thalheimer Archive (in English)