Bruno Kaiser

Bruno Kaiser (5 February 1911 – 27 January 1982) was a Marxist scholar of German studies who became a journalist and, during the Nazi period, a resistance activist. In his later years he became, in addition, a distinguished librarian.

Life

Early years

Bruno Kaiser was the son of a high school teacher who was also a passionate collector of, among other things, antique prints. In addition to his school education, Bruno Kaiser learned from his father a knowledge of collecting and a love of literature and of collecting that formed the basis for much of his later life. Following the successful completion of his school career he went on to Berlin's Humboldt University where he studied Literary sciences and Art history. He also started contributing to the venerable Vossische Zeitung (newspaper), initially on a voluntary basis and later as a contributing editor. Kaiser's period of study at the university was later terminated before completion and at some point he became an Antifascist activist. On 10 May 1932 Kaiser was one of a number of intellectuals showing public solidarity with the anti-war anti-Fascist campaigner Carl von Ossietzky, attempting to accompany the condemned man all the way to the prison door after the failure of his appeal hearing.

In January 1933 the NSDAP (Nazi Party) took power in Germany and early in 1934 the Vossische Zeitung was closed down which left Bruno Kaiser without a job. Under the new regime his record of anti-Fascist campaigning and his Jewish family background restricted his job opportunities in journalism, and he was already suffering from tuberculosis, but he continued working against Fascism, distributing illegal leaflets with anti-Fascist content. In 1938 he was arrested, interrogated and tortured, but no charges were preferred against him and he was released, albeit now under police surveillance. Still in 1938, he now took the first opportunity to emigrate, initially to Belgium.

Exile

Kaiser used his exile to study in libraries in Belgium, the Netherlands and France, making a speciality of unearthing and rediscovering long forgotten publications from classical writers whose better remembered works inspired Workers' movements in the twentieth century, notably Friedrich Engels