Fritz Wolffheim (30 October 1888 – 17 March 1942) was a German
communist
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
politician and writer. He was a leading figure in the
National Bolshevism
National Bolshevism (russian: национал-большевизм, natsional-bol'shevizm, german: Nationalbolschewismus), whose supporters are known as National Bolsheviks (russian: национал-большевики, natsional-bol'sheviki ...
tendency that was briefly influential in Germany after
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
.
Early life
Wolffheim, who came from a leading
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family, trained as an accountant and first became active in politics in 1909 when he joined the
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany (german: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, ; SPD, ) is a centre-left social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany.
Saskia Esken has been the ...
.
From 1910 to 1913 he lived in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
where he was a member of the
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America (SPA) was a socialist political party in the United States formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party of Ameri ...
.
In the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
he also became a member of the
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), members of which are commonly termed "Wobblies", is an international labor union that was founded in Chicago in 1905. The origin of the nickname "Wobblies" is uncertain. IWW ideology combines genera ...
, editing a paper for them.
[John Paul Gerber, ''Anton Pannekoek and the socialism of workers' self-emancipation, 1873–1960'', Springer, 1989, p. 120] He also served as secretary of the movement in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
, working alongside
Lala Hardayal
Lala Har Dayal Mathur (Punjabi: ਲਾਲਾ ਹਰਦਿਆਲ; 14 October 1884 – 4 March 1939) was an Indian nationalist revolutionary and freedom fighter. He was a polymath who turned down a career in the Indian Civil Service. His simple ...
in this capacity. Whilst involved with IWW Wolffheim became convinced of the need for a united revolutionary organisation instead of the distinct party and
trade union
A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ( ...
model and would later use his theories in Germany where
Anton Pannekoek
Antonie “Anton” Pannekoek (; 2 January 1873 – 28 April 1960) was a Dutch astronomer, philosopher, Marxist theorist, and socialist revolutionary. He was one of the main theorists of council communism (Dutch: ''radencommunisme'').
Biograph ...
adopted them enthusiastically.
After arriving in
Hamburg
(male), (female) en, Hamburger(s),
Hamburgian(s)
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, utc_offset1 = +1
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, utc_offset1_DST = +2
, postal ...
in 1913 Wolffheim won support for his ideas amongst the local party to the point where in early 1919 the Hamburg KPD declared that it was incompatible to be a member of both the Party and a traditional trade union.
National Bolshevism
Within the Hamburg party a power base had been built up by
Heinrich Laufenberg
Heinrich Laufenberg (19 January 1872 – 3 February 1932) was a leading German communist and one of the first to develop the idea of National Bolshevism. Laufenberg was a history academic by profession and was also known by the pseudonym Karl Erle ...
with
Rudolf Lindau,
Wilhelm Düwell
Wilhelm may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* William Charles John Pitcher, costume designer known professionally as "Wilhelm"
* Wilhelm (name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name or surname
Other uses
* Mount ...
and
Paul Frölich
Paul Frölich (7 August 1884 – 16 March 1953) was a German journalist and left-wing political activist and author, a founding member of the Communist Party of Germany and founder of the party's paper, ''Die Rote Fahne.'' A Communist Party deputy ...
amongst his closest lieutenants. Wolffheim became associated with this tendency and before long became Laufenberg's closest collaborator.
As leaders of the KPD in Hamburg the duo strongly attacked
imperialism
Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas, often through employing hard power (economic and ...
in Germany, publishing a joint pamphlet in 1915 in which both expansionism and the support that they felt was being given to it by the SPD were attacked.
[Ruth Fischer, John C. Leggett, ''Stalin and German Communism: A Study in the Origins of the State Party'', Transaction Publishers, 2006, p. 92] In October 1919 Wolffheim and Laufenberg brought their ideas, which were already known as "national Bolshevism" by that point, to Karl Radek arguing that they should unite behind a
dictatorship of the proletariat
In Marxist philosophy, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a condition in which the proletariat holds state power. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the intermediate stage between a capitalist economy and a communist economy, whereby the ...
which would harness German
nationalism
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a in-group and out-group, group of peo ...
in order to renew war on the
Allies
An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
in an alliance with the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
.
The policy emphasised a co-operative struggle for national liberation at the expense of
class war
Class War is an anarchist group and newspaper established by Ian Bone and others in 1983 in the United Kingdom. An incarnation of Class War was briefly registered as a political party for the purposes of fighting the 2015 United Kingdom general ...
and thus broke from Marxist orthodoxy. Wolffheim even suggested that in order to bring about the desired revolution the
far left combat units could be fused with elements of the
far right
Far-right politics, also referred to as the extreme right or right-wing extremism, are political beliefs and actions further to the right of the left–right political spectrum than the standard political right, particularly in terms of being ...
Freikorps
(, "Free Corps" or "Volunteer Corps") were irregular German and other European military volunteer units, or paramilitary, that existed from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. They effectively fought as mercenary or private armies, regar ...
. The idea was rejected as nonsense by
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 19 ...
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 19 ...
Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder
/ref> whilst Radek also criticised the plan strongly. Before long Wolffheim was expelled from the KPD along with Laufenberg after the pair had tried to wrest control from Wilhelm Pieck
Friedrich Wilhelm Reinhold Pieck (; 3 January 1876 – 7 September 1960) was a German communist politician who served as the chairman of the Socialist Unity Party from 1946 to 1950 and as president of the German Democratic Republic from 1949 to ...
.
Along with Laufenberg and Jan Appel
Jan Appel (pseudonyms: ''Max Hempel'', ''Jan Arndt'', ''Jan Voß''; 22 August 1890, Mecklenburg4 May 1985, Maastricht) was a German revolutionary who participated in the German Revolution of 1918. He became a prominent Left Communist activist ...
, Wolffheim attended the Heidelberg
Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...
conference that saw the birth of the Communist Workers Party of Germany
The Communist Workers' Party of Germany (german: Kommunistische Arbeiter-Partei Deutschlands; KAPD) was an anti-parliamentarian and left communist party that was active in Germany during the time of the Weimar Republic. It was founded in April 1 ...
(KAPD) and was a founder member of this group. By 1920 however he had been expelled from the party, with his national Bolshevism the official reason for his departure. Individually Wolffheim was close to the rightist General Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck
Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck (20 March 1870 – 9 March 1964), also called the Lion of Africa (german: Löwe von Afrika), was a general in the Imperial German Army and the commander of its forces in the German East Africa campaign. For four yea ...
whilst along with Laufenberg he had met with Ernst Graf zu Reventlow
Ernst Christian Einar Ludvig Detlev, Graf zu Reventlow (18 August 1869 – 21 November 1943) was a German naval officer, journalist and Nazi politician.
Early life
Ernst Christian Einar Ludvig Detlev, Graf (Count) zu Reventlow was born at Husum, ...
immediately prior to the Kapp Putsch
The Kapp Putsch (), also known as the Kapp–Lüttwitz Putsch (), was an attempted coup against the German national government in Berlin on 13 March 1920. Named after its leaders Wolfgang Kapp and Walther von Lüttwitz, its goal was to undo the ...
.
Later years
Following his expulsion from the KAPD Wolffheim became a member of the League for the Study of German Communism, a pro-nationalist group that included representatives of business and army officers amongst its membership. Wolffheim's membership of this group brought him into contact with elements on the fringes of the Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
.[Broué, Birchall, Weitz, Archer, ''The German Revolution, 1917–1923'', p. 556] However his involvement with Nazism
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
was never more than perfunctory (probably due to his Jewishness) and he instead became associated with the ''Gruppe Sozialrevolutionärer Nationalisten'', a national revolutionary group founded by the journalist Karl Otto Paetel in 1930.[Hermann Weber & Andreas Herbst, ''Deutsche Kommunisten. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 bis 1945'', Karl Dietz Verlag, 2004, pp. 882–883] Arrested by the Nazis in 1936, he died in the Ravensbrück concentration camp
Ravensbrück () was a German concentration camp exclusively for women from 1939 to 1945, located in northern Germany, north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück (part of Fürstenberg/Havel). The camp memorial's estimated figure o ...
in 1942.
Written works
He wrote several texts with Laufenburg:
* ''Democracy and Organisation'' (1915)
* ''First Address to the German Proletariat'' (1919)
* ''May Appeal to Proletarians'' (1920)
* ''Communism Against Spartakism'' (1920)
* ''Moscow and German Revolution'' (1920)
References
External links
Fritz Wolffheim in the Marxists Internet Archive
(includes merely his 1919 pamphlet ''Factory Organizations or Trade Unions?'')
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wolffheim, Fritz
1888 births
1942 deaths
Politicians from Berlin
Jewish German politicians
Jewish socialists
Industrial Workers of the World members
Members of the Socialist Party of America
Social Democratic Party of Germany politicians
Communist Party of Germany politicians
Communist Workers' Party of Germany politicians
National Bolsheviks
People who died in Ravensbrück concentration camp
People condemned by Nazi courts
Politicians who died in Nazi concentration camps
German civilians killed in World War II
German nationalists
German Jews who died in the Holocaust