Julian Borchardt (13 January 1868 – 16 February 1932) was a socialist politician, journalist, activist and participant in the

Zimmerwald Left The Zimmerwald Conference was held in Zimmerwald, Switzerland, from September 5 to 8, 1915. It was the first of three international socialist conferences convened by anti-militarist socialist parties from countries that were originally neutral d ...

. Borchardt was born in

Bromberg Bydgoszcz ( , , ; german: Bromberg) is a city in northern Poland, straddling the meeting of the River Vistula with its left-bank tributary, the Brda. With a city population of 339,053 as of December 2021 and an urban agglomeration with more ...

Prussia Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an em ...

(modern

Bydgoszcz Bydgoszcz ( , , ; german: Bromberg) is a city in northern Poland, straddling the meeting of the River Vistula with its left-bank tributary, the Brda. With a city population of 339,053 as of December 2021 and an urban agglomeration with more ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

) in 1868. He became a socialist journalist and writer, serving as editor on

Social Democrat Social democracy is a Political philosophy, political, Social philosophy, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports Democracy, political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocati ...

newspapers from 1901 to 1906. He was appointed as a lecturer to the SPD central education committee in 1907 and entered the Prussian diet in 1911. In 1913 he relinquished these posts and started editing ''Lichtstrahlen'', which provided a platform for German and international left anti-war-opposition and texts of the nascent Communist movement towards the end of the First World War and after. However he never joined the Communist party. He also wrote on historical and economic subjects including a widely translated digest of

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

's ''

Das Kapital ''Das Kapital'', also known as ''Capital: A Critique of Political Economy'' or sometimes simply ''Capital'' (german: Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, link=no, ; 1867–1883), is a foundational theoretical text in Historical mater ...

''.Julian Borchardt Papers
International Institute of Social History, accessed 20 March 2011 He was a member of the

Association of Proletarian-Revolutionary Authors The Association of Proletarian-Revolutionary Authors (German: ''Bund proletarisch-revolutionärer Schriftsteller'') was a German cultural organisation established in 1928, at the time of the Weimar Republic. It was close to the Communist Party of Ge ...

. From 1927 until his death in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

, 1932, he was working on a history of Germany which was never completed. His manuscript of this is in the

International Institute of Social History The International Institute of Social History (IISH/IISG) is one of the largest archives of labor and social history in the world. Located in Amsterdam, its one million volumes and 2,300 archival collections include the papers of major figur ...

Texts

''Preface to The People’s Marx''
1919

, 1919
''Di yesoydes̀ fun der poliṭisher eḳonomye: loyṭ'n Ḳapiṭal fun Ḳarl Marḳs''
1925 in

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Borchardt, Julian German anti–World War I activists Members of the Prussian House of Representatives People from Bydgoszcz 1868 births 1932 deaths