Max Barthel (born 17 November 1893 in

Loschwitz Loschwitz is a borough ('' Stadtbezirk'') of Dresden, Germany, incorporated in 1921. It consists of ten quarters (''Stadtteile''): Loschwitz is a villa quarter located at the slopes north of the Elbe river. At the top of the hillside is the quar ...

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

— died 17 June 1975 in

Waldbröl Waldbröl is a town in the southern part of the Oberbergischer Kreis (upper Berg county), in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Geography Location The town is located on the slopes of the Nutscheid range of hills and is part of the Bergisches Land ...

) was a German writer. A factory worker, Barthel was a member of the socialist youth movement; he was a

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 ...

frontline soldier from 1914 to 1918.

Trip to Russia

In 1920 he accepted a personal invitation from Karl Radek to travel to

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

and attend the

2nd World Congress of the Comintern The 2nd World Congress of the Communist International was a gathering of approximately 220 voting and non-voting representatives of Communist and revolutionary socialist political parties from around the world, held in Petrograd and Moscow from Ju ...

in 1920. He travelled as a stowaway to

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...

. Once here he mingled with Russian prisoners of war and thus was able to cross the border. Whilst in Russia, he also attended the International Conference of the

Young Communist International The Young Communist International was the parallel international youth organization affiliated with the Communist International (Comintern). History International socialist youth organization before World War I After failed efforts to form an i ...

and met

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 1 ...

. He attended the

Kultintern Kultintern was an international organisation set up to enable the Russian Proletkult organisation to work with an international network of contacts alongside the Comintern. Its goal was to spread "proletarian culture". It was first proposed in an is ...

, where he joined the Provisional International Bureau. In 1923 Barthel moved from the KPD ( Communist Party of Germany) to the Social Democratic Party of Germany. He drew closer to Nazism after the seizure of power; he was a reporter on

Strength Through Joy NC Gemeinschaft (KdF; ) was a German state-operated leisure organization in Nazi Germany. Richard Grunberger, ''The 12-Year Reich'', p. 197, It was part of the German Labour Front (german: link=no, Deutsche Arbeitsfront), the national labour or ...

trips, and a press correspondent during the war. In 1922 he had worked Communist ideas into the poem "Arbeiterseele" (The Worker's Soul), but in 1934 his novel ''Das unsterbliche Volk'' (The Immortal ''Volk'') described "the transformation of a German worker imselffrom a Communist to a follower of the Führer". In a tone of resignation, Barthel titled his postwar autobiography ''Kein Bedarf an Weltgeschichte'' (No Need for World History; 1950).

Works

* ''Vom roten Moskau bis zum schwarzen Meer'' (From Red Moscow to the Black Sea, 1921) Berlin: Internationaler Jugendverlag * ''Der Mensch am Kreuz. Roman nach dem Tagebuch eines katholischen Pfarrers'' (The Man on the Cross. A Novel based on the Diary of a Catholic Pastor, 1929) Berlin: Der Bücherkreis

Bibliography

* Christian Zentner, Friedemann Bedürftig (1991). ''

The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich ''The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich'' is a two-volume text edited by and , first published in German in 1985. ''The Encyclopedia of the Third Reich'' is leading source material for information about Nazi Germany and the reign of Adolf Hitler a ...

''. Macmillan, New York.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barthel, Max 1893 births 1975 deaths Writers from Dresden People from the Kingdom of Saxony Communist Party of Germany politicians Social Democratic Party of Germany politicians German Army personnel of World War I German male writers Politicians from Dresden