Walter Haenisch (11 December 1906, Dortmund – 16 June 1938, Butovo) was a Marxist theoretician and the son of German SPD politician

Konrad Haenisch Konrad Haenisch (13 March 1876 – 28 April 1925) was a German Social Democratic Party politician and part of "the radical Marxist Left" of German politics. He was a friend and follower (''Parvulus'' in his own words) of Alexander Parvus. Life ...

Life

Haenisch did his Abitur at the famous Karl-Marx-Schule in Neukölln. He studied English literature, partly at the

University of Reading The University of Reading is a public university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as University College, Reading, a University of Oxford extension college. The institution received the power to grant its own degrees in 192 ...

. He became a member of the

Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...

(KPD) in 1931 and moved 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 ...

, where he initially participated in Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe , the ambitious project of a complete edition of the works of Marx and Engels. In 1935 Walter Haenisch was laid off (there were accusations of "social democratic leanings" against him) and subsequently wrote several articles in "Internationale Literatur", for example on

William Cobbett William Cobbett (9 March 1763 – 18 June 1835) was an English pamphleteer, journalist, politician, and farmer born in Farnham, Surrey. He was one of an agrarian faction seeking to reform Parliament, abolish "rotten boroughs", restrain foreign ...

, and a famous article on the impact of

Percy Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley ( ; 4 August 17928 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achie ...

on Marxism, which was published in Das Wort (edited by

Lion Feuchtwanger Lion Feuchtwanger (; 7 July 1884 – 21 December 1958) was a German Jewish novelist and playwright. A prominent figure in the literary world of Weimar Germany, he influenced contemporaries including playwright Bertolt Brecht. Feuchtwanger's J ...

and

Bert Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...

). He also published an article on Marx and the Democratic Association of 1847 in one of the first editions of "

Science and Society Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

", the leading Marxist publication in the USA.Walter Haenisch: Karl Marx and the Democratic Association of 1847, Science and Society, Vol. 2, No. 1, Winter, 1937, pp. 83-102 Haenisch's connections to Western countries and culture as well as the earlier accusations which led to his dismissal from Marx-Engels-Institute raised the suspicion of the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...

, which arrested him in March, 1938. In June, 1938, Haenisch was sentenced to death for "espionage" (like thousands of German communists) and subsequently shot at Butovo firing range and interred in a mass grave there. Haenisch was married to Gabriele Bräuning, who was deported to Uzbekistan in 1941 and returned to the GDR in 1954. She later married German geologist Friedrich Stammberger, worked as a lecturer for Dietz Verlag Berlin, was a lifelong member of SED (and successors PDS and Linkspartei) and died in 2005.

Literature on Haenisch and his reception

* Gabriele Stammberger, Michael Peschke: Gut angekommen – Moskau. Das Exil der Gabriele Stammberger 1932–1954. Basisdruck Verlag, Berlin 1999, (memoirs of Haenischs widow, especially pp. 101–110 containing a self-written CV of Haenisch) * Robert Kaufman: Intervention & Commitment Forever! Shelley in 1819, Shelley in Brecht, Shelley in Adorno, Shelley in Benjamin: In: Reading Shelley's Interventionist Poetry 1819-1820: (Michael Scrivener, ed.): "Romantic Circles", University of Maryland, USA (mentions Haenisch's Shelley essay in Paragraphs 6 to 12
online
*

Andrew Benjamin Andrew Benjamin (born 1952, Australia) is an Australian philosopher. He holds a post as Distinguished Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney. Benjamin first came to critical attention with his writings in continental philosophy, writ ...

: Walter Benjamin and Art: Bloomsbury Academic, 2005, ( on Haenisch's Shelley essay, S. 134-135 )

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Haenisch, Walter 1906 births 1938 deaths Writers from Dortmund German Marxists German Marxist historians 20th-century German historians