Conducts research and collects data on the global history of labour, workers, and labour relations

A Sudeten-German Euro-communist

From Berlin the IISH received a typescript of more than 200 pages by Leopold Grünwald. Grünwald, born in 1901, was a Sudeten German of Jewish descent. Around 1930 he was secretary of the Czechoslovakian Union of Freethinkers and a member of the board of the Proletarian Freethinker International. Also, in the 1930s he was a member of the Sudeten German communist party. During the Second World War he was responsible for the Sudeten German radio station in Moscow. From 1945 until 1969 he was a member of the Austrian communist party.

Grünwald is best known for his publications on the Sudeten German resistance abroad after the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1938. In this manuscript, An der Schwelle des XXI. Jahrhunderts. Reflexionen 100 Jahre nach Karl Marx (On the eve of the 21st century. Reflections 100 Years after Karl Marx), Grünwald, starting with citations from Erich Fried and Karl Kraus, writes about Stalin and the Second World War, the occupation of Czechoslovakia as part of the Warsaw Pact Countries in 1968, and the founding in the 1970s of Euro-communism. Grünwald writes with sympathy on the Italian Euro-communists and ends his arguments with the election of Reagan in 1984 and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985. Grünwald died in 1992. (Text: Bouwe Hijma)

Typescript in: Germany, various manuscripts collection, no 126

Posted: 
1 October 2011