In the beginning of 2012 the IISH received an important supplement to the papers of Wolfgang Abendroth. For many years Abendroth was a professor of political science at the University of Marburg in Germany and specialized in the history of the German and European labor movements. This supplement includes correspondence between Abendroth and his wife Lisa Abendroth-Hörmeyer (1917-2012). They met in 1942. Many of these letters were written in the Greek island of Lemnos, where Abendroth was a soldier in the Wehrmacht from 1943-1944. He was in the Strafbataillon 999 on the island and went over to the partisans. When he was released from British war captivity in 1947, he settled in the Soviet Zone in Potsdam and later in Jena, but because of the Stalinist repression of the social-democrats he fled to the FRG in December 1948.
The supplement contains documents on the judicial proceeding against Abendroth in 1937 and his sentence to four years in prison.
The supplement also contains many documents requested by Lisa (widow) and Elisabeth (daughter) from the BStU (earlier GDR-) archives on Abendroth and the founding of a new socialist party in the FRG in 1967. Among the new documents are also many articles published after Abendroth’s death, especially from 2006, the year of his 100th birthday.
Interesting are the discussions following his death and the fall of the Wall four years later. The find and publication of a letter of condolence which Abendroth after the death of the GDR-leader sent to Albert Norden, member of the Politburo of the SED, led to a fierce polemic in the German press on intentions and sympathies of Abendroth (inv. no. 1259).
The supplement also contains interesting photo material. For instance, there is an impressive portrait, made by the German photographer Barbara Klemm, of Abendroth together with the German/American philosopher Herbert Marcuse during the Angela Davis congress in Frankfurt am Main in 1972 (IISH call number BG B35/54).