Ernst Thälmann

Ernst Thälmann (April 16, 1886—August 18, 1944) was the leader of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during much of the Weimar Republic. He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1933 and held in solitary confinement for eleven years, before being shot on Adolf Hitler's orders in 1944.

Legacy

After 1945, Ernst Thälmann was - along with other leading communists who had been killed such as Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht - widely honoured in East Germany, with many institutions (eg schools, streets, factories) named after him. His name was also given to the East German pioneer organisation, the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation. A member of the organisation would pledge that "Ernst Thälmann is my model" and that "I promise to learn to work and fight as Ernst Thälmann teaches". In the 1960s Cuba named a small island, Ernst Thälmann Island, after him.

Related Topics:
1945 - Rosa Luxemburg - Karl Liebknecht - East Germany - Pioneer organisation - Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation - Cuba - Ernst Thälmann Island

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In his time as head of the KPD, Thälmann closely aligned the German Communists with the hegemony of the Soviet Communist Party in Moscow. Supporters of a more autonomous course were sidelined. This has been criticised in particular from the German left. Clara Zetkin, together with Rosa Luxemburg one of the leading German women communists, described Thälmann as "uninformed and not educated in theory", and as caught in "uncritical self-deception and self-infatuation", which "borders on megalomania". The strategy of the KPD during the Weimar Republic, of treating the SPD as its main political enemy, is often seen as having sharply weakened anti-Nazi forces and as having thereby contributed to the Nazis' rise to power.

Related Topics:
Hegemony - Soviet Communist Party - Clara Zetkin - Rosa Luxemburg - Weimar Republic

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