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Ruth Fischer
Ruth Fischer (11 December 1895 – 13 March 1961) was an Austrian and German Communist, and a co-founder of the Austrian Communist Party (KPÖ) in 1918. Along with her partner Arkadi Maslow, she led the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) through both the May 1924 and December 1924 federal elections. After being removed from the KPD, she became involved with various anti-Stalinist left-wing groups, and would remain a staunch anti-Stalinist activist for the rest of her life.
Fischer was born Elfriede Eisler in Leipzig in 1895, the daughter of Marie Edith Fischer and Rudolf Eisler, a professor of philosophy at Leipzig but of Austrian nationality. Her father was Jewish and her mother was Lutheran.
She was the elder sister to noted film and concert composer Hanns Eisler and fellow communist activist Gerhart Eisler. She studied philosophy, economics and politics at University of Vienna, where her father was working.
At an undisclosed time, before March 1921, she adopted her mother's maiden name as part of her writer's name, "Ruth Fischer." According to later records of the British Security Service (MI5), she also used the names of her partner Maslow and husband Pleuchot.
The Austrian Communist Party was founded on 3 November 1918 by Ruth Fischer and Paul Friedländer, a medical student she married in 1917, who later died in a Nazi prison or concentration camp. She claimed in her memoir, Stalin and German Communism, that she was listed as member number one. Eight days later, she claimed, a crowd of rioters proclaimed her editor of Vienna's largest daily, the Neue Freie Presse, and she was arrested and charged with treason, but released under amnesty. She opposed the failed attempt to seize power in Austria in June 1919 instigated by the Hungarian communist Erno Bettelheim, and during the recriminations that followed, she left her husband and moved to Berlin. She visited the Comintern representative Karl Radek many times while he was interned in Moabit prison, acting as his contact with the Communist Party of Germany. In a memoir of his year in Berlin, Radek commented: "She gave the impression of being a lively, if uneducated female .. I saw that she could grasp ideas easily, but that they didn't sink in very far, and she could easily fall under some other influence."
In 1921, Fischer became leader of the Berlin branch of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), and she and Arkadi Maslow emerged as leaders of the left of the communist party, who blamed the party's over-cautious leadership for the failure of the March Action in 1921, and opposed the tactic of a 'united front' with the German Social Democratic Party. The German authorities tried to forcibly repatriate her to Austria. Thus she married the fellow communist Gustav Golke (1889–1937, executed in the Soviet Great Purge), in order to be naturalised as a German. Heinrich Brandler was the national leader of the Communist Party of Germany. In the early months of 1923, Ruth Fischer and urged Brandler to organize an uprising on the model provided by the Bolsheviks in 1917. Together they developed the "theory of the offensive". Fischer denounced the leadership for "making concessions to social democracy", for "opportunism" and for "ideological liquidationism and theoretical revisionism". Chris Harman, author of The Lost Revolution (1982) has pointed out: "Articulate and energetic, they were able to gather around them many of the new workers who had joined the party." Although she appeared to represent a minority view in the Communist Party of Germany at that time, Comintern ordered that she should be co-opted onto its Central Committee in April 1923.
In 1923, Fischer appealed to a group of Nazi students, proclaiming that "Those who call for a struggle against Jewish capital are already, gentlemen, class strugglers, even if they don’t know it. You are against Jewish capital and want to fight the speculators. Very good. Throw down the Jewish capitalists, hang them from the lamp-post, stamp on them. But, gentlemen, what is your position with respect to the big capitalists, the Stinneses and Klöckners?"
Ruth Fischer argued that the Communist Party of Germany leaders were saying: "In no circumstances must we proclaim the general strike. The bourgeoisie will discover our plans and destroy us before we have moved. On the contrary, we must calm the masses, hold back our people in the factories and the unemployed committees until the government thinks the moment of danger has passed."
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Ruth Fischer
Ruth Fischer (11 December 1895 – 13 March 1961) was an Austrian and German Communist, and a co-founder of the Austrian Communist Party (KPÖ) in 1918. Along with her partner Arkadi Maslow, she led the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) through both the May 1924 and December 1924 federal elections. After being removed from the KPD, she became involved with various anti-Stalinist left-wing groups, and would remain a staunch anti-Stalinist activist for the rest of her life.
Fischer was born Elfriede Eisler in Leipzig in 1895, the daughter of Marie Edith Fischer and Rudolf Eisler, a professor of philosophy at Leipzig but of Austrian nationality. Her father was Jewish and her mother was Lutheran.
She was the elder sister to noted film and concert composer Hanns Eisler and fellow communist activist Gerhart Eisler. She studied philosophy, economics and politics at University of Vienna, where her father was working.
At an undisclosed time, before March 1921, she adopted her mother's maiden name as part of her writer's name, "Ruth Fischer." According to later records of the British Security Service (MI5), she also used the names of her partner Maslow and husband Pleuchot.
The Austrian Communist Party was founded on 3 November 1918 by Ruth Fischer and Paul Friedländer, a medical student she married in 1917, who later died in a Nazi prison or concentration camp. She claimed in her memoir, Stalin and German Communism, that she was listed as member number one. Eight days later, she claimed, a crowd of rioters proclaimed her editor of Vienna's largest daily, the Neue Freie Presse, and she was arrested and charged with treason, but released under amnesty. She opposed the failed attempt to seize power in Austria in June 1919 instigated by the Hungarian communist Erno Bettelheim, and during the recriminations that followed, she left her husband and moved to Berlin. She visited the Comintern representative Karl Radek many times while he was interned in Moabit prison, acting as his contact with the Communist Party of Germany. In a memoir of his year in Berlin, Radek commented: "She gave the impression of being a lively, if uneducated female .. I saw that she could grasp ideas easily, but that they didn't sink in very far, and she could easily fall under some other influence."
In 1921, Fischer became leader of the Berlin branch of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), and she and Arkadi Maslow emerged as leaders of the left of the communist party, who blamed the party's over-cautious leadership for the failure of the March Action in 1921, and opposed the tactic of a 'united front' with the German Social Democratic Party. The German authorities tried to forcibly repatriate her to Austria. Thus she married the fellow communist Gustav Golke (1889–1937, executed in the Soviet Great Purge), in order to be naturalised as a German. Heinrich Brandler was the national leader of the Communist Party of Germany. In the early months of 1923, Ruth Fischer and urged Brandler to organize an uprising on the model provided by the Bolsheviks in 1917. Together they developed the "theory of the offensive". Fischer denounced the leadership for "making concessions to social democracy", for "opportunism" and for "ideological liquidationism and theoretical revisionism". Chris Harman, author of The Lost Revolution (1982) has pointed out: "Articulate and energetic, they were able to gather around them many of the new workers who had joined the party." Although she appeared to represent a minority view in the Communist Party of Germany at that time, Comintern ordered that she should be co-opted onto its Central Committee in April 1923.
In 1923, Fischer appealed to a group of Nazi students, proclaiming that "Those who call for a struggle against Jewish capital are already, gentlemen, class strugglers, even if they don’t know it. You are against Jewish capital and want to fight the speculators. Very good. Throw down the Jewish capitalists, hang them from the lamp-post, stamp on them. But, gentlemen, what is your position with respect to the big capitalists, the Stinneses and Klöckners?"
Ruth Fischer argued that the Communist Party of Germany leaders were saying: "In no circumstances must we proclaim the general strike. The bourgeoisie will discover our plans and destroy us before we have moved. On the contrary, we must calm the masses, hold back our people in the factories and the unemployed committees until the government thinks the moment of danger has passed."