The triptych by Hubertus Niese in the FMP 1 office building in Berlin
Photo: Sabine Koschmieder-Peters
In view of the plight of left-wing newspapers, magazines and publishers today, about whose problems and even deaths “nd” has had to report repeatedly in the past weeks and months, one wishes for an energetic, imaginative, clever man like Willi Münzenberg. His advice and actions are missing. It’s good that he’s at least remembered by the left.
Just in time for his 135th birthday on August 14th, an exhibition in his honor was opened at Berlin’s Franz-Mehring-Platz 1, the headquarters of the “nd” editorial team and publishing house. She dispels legends and denunciations, such as those about the “Münzenberg Group”, the “Red Hugenberg” or the “Red Millionaire”, which persist to the present day, once spread by political opponents, but sometimes also spread around Mistrust and resentment within one’s own ranks,” as can be read here. You can see the covers of some of the newspapers and magazines published by Münzenberg, as well as class struggle papers as well as left-wing tabloids, which are still underestimated or frowned upon today. The variety of print products, from “World in the Evening” to “Sichel und Hammer” to “Not und Brot”, is impressive. The “Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung” (AIZ) is particularly honored: “Their imagery and political collages are trademarks. She acts and reacts with image-text reports from companies, from strikes, from the stamp offices and demonstrations.« That is avant-garde. Prominent figures from the left-wing spectrum of the Weimar Republic wrote articles for them, as did the group of illustrators and photographers. In the year it was banned, 1933, the AIZ had a circulation of half a million copies. This is what left-wing media dreams of these days.
Not forgotten in the exhibition is Münzenberg’s “radical attempt at a red dream factory.” It was the pitiful photos of the famine on the Volga in 1921, largely due to the ultimately failed intervention of the Western powers against Soviet Russia, that inspired Münzenberg, the bourgeois propaganda and entertainment industry using the still young cinematography to counteract a self-confident counterpart. He founded his own production and distribution company, Meshrabprom/Prometheus. Almost 600 feature, documentary, educational and animated films were made in their studios between 1921 and 1936, including such popular films as “Mother Krausen’s Journey into Happiness” and “Kuhle Wampe”. Which Hollywood producer can compete with that? The exhibition shows an advertising poster for the “Battleship “Potemkin””.
“A loyal but independent son,” said a friend about Münzenberg. In fact, that was Willi, as the exhibition impressively proves: KPD representative in the Reichstag, member of the Central Committee since 1927, general secretary of the International Workers’ Aid (IAH) and Comintern official. “He stands for the changing and contradictory strategy of his movement.” Münzenberg founded and leads independent journalistic and economic ventures and organizations, and works with editors, publishers, writers, artists, scientists, and intellectuals of different backgrounds and views. »He motivates her. He accepts them… Münzenberg lives in the conflict between these poles.
One of his greatest achievements is the “Brown Book on the Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror.” On a display board you come across John Heartfield’s famous photomontage: the Bulgarian communist and AI general secretary leans accusingly over the imp, Hitler. Caricaturing the demagogic show trial of the Nazis in the fall of 1933, which was intended to blame the communists for the inferno on the night of February 27th and 28th, 1933. Having been warning about the dangers of fascism for years, Münzenberg is nevertheless surprised by this start to unrestrained terror. His name is on one of the fascists’ first wanted lists.
He managed to escape to Paris via adventurous paths, where, after the VII World Congress of the CI in Moscow in 1935, in which he took part, he immediately tried to form a German anti-fascist popular front. During the meeting of communists from all over the world, not only was a new definition of fascism, the so-called Dimitroff formula, adopted, but also an alliance of communists, social democrats and bourgeois democrats was promoted. In September 1935, Münzenberg was able to unite 51 communist, social democratic and bourgeois opponents of Hitler in the Hotel Lutetia for the first time. In February 1936, the committee for the creation of a German popular front was formed with Heinrich Mann at the top. “The result radiates internationally,” is rightly stated in the exhibition. And then, somewhat boldly: “In the end it’s still a maneuver.” Yes, Stalin soon thwarted the hopeful and so necessary ambitions. Nevertheless, the idea lives in the anti-fascist underground in Germany and is widely practiced illegally and in exile, even in concentration camps. “In the end there is deception and disappointment with fatal consequences” is a not entirely wrong conclusion, but a little too fatalistic.
No media mogul or Hollywood producer can compete with him!
Münzenberg is defamed, denounced and discredited by his own comrades. He also forestalls his exclusion from the party by resigning himself. His defiant, accusatory reasoning is quoted in the exhibition: “For this reason… my political past, my socialist sense of responsibility and my temperament force me to separate from an organization that makes political work impossible for me.” Münzenberg assures me of the place to claim “whom I have chosen since 1906 alongside Karl Liebknecht, later alongside Rosa Luxemburg, Klara Zetkin and in 1915 alongside Lenin, his place in the fighting ranks of revolutionary socialism.”
Finally, the exhibition takes a look at the (to say the least) tense relationship with Münzenberg in the GDR. His name was not mentioned at the unification party conference of the KPD and SPD in April 1946; He was only marginally mentioned until the early 1970s, only to be slandered as “unprincipled” and “extreme anti-communist” in a 1974 AIZ story.
Only on Münzenberg’s 100th birthday in 1989 did a half-hearted rehabilitation take place: the GDR sent a representative of its embassy in France to Saint-Marcellin, where he was buried after his violent death (suicide or murder at Stalin’s behest is still controversial today). And a series about him appeared in the central organ “Neues Deutschland”, which was followed two years later by a biography written by the former deputy “nd” editor-in-chief Harald Wessel. He had gone to a wide variety of locations during Münzenberg’s life and work, including the forest of Montagne, where the body was found on October 17, 1940. Münzenberg was on the run from the fascist Wehrmacht invading France, hoping to cross the “near and yet so far” Swiss border, as his partner Babette Groß discovered during her research after the liberation from fascism. Villagers also reported to her that he had been spotted in the company of two men. Stalin’s assassins?
The exhibition informs that the weathered gravestone was renovated last year with the support of the Willi Münzenberg’s Heirs Foundation and the Association Européenne Willi Münzenberg, founded in Montagne in 2022. And about the founding of the Münzenberg Forum in 2012, which strives to preserve Münzenberg and his legacy in left-wing memory. At the end of the exposition it is said somewhat wistfully and again too pessimistically: »The impact on political work remains small. The times are different. History lies under the microscope and is institutionalized or often precariously processed according to anniversaries and plans. The centerpiece and crowning glory of the (unfortunately somewhat hidden) appreciation at FMP 1 is a triptych by Hubertus Giebe, made on wood with strong, combative-like brushstrokes Dresden painting school, which included Otto Dix, Hans and Lea Grundig, representatives of the proletarian-revolutionary art of the Weimar Republic. Which brings the circle to Münzenberg full circle.
“Global Spaces for Radical Solidarity”, Franz-Mehring-Platz 1, 10243 Berlin, Monday to Friday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Admission is free, visitors interested in Hubertus Giebe’s artwork are asked to report to office 1.23 on the 1st floor, as this is not freely accessible. The accompanying program can be found at www.muenzenbergforum.de, where the exhibition can also be viewed online.
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