Gegen den Geist des Sozialismus. Anarchistische und kommunistische Kritik der Judenfeindschaft in der KPD zur Zeit der Weimarer Republik. Vortrag mit Olaf Kistenmacher

In the organizer's words:

Anti-Semitism in the political left did not only become an issue after 1945. The criticism of it is as old as the issue itself. In the Weimar Republic, it was former founding members of the KPD such as Franz Pfemfert or anarcho-syndicalists like Rudolf Rocker who criticized the anti-Semitic agitation during the Schlageter course. In the mid-1920s, Clara Zetkin warned against anti-Semitic sentiment at grassroots level at the KPD party conference. In 1929, one of the first radical critiques of the KPD's anti-Zionism appeared in the central organ of the KPD opposition formed around Heinrich Brandler and August Thalheimer.

In their criticism, the anarchist and communist leftists drew on interventions by Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky and at the same time reflected on developments in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution. Marx's claim to "overthrow all conditions in which man is a humiliated, enslaved, abandoned, contemptible being" included for them the fight against anti-Semitism within their own ranks. Their criticism not only came decades before the internal left-wing debate on anti-Semitism from the left, Luxemburg and Pfemfert also anticipated the arguments of the later anti-nationalist and anti-German left.

Olaf Kistenmacher works as an author and journalist. He completed his doctorate with the study Arbeit und "jüdisches Kapital". Antisemitic statements in the KPD daily newspaper Die Rote Fahne during the Weimar Republic. Together with Hans-Joachim Hahn, he edited the two anthologies Beschreibungsversuche der Judenfeindschaft, which deal with anti-Semitism research before 1945.

This event is part of the Action Weeks against Anti-Semitism and is sponsored by the AStA of the University of Cologne. Information on the series can be found at https://www.instagram.com/bga_koeln and https://bga-koeln.tumblr.com.