Margarete Buber-Neumann
Encyclopedia
Margarete Buber-Neumann was a leading member of the Communist Party of Germany
during the years of the Weimar Republic
. She survived imprisonment during World War II in both the Soviet Union
and Nazi Germany
. After the war, she wrote a prison memoir and served as a star witness during the so-called "trial of the century" in the Kravchenko Affair in France.
, and in her youth was active in socialist youth organisations. After World War I
she became more radical and joined the newly founded German Communist Party
(KPD
). In 1922 she married Rafael Buber, communist son of the philosopher Martin Buber
, who was Jewish. They had two daughters. Following her divorce in 1929, she married again, to a leading German Communist named Heinz Neumann. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the Neumanns went into exile in the Soviet Union. During the 1930s they both worked for the Comintern
, first in France
and then in Spain
during the Spanish Civil War
.
In 1920, Buber-Neumann's sister, Babette Thüring, had married Fritz Gross of Vienna, who moved to Germany after World War I
and became a member of the KPD. They had a son in 1923, then separated. Babette retained her married name of 'Babette Gross' for the rest of her life. (Fritz Gross moved to England in the 1930s, helped refugees during World War II
, and died in 1946 with a considerable corpus of mostly unpublished work.) Babette then became communist (commonlaw) wife of Willi Münzenberg
, under whom Otto Katz and Arthur Koestler
worked in Paris. In Münzenberg's office, Koestler met both sisters. Koestler would remain a friend after both he and Buber-Neumann had left the party. (As "Babette Gross," Buber-Neuman's sister later wrote a biography of Münzenberg.)
's Hotel Lux
, Heinz Neumann was arrested as part of Joseph Stalin
's Great Purge
and later executed. Buber-Neumann never learned her husband's exact fate. Instead, she found herself arrested the following year and sent to a labour camp in Karaganda
as a "wife of an enemy of the people." Following the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939, she became one of a number of German Communists handed over in 1940 by the Soviets to the Nazis.
Buber-Neumann was then imprisoned in Ravensbrück concentration camp
, where she became friends with Orli Wald
. Because she had renounced communism as a result of her experiences in the Soviet Union, she was treated as a relatively privileged prisoner. This enabled her to survive five years in the camp. She worked in a clerical capacity in the Siemens
plant attached to the camp, and later as secretary to a camp official, SS-Oberaufseherin Johanna Langefeld
. She was freed in April 1945.
Buber-Neumann spent some years in Sweden
. In 1948, she published Als Gefangene bei Stalin und Hitler (published the following year in German, French, and English -- "Under Two Dictators: Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler"). At the urging of friend Koestler, in this book she gave an account of her years in both Soviet prison and Nazi concentration camps. The book aroused the bitter hostility of the Soviet and German communists. In 1949, she testified in Paris
in support of Victor Kravchenko, who was suing a magazine connected with the French Communist Party for libel after he was accused of fabricating his account of Soviet labour camps. Buber-Neumann corroborated Kravchenko's account in great detail, contributing to his victory in the case.
Kafkas Freundin Milena. In 1976, she published Die erloschene Flamme: Schicksale meiner Zeit ("The Extinct Flame: Fates of My Time"), in which she argued that Nazism and Communism were in practice the same. By this time, she had become a political conservative, joining the Christian Democratic Union
(CDU) in 1975.
In 1980, Buber-Neumann was awarded the Great Cross of Merit
of the Federal Republic of Germany. She died in Frankfurt am Main in 1989. Her daughters by her marriage to Rafael Buber were raised at the home of their grandfather, Martin Buber, and settled in Israel
.
Communist Party of Germany
The Communist Party of Germany was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956...
during the years of the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
. She survived imprisonment during World War II in both the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
. After the war, she wrote a prison memoir and served as a star witness during the so-called "trial of the century" in the Kravchenko Affair in France.
Early life
Margarete Buber-Neumann was born Margarete Thüring in PotsdamPotsdam
Potsdam is the capital city of the German federal state of Brandenburg and part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. It is situated on the River Havel, southwest of Berlin city centre....
, and in her youth was active in socialist youth organisations. After World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
she became more radical and joined the newly founded German Communist Party
German Communist Party
The German Communist Party is a Marxist-Leninist party in Germany.-History:The DKP was formed in West Germany in 1968, in order to fill the place of the Communist Party of Germany , which had been banned by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1956...
(KPD
Communist Party of Germany
The Communist Party of Germany was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956...
). In 1922 she married Rafael Buber, communist son of the philosopher Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
, who was Jewish. They had two daughters. Following her divorce in 1929, she married again, to a leading German Communist named Heinz Neumann. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the Neumanns went into exile in the Soviet Union. During the 1930s they both worked for the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
, first in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and then in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
during the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
.
In 1920, Buber-Neumann's sister, Babette Thüring, had married Fritz Gross of Vienna, who moved to Germany after World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
and became a member of the KPD. They had a son in 1923, then separated. Babette retained her married name of 'Babette Gross' for the rest of her life. (Fritz Gross moved to England in the 1930s, helped refugees during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, and died in 1946 with a considerable corpus of mostly unpublished work.) Babette then became communist (commonlaw) wife of Willi Münzenberg
Willi Münzenberg
Willi Münzenberg was a communist political activist. Münzenberg was the first head of the Young Communist International in 1919-20 and established the famine-relief and propaganda organization Workers International Relief in 1921...
, under whom Otto Katz and Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler CBE was a Hungarian author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria...
worked in Paris. In Münzenberg's office, Koestler met both sisters. Koestler would remain a friend after both he and Buber-Neumann had left the party. (As "Babette Gross," Buber-Neuman's sister later wrote a biography of Münzenberg.)
Internment
In 1937, while living at MoscowMoscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
's Hotel Lux
Hotel Lux
Hotel Lux was a hotel in Moscow that, during the early years of the Soviet Union, housed many leading exiled Communists. During the Nazi era, exiles from all over Europe went there, particularly from Germany. A number of them became leading figures in German politics in the postwar era...
, Heinz Neumann was arrested as part of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's Great Purge
Great Purge
The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin from 1936 to 1938...
and later executed. Buber-Neumann never learned her husband's exact fate. Instead, she found herself arrested the following year and sent to a labour camp in Karaganda
Karaganda
Karagandy , more commonly known by its Russian name Karaganda, , is the capital of Karagandy Province in Kazakhstan. It is the fourth most populous city in Kazakhstan, behind Almaty , Astana and Shymkent, with a population of 471,800 . In the 1940s up to 70% of the city's inhabitants were ethnic...
as a "wife of an enemy of the people." Following the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August 1939, she became one of a number of German Communists handed over in 1940 by the Soviets to the Nazis.
Buber-Neumann was then imprisoned in Ravensbrück concentration camp
Ravensbrück concentration camp
Ravensbrück was a notorious women's concentration camp during World War II, located in northern Germany, 90 km north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück ....
, where she became friends with Orli Wald
Orli Wald
Orli Wald was a member of the German Resistance in Nazi Germany. She was arrested in 1936 and charged with high treason, whereupon she served four and a half years in a women's prison, followed by "protective custody" in Nazi concentration camps until 1945, when she escaped...
. Because she had renounced communism as a result of her experiences in the Soviet Union, she was treated as a relatively privileged prisoner. This enabled her to survive five years in the camp. She worked in a clerical capacity in the Siemens
Siemens
Siemens may refer toSiemens, a German family name carried by generations of telecommunications industrialists, including:* Werner von Siemens , inventor, founder of Siemens AG...
plant attached to the camp, and later as secretary to a camp official, SS-Oberaufseherin Johanna Langefeld
Johanna Langefeld
Johanna Langefeld was a German female guard and supervisor at three Nazi concentration camps.-Early life:Born in Kupferdreh , Johanna Langefeld was brought up in a Lutheran-Protestant, nationalistic family. Her father was a blacksmith. In 1924 she moved to Mülheim and married Wilhelm Langefeld,...
. She was freed in April 1945.
Kravchenko Affair
After World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
Buber-Neumann spent some years in Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
. In 1948, she published Als Gefangene bei Stalin und Hitler (published the following year in German, French, and English -- "Under Two Dictators: Prisoner of Stalin and Hitler"). At the urging of friend Koestler, in this book she gave an account of her years in both Soviet prison and Nazi concentration camps. The book aroused the bitter hostility of the Soviet and German communists. In 1949, she testified in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in support of Victor Kravchenko, who was suing a magazine connected with the French Communist Party for libel after he was accused of fabricating his account of Soviet labour camps. Buber-Neumann corroborated Kravchenko's account in great detail, contributing to his victory in the case.
Anti-communism
In the 1950s, Buber-Neumann returned to Germany as a staunch anti-communist. She also continued to write for the next three decades. In 1957, she published Von Potsdam nach Moskau: Stationen eines Irrweges ("From Potsdam to Moscow: Stations of an Erring Way"). In 1963, she published a biography of her Ravensbrück friend Milena JesenskáMilena Jesenská
Milena Jesenská was a Czech journalist, writer, editor and translator, who refused to abandon her Jewish friends and was deported to and died alongside them in Ravensbrück concentration camp....
Kafkas Freundin Milena. In 1976, she published Die erloschene Flamme: Schicksale meiner Zeit ("The Extinct Flame: Fates of My Time"), in which she argued that Nazism and Communism were in practice the same. By this time, she had become a political conservative, joining the Christian Democratic Union
Christian Democratic Union (Germany)
The Christian Democratic Union of Germany is a Christian democratic and conservative political party in Germany. It is regarded as on the centre-right of the German political spectrum...
(CDU) in 1975.
In 1980, Buber-Neumann was awarded the Great Cross of Merit
Bundesverdienstkreuz
The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany is the only general state decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has existed since 7 September 1951, and between 3,000 and 5,200 awards are given every year across all classes...
of the Federal Republic of Germany. She died in Frankfurt am Main in 1989. Her daughters by her marriage to Rafael Buber were raised at the home of their grandfather, Martin Buber, and settled in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
.
Works
(From the Library of Congress catalog)- Fånge hos Hitler och Stalin (1948)
- Als Gefangene bei Stalin und Hitler (1949)
- Déportée en Sibérie. Traduit de l'allemand par Anise Poster-Vinay (1949)
- Under two dictators; tr. by Edward Fitzgerald (1949)
- Von Potsdam nach Moskau: Stationen eines Irrweges (1957)
- Kafkas Freundin Milena (1963) - Mistress to Kafka: the life and death of Milena; introduction by Arthur Koestler (1966)
- Kommunistische Untergrund. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der kommunistischen Geheimarbeit (1970)
- Dokumentation einer Manipulation (1972)
- Freiheit, du bist wieder mein ..." : d. Kraft zu überleben (1978)
- Plädoyer für Freiheit und Menschlichkeit: Vorträge aus 35 Jahren - Janine Platten und Judith Buber Agassi (2000)
External links
- Frauen.Biographieforshung bio
- Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies bio
- Arcade Publishing bio
- Random House - Australia bio
- Fundacio Andreu Nin review
- Corbis photo