Beaten But Not Defeated: Siegfried Moos - A German anti-Nazi who settled in Britain

350 Pages·2014·1.72 MB·English

by  Merilyn Moos

First published by Chronos Books, 2014
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Text copyright: Merilyn Moos 2013
ISBN: 978 1 78279 677 0
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Part 1: An anti-Nazi in Germany
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: 1904 - 1928 Early life. The makings of a revolutionary
Chapter 3: Bavaria: the early stamping ground of the Nazis; KPD
resistance
Chapter 4: 1928 - 1933 Political Background to the KPD
1918-1928
1928-1933
Deadly mis-estimation of NSDAP
Chapter 5: 1928 - 1933 Resistance
May 1 1929
Rotfrontkämpferbund (RFB)
Cross-membership
Berlin Proletarische Freidenker (BPF)
The importance of left sporting organisations
Agit-prop
Alles an der Roten Start
The India connection
Going underground in Berlin
Escape from Germany
Stay in Paris
PART 2: In exile in Britain
Chapter 6: 1934 - 1938 The first years of exile
Introduction
Background
1934-1937 Siegi’s political life: the KPD group in exile
1934-1938 Siegi’s status as a refugee
Lotte, Brian, the USSR and Siegi
Chapter 7: 1938 - 1947 Life at Oxford: ‘A whole world separates me
from the line’.
Siegi at the Institute of Statistics
Lotte and the USA
The risk and reality of internment, 1940
Die Zeitung
Siegi’s writings 1938-1947
The Holocaust and its shadow
Chapter 8: 1947 - 1966 The Durham years. Drowning ghosts
Chapter 9 1966 - 1988 London. Beaten but not defeated
The Board of Trade and Harold Wilson
The betrayal of the 1919 German Revolution
The last years
Epilogue
Appendices
1. 5 articles by Siegi Moos, on the role of revolutionary theatre, first
published in 1930/31, in Arbeiterbühne und Film, translated by Ian
Birchall
2. Researching the KPD 1929-37. Conversations with three members of
the KPD in the 1930s
3. Hermann Binnswanger
4. Members of Proletarian FreeThinkers
5. Divisions amongst revolutionary left, 1929
6. Weber/LaPorte debate about Stalinisation of KPD
7. The Russian Oil Products (ROP)
8. The Workers’ Olympics.
9. Lotte Moos
Bibliography
Berlin 1933
Oxford
Durham, late 1950s
To my parents, Siegi and Lotte Moos, who gave me life.
Acknowledgements
This is a book which would never have been written, never mind
finished, if it had not been for the help of a large number of people. I
want to thank in particular Irene Fick for her commitment and good
nature in translating so many documents from German to English and
English to German without which this book would have been impossible;
Richard Kirkwood for his detailed knowledge and analysis of the
revolutionary left in Germany during the Weimar Republic, and for the
moments of inspiration in his exploration of my father’s role in Germany
and then in Britain, and Ian Birchall for his generosity in translating my
father’s articles and for his astute comments on the text. My thanks also
to Nick Jacobs for his translation of the biographies in Hermann
Weber’s: Deutsche Kommunisten Biographisches handbuch 1918 bis 1945, of
the men and women who pass through Siegi’s biography. I also want to
thank the following for their interest and encouragement: Charmian
Brinson, Hugh Brody, Pete Cannell, Annie Duarte-Potter, and Sue Vice.
Many other people provided me with useful material and ideas, either in
document form or in discussion, all of whom I acknowledge in the
endnotes.
My particular thanks to Elfrieda Bruning, Hans Kohoutek and Rudi
Schiffman, who has sadly died since I interviewed him. They all agreed
to be interviewed aged 100 or over and gave me an invaluable insight
into what it was like to be a Communist in the early 1930s in Germany.
My thanks also to Dr Hans Coppi of the VVN-BdA (Vereinigung der
Verfolgten des Naziregines - Bund der Antifaschistinnen und
Antifaschisten (VVN-BdA e.V., Association of Victims of the Nazi-
Regime) for arranging the interviews for me.
Although Chronos bore the greater part of the expense of publishing
this book, it would not have been published if it were not for the
generous financial support of Rudolph Moos, from the US, and Mairead
Breslin Kelly, from Ireland. I suspect my father would have appreciated
the historical irony that Rudolph’s gift was in part a consequence of his