The early life of Paul Frölich

Submitted by AWL on 2 November, 2021 - 10:41 Author: Paul Hampton
The post-WW1 German revolution

The German revolution, 1919


Paul Frölich deserves to be better known. He is chiefly credited for his valuable 1928 biography of Rosa Luxemburg. However Frölich was a significant figure on the German revolutionary left in his own right. A recent book, Paul Frölich, In the Radical Camp: A Political Autobiography 1890-1921, edited and introduced by Reiner Tosstorff, provides a window into his life. The book deserves the attention of contemporary socialists.

Paul Frölich was born in Leipzig on 7 August 1884. Both his parents were active in the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), which was illegal at the time Frölich was born. Frölich joined the SPD in 1902, when it had 300,000 members and 30% of the vote. Leipzig was a bastion of the SPD and Frölich’s political apprenticeship came through the local SPD newspaper, Leipziger Volkszeitung, aligned with the party’s radical left. He went to work on the Hamburger Echo, another local SPD paper, in October 1910, and in May 1914 joined the editorial team of the Bremer Bürgerzeitung.

Frölich was one of the leaders of the anti-war left in the German workers’ movement during the First World War. In Bremen, Frölich belonged to the Linksradikale (left radicals). Interrupted by military service from September 1914 to autumn 1915 and again from July 1916, he was co-founder of the weekly Arbeiterpolitik that first appeared in June 1916. At the end of April 1916, he attended the international socialist anti-war conference in Kiental, Switzerland.

The left radicals were initially a loose, informal combination. It was only on the eve of the November 1918 revolution that they formed the Internationale Kommunisten Deutschlands (IKD). At the end of 1918, the IKD and the Spartacus League united to form the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD). Frölich was elected to the central committee.

Frölich was active in the Munich Soviet Republic in April-May 1919, writing an account of its activities. He was a leader of the KPD during the Kapp Putsch in March 1920, the unification with the USPD in December 1920 and the March Action in 1921. Frölich was a KPD Reichstag deputy from February 1921 to April 1924. He was re-elected to the Reichstag for the KPD in 1928, serving until September 1930.

In 1928-29, Frölich was expelled from the KPD and subsequently took part in founding the Kommunistische Partei-Opposition (KPO). In 1931, the SPD expelled six Reichstag deputies for their refusal to “tolerate” the Brüning government. The Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei (SAP) was formed. In 1932, Frölich led a minority of a thousand KPO members, a third of the organisation, who went over to the SAP. Hitler’s rise to power saw Frölich sent to a concentration camp. In December 1933, he was released, fleeing to Czechoslovakia and then Paris.

Exile

In exile the SAP published the newspaper Neue Front and the theoretical journal Marxistische Tribune. The SAP initially shared Trotsky’s position to found a new, Fourth International, but soon turned away towards “broader” forces. The SAP increasingly divided over its assessment of Stalinism. Walcher supported the “critical defence” of the USSR, while Frölich became increasingly opposed.

During and after the Second World War, Frölich faced many difficulties, reaching the USA in 1941, where he lived until his return to Germany in 1950. He died on 16 March 1953 in Frankfurt.

This book consists of an authoritative introduction on Frölich’s life, along with the manuscript of his autobiography, covering his life until 1921. The autobiography was written in the late 1930s at the behest of the International Institute for Social History. However the manuscript was lost until 2007, when it was discovered during some clearing work. The English text is abridged from the German version published in 2013.

As Tosstorff points out, the biography seems particularly obtuse because Frölich says nothing about his private life. Readers learn nothing about his first wife, with whom he had three children. Nor does he discuss Rosi Wolfstein, who shared his political life from the 1920s until his death. Nevertheless this is a valuable book with much to offer modern socialists.

The chief merit of Frölich’s autobiography is his honest assessments of some key episodes during this crucial period. Probably the biggest revelation is that within the Leipzig SPD, the old illegal organisation continued to exist after the end of the anti-socialist law in 1890. This was known as the “Corpora”, the “inner organisation” or “internal”. Although co-opted into the Corpora in 1906-07, Frölich argued to replace it with an elected membership. This was rejected.

The culture of the SPD left was poetically summed up by the epithet on Bruno Schoenlank’s grave, probably selected by Rosa Luxemburg:

Regret I did not enter into battle

With sharper blows and with far greater zeal,

Regret that only one time I was banished

Regret that often I knew human fears,

Regret the day I struck no wounding blow,

Regret the hour when I no armour wore,

And, overcome now with remorse, regret

That I was not three times more keen and bold.

Frölich is self-critical about the attitude of the left radicals towards the formation of the USPD, which held its founding congress in Gotha on 6-8 April 1917. The Spartacus League joined, preserving their own organisation, independence of propaganda and the right to their own actions. The left radical tendency rejected adhesion to the USPD, preferring complete independence.

Frölich concluded that the Spartacists were “certainly correct to make use of such a favourable situation”. The left radicals were influenced by the particular situation in Bremen. However, “the general conditions in Germany should have been the deciding factor, and not the exceptional case. The left radical tactic was therefore wrong”.

Frölich also criticises the position he took at the founding congress of the KPD, where he propagated the “unitary organisation”, of combining trade union and party in one organisation. Frölich concluded that “the idea was wrong, as it failed to consider the essential difference between the party as an organisation of convinced socialists and the trade union as a class organ... In the course of 1919 I was forced to realise that the idea was wrong and unattainable. It also turned out to contain syndicalism and was already wrong on this count, since all its champions recognised the primacy of politics”.

KPD

He also came to criticise the KPD’s attempted seizure of power in January 1919. During the battles, Radek wrote a letter to the party leadership, calling for the immediate suspension of a struggle that could not be won. Radek advised that “Nothing prevents a weaker party from retreating before a superior force”. However Luxemburg read the letter with great displeasure and cried out: “We do not need this advice. The struggle will continue”. Frölich favoured Radek’s position.

After the murders of Luxemburg, Liebknecht, Jogiches and others, Paul Levi took over as KPD leader. Further defeats in Munich and elsewhere, plus the threat from the left, put the KPD in a perilous position before its Heidelberg congress in October 1919.

Levi enforced an “ultimatum”, in the power struggle for the leadership of the party against the “left communists”. Frölich accepted that Fritz Wolffheim was “an unscrupulous demagogue”, and Heinrich Laufenberg “a political intriguer”. Both “did indeed pose a danger to the party”. Nevertheless Frölich lamented the loss of members and the damage to the central committee’s authority.

The Halle USPD congress in December 1920 decided to unify the party with the KPD. Frölich reported “an atmosphere of great enthusiasm”, in which Zinoviev’s speech made “a tremendous impression”. The right wing around Hilferding refused to go with the majority decision, soon rejoining the SPD.

Frölich pointed to the early bureaucratisation of the unified KPD:

“Until then our life had been pervaded by a Spartan spirit. We scarcely felt needs, as we had no time to indulge in them. There had never been more money than for the strictest necessities. The USPD people came with different ideas of life and different habits. To go some way to meeting their expectations, salaries were immediately doubled…

“Now a daily expenses allowance was introduced, which to us seemed scandalous even if it was still far below those paid by the SPD and the trade-union leaderships. Each party brought with it its staff of employees, and although the administration was simplified, we could not bring ourselves to decide on dismissals. This led to an inflation of the apparatus. This was encouraged still more so by Moscow, as only the Comintern subsidies made all these measures possible.”

The March Action was the failed uprising led by KPD and other organisations in 1921. Frölich supported the action at the time and his account contains some justification for it. However his balance sheet accepted the mistake:

“All the same, we overestimated the tensions, did not see the inhibiting factors, and particularly failed to recognise the possibility of a compromise in foreign policy... I failed to recognise as a general strategic lesson the necessity of a retreat or escape in a dangerous situation; this would only be brought home to me under the pressure of very harsh facts in the particular case…

“It was only much later that I understood that it was wrong to conduct a vanguard struggle in a bad position and with an unfavourable balance of forces for a decisive battle. Further, that it is impossible to apply suitable tactical formulas for all cases, one must rather depend in each situation on a correct view, instinct and intuition.”

Pen-portraits

Frölich provides some very sharp pen-portraits of key socialists he worked with over these years. Franz Mehring was “exquisitely sensitive. A misunderstanding could lead to a proven friendship being broken. The rapier was always ready at hand”. Paul Lensch was “a very talented journalist”, but he was “a bulldog, broad-shouldered and broad-legged, biting, reckless and insensitive. His style was not that of a fencer but of a butcher... a talented insulter”.

Leo Jogiches aroused “strong prejudices”, yet won respect:

“His dedication to the cause was boundless, his capacity for work amazing. The whole person was pure will. The discipline he had imposed on himself made his face an iron mask. He never let his feelings show. He was hard on people… Jogiches had just one response to my explanations: ‘The day has twenty-four hours’... In Leo’s time, the word ‘duty’ was written on the central committee in capital letters... His instructions, criticism and objections gave the sense of how seriously he had himself thought through every detail. He was a large-scale organiser and the only objection that could be made to his manner was that he took everything too much on himself.”

Frölich is scathing about Paul Levi’s leadership of the KPD between 1919 and 1921:

“Paul Levi’s personality allows us to understand how deeply the particular qualities of a party leader can help to determine the fate of a party, particularly in times of turbulence… [He] contributed extraordinary intellectual gifts as a party leader: an extremely ready penetration of complex events, a view for political realities, rejection of romantic illusions, activity, personal courage, tremendous oratorical and literary talent...

“As the number one, he was a failure. His political habitus was too one-sidedly intellectual. He lacked the inner connection with the masses, with people in general. He did not have the patience to understand people, convince them and win them over…

“Paul Levi did not belong to the ‘family’. He stood apart. His connections with the others were only for party business... He had conflicts with many of his assistants, the causes of which are hard to understand... He treated people that he had something against with deliberate brutality, and this was how matters were dealt with. There was no collegial common work with him on the central committee... He did not feel the need to convince, to win people for his opinion... If he came up against resistance, then he answered with blows of the whip, arrogantly, scornfully, injuriously, in a way that took away from the others the desire to debate further…”

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