August Thalheimer facts for kids
August Thalheimer (born March 18, 1884 – died September 19, 1948) was a German thinker and activist. He followed the ideas of Karl Marx, which are about how society and the economy should be organized.
Early Life and Education
August Thalheimer was born in 1884 in a town called Affaltrach in Germany. His family was Jewish and working-class. He studied at several famous universities. These included places like Munich, Oxford, London, Strasbourg, and Berlin.
Political Journey
Before World War I, August Thalheimer was a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. This was a big political party in Germany. He worked as an editor for one of their newspapers, Volksfreund.
From 1916, he also worked on Spartakusbriefe. This was the official paper of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD). Later, Thalheimer helped start the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). He became known as their main thinker and writer. He also edited Rote Fahne, another important newspaper.
In 1923, Thalheimer was part of the local government in Württemberg. He served as the Minister of Finance during a difficult time. Because of some problems, he and another leader, Heinrich Brandler, were called to Moscow in 1924. In Moscow, he worked for the Comintern, which was an international group of communist parties. He also worked at the Marx-Engels Institute.
In 1927, Thalheimer gave talks at the Moscow Sun Yat-sen University. These talks were later published as a textbook on philosophy. He also helped Nikolai Bukharin write a plan for the Comintern.
In 1928, he returned to Germany. He was not happy with the leadership of Ernst Thälmann in the KPD. A year later, in 1929, he and Brandler were removed from the KPD. They then started their own group called the Communist Party Opposition (KPO).
The KPO had different ideas about the Soviet Union's foreign policy. However, they supported some of its internal policies. For example, Thalheimer supported policies like forced collectivization. This was when farms were taken over by the state. He also supported Stakhanovism, which encouraged workers to produce more.
In 1932, Thalheimer had to leave Germany. He went to live in Paris, France. From 1935, he wrote a regular column. This column was about international news for Workers Age. This was the newspaper of the Communist Party of the USA (Opposition).
In 1936, Thalheimer moved to Barcelona, Spain. There, he had a disagreement with Andrés Nin. This was about the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification's (POUM) criticism of the first Moscow Trial. He soon went back to France. He continued to work with the KPO group that was also in exile.
In July 1937, some KPO members in Barcelona were arrested. Thalheimer and Brandler released a joint statement. They said they fully supported their arrested friends. They stated that these friends were against fascism and were revolutionaries. They believed they were innocent of any wrongdoing against the Spanish Revolution.
Later Life
In 1940, Germany took over France. August Thalheimer then fled to Cuba. He passed away in Havana in 1948.
See also
In Spanish: August Thalheimer para niños
