Otto Rühle facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Otto Rühle
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| Member of the Reichstag | |
| In office 12 January 1912 – 9 November 1918 |
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| Constituency | Pirna-Sebnitz |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Karl Heinrich Otto Rühle
23 October 1874 Großschirma, German Empire |
| Died | 24 June 1943 (aged 68) Mexico City, Mexico |
| Citizenship | German |
| Nationality | German |
| Political party |
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| Spouse |
Alice Gerstel
(m. 1921; died 1943) |
| Occupation | |
Karl Heinrich Otto Rühle (born October 23, 1874 – died June 24, 1943) was a German thinker and politician. He was known for his ideas about how society should be organized, based on the teachings of Karl Marx. Rühle was against both the First World War and the Second World War. He also believed in a type of communism called council communism, which focused on workers' councils.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Otto Rühle was born in a town called Großschirma in Saxony, Germany, on October 23, 1874. His father worked for the railway. In 1889, Otto began training to become a teacher in Oschatz. During this time, he became involved with a group called the German Freethinkers League, which encouraged people to think freely and question traditional ideas.
In 1895, he worked as a private tutor for a countess and also taught in Oederan.
Political Work and Ideas
Otto Rühle joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1896. This was a political party that aimed to improve the lives of working people. He quickly started a socialist Sunday school, teaching children about socialist ideas.
However, he was fired from his teaching job in 1902. After that, he supported himself by writing and editing newspapers for the SPD in different cities like Hamburg and Chemnitz. Rühle was very critical of the way schools taught children. He even started a group in Hamburg to improve education for working-class families.
By 1907, he became a traveling teacher for the SPD. He became well-known for his writings about education and society, such as "Work and Education" (1904) and "The Proletarian Child" (1911). These books talked about how work and education affected children from poor families.
Rühle joined other important figures like Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg to create a group and a magazine called Internationale. This group believed in a worldwide revolution where workers would unite against countries that were fighting each other. In 1916, Rühle also joined the Spartacus League, another group that wanted big changes in Germany.
Serving in the Reichstag
In 1912, Otto Rühle was elected as a representative for the area of Pirna-Sebnitz in Saxon Switzerland. He served in the Reichstag, which was the German parliament at the time.
In 1918, Rühle decided not to run for re-election. His time in the Reichstag ended around the time of the abdication of Wilhelm II, when Germany was going through a period of big changes that led to the creation of the Weimar Republic.
Views on Revolution and Society
Otto Rühle was part of a group that disagreed with some of the main ideas of the German labour movement, which is a term for groups that work to protect the rights of workers. He was one of the first to criticize Bolshevism, which was the political system in the Soviet Union (now Russia). He also spoke out against fascism, a strict political system where the government has total control.
Rühle believed that the Soviet Union's system was a form of "state capitalism." This meant he thought it was similar to the way capitalism worked in Western countries, where businesses are owned by private people, but in the Soviet Union, the state (government) controlled everything. He even said that the Soviet system "served as the model for other capitalistic dictatorships." He felt that even if their ideas seemed different, the way their societies were set up was very similar.
Attending the Comintern Congress
In 1920, the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD), a group Rühle was part of, was invited to a big meeting called the Second Congress of the Communist International. This meeting brought together communist groups from around the world. Otto Rühle and another person named August Merges went as representatives for the KAPD.
The Revolution is not a Party Affair
Otto Rühle had strong ideas about how a revolution should happen. He thought that a "vanguard party," which is a small group of highly organized leaders, might work to overthrow a king (like the Tsar in Russia). However, he believed it was not the right way for a "proletarian revolution," which is a revolution led by working-class people.
He argued that what the Bolsheviks (the ruling party in the Soviet Union) created was more like the "bourgeois revolutions" that had happened in Europe. These were revolutions led by the middle class, not truly by the workers. Rühle believed that a system where a few leaders tell everyone else what to do was just like the old class system. He said: "Lenin's organisation is only a replica of bourgeois society." This meant he thought it copied the way society was already divided into rulers and those who are ruled.
Rühle strongly believed that "the revolution is not a party affair." He supported a "council communist" approach, which meant that workers' councils (groups of workers who make decisions together) should be the main way to organize society. In October 1921, he helped set up a group called the Allgemeine Arbeiter-Union – Einheitsorganisation, which focused on these ideas.
Later in his life, Rühle saw similarities between the Soviet Union and fascist countries like Nazi Germany. When the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was signed in 1939 (a deal between Germany and the Soviet Union), he wrote that "Russia was the example for fascism." He felt that the way the state was organized and ruled in Russia was very similar to Italy and Germany, calling them "red, black, or brown fascism."
Because of his connection to Leon Trotsky, a famous Russian revolutionary who disagreed with the Soviet government, Rühle had trouble finding work when he lived in Mexico. He had to hand-paint notecards for hotels to earn money.
Rühle was also part of the Dewey Commission, a group that investigated charges made against Trotsky during the Moscow Trials. The commission found Trotsky innocent.
In 1928, Rühle wrote a detailed book about Karl Marx called Karl Marx: His Life and Works.
Personal Life
In 1921, Otto Rühle married Alice Rühle-Gerstel, who was a German-Jewish writer, a supporter of women's rights, and a psychologist.
In 1936, Alice joined him in Mexico. Sadly, she died on the same day as Otto, June 24, 1943.
See also
In Spanish: Otto Rühle para niños
- Exilliteratur
- List of peace activists
Sources
- Otto Rühle at the Marxists Internet Archive.
- Otto Rühle at Kurasje.org.
- "Non-Leninist Marxism: Writings on the Workers Councils" (2007). St. Petersburg, Florida: Red and Black Publishers. ISBN: 978-0-9791813-6-8. It includes Ruhle's "The Revolution is Not a Party Affair" and "Report From Moscow".
