The German Left and the Weimar Republic

The German Left and the Weimar Republic illuminates the history of the political left by presenting a wide range of documents on various aspects of socialist and communist activity in Germany. Separate chapters deal with the policy of Social Democracy in and out of government, the attempts of the Communist Party to overthrow the Weimar Republic, and then later to oppose it. Later chapters move away from the political scene to treat the attitudes of the parties to key social issues, in particular questions of gender and sexuality. The book concludes with a presentation of documents on various groups of socialist and communist dissidents. Many of the documents are made accessible for the first time, and each chapter begins with an original introduction indicating the current state of research.

Ben Fowkes taught history at the universities of Sheffield and North London. He carried out archival research in Vienna, Bonn, Prague and Moscow, and wrote a number of books, including Communism in Germany under the Weimar Republic. He also did a number of translations, such as Karl Marx: The Economic Manuscript of 1863-1865 (Capital, Book Three) and Henryk Grossman: Selected Works (edited by Professor Rick Kuhn). Both to be published by Brill.

“Socialist historian Ben Fowkes has given us a unique and vivid text documentary of the German workers’ movement during the tumultuous years of its greatest influence… For socialists, this unique resource breaks through veils of historical interpretation and ideology and permits us to hear the protagonists of our movement’s past in their own words.” — John Riddell, editor of Toward the United Front