{{Short description|German politician (1883–1930)}} {{for multi|the American composer|Paul Alan Levi|the picture framer|Paul Levi (picture framer)}} {{Infobox officeholder | image = Paul Levi - Schwadron.jpg | caption = Levi {{circa}} 1920s | name = Paul Levi | office1 = Chairman of the<br />Communist Party of Germany | term_start1 = March 1919 | term_end1 = February 1921 | 1blankname1 = Serving with | 1namedata1 = Ernst Däumig {{small|(1920–1921)}} | predecessor1 = Leo Jogiches | successor1 = Heinrich Brandler | office2 = Member of the Reichstag | term_start2 = 24 June 1920 | term_end2 = 9 February 1930 | constituency2 = ''Reichswahlvorschlag'' {{small|(1920–1924)}}<br/>Chemnitz–Zwickau {{small|(1924–1930)}} | predecessor2 = ''Constituency established'' | successor2 = Georg Graupe | birth_date = {{Birth date|1883|03|11|df=y}} | birth_place = Hechingen, Province of Hohenzollern, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire | death_date = {{Death date and age|1930|02|09|1883|03|11|df=y}} | death_place = Berlin, Weimar Republic | party = SPD {{small|(1906–1916, after September 1922)}}<br/>USPD {{small|(1917–1918, March–September 1922)}}<br/>KPD {{small|(1918–1921)}}<br/>KAG {{small|(1921–March 1922)}} | other_party = Spartacus League {{small|(1915–1918)}} | allegiance = {{flag|German Empire}} | branch = Imperial German Army | service_years = 1915–1916 | rank = | commands = | battles = {{tree list}} * World War I ** Western Front {{tree list/end}} | module2 = {{collapsible list | title = Central institution membership | bullets = on | 1920–1921: Full member,<br />KPD Politburo | 1919–1921: Full member,<br />KPD Zentrale }} }} '''Paul Levi''' ({{IPA|de|ˈleːvi|lang}}; 11 March 1883 – 9 February 1930) was a German communist and social democratic political leader. He was the head of the Communist Party of Germany following the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in 1919. After being expelled for publicly criticising Communist Party tactics during the March Action, he formed the Communist Working Group (KAG / ''Kommunistische Arbeitsgemeinschaft'') which in 1922 merged with the Independent Social Democratic Party. This party, in turn, merged with the Social Democratic Party a few months later and Levi became one of the leaders of its left wing.
==Biography==
===Early years=== Paul Levi was born on 11 March 1883 in Hechingen in Hohenzollern Province to a well-to-do Jewish merchant family.<ref>{{harvtxt|Grunwald|2012|p=57}}</ref> He attended the Gymnasium in Stuttgart.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|2–3}} Levi started work as a lawyer in Frankfurt in 1906<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|3}} and also joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) the same year. There he became part of the party's left wing together with Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Beginning in 1913, Levi was also Luxemburg's lawyer in political cases.<ref name="Broué" />{{rp|61}} In 1914 he was elected as an SPD town councillor in Frankfurt.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|3}}
Levi was one of the twelve delegates to the meeting in March 1915 which led to the formation of the ''Gruppe Internationale'' which became the Spartacist League.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|5}} The following month he was conscripted to the army and sent to the Vosges.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|5}} After starving himself, Levi was discharged on medical grounds in 1916, settling in Switzerland and associating with Karl Radek, Grigory Zinoviev and Vladimir Lenin, becoming a part of the bureau of the Zimmerwald Left and helping found ''La nouvelle internationale'' which he wrote for under the pseudonym 'Hartstein'.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|5}} He was one of the signatories to a declaration approving of Lenin and other Russian revolutionaries actions in travelling through Germany in a sealed train.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|5}}
Levi returned to Germany after the October Revolution and from March 1918 lived mostly in Berlin where he was one of the three editors of the ''Spartakusbriefe''.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|5}} At the founding conference of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) on 30–31 December 1918, he introduced the discussion on 'The National Assembly'.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|7}} Levi was amongst the majority on the KPD Zentrale who opposed the initiatives of Karl Liebknecht and Wilhelm Pieck who had supported a Revolutionary Committee with the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) and the Revolutionary Stewards to lead what became known as the Spartacist Uprising in January 1919.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|7}}
===Communist leader===
After the killing of the KPD's main leaders Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, and Leo Jogiches, Levi took over as the central leader of the Communist Party.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|7}} At the KPD's second congress in October 1919, Levi expelled the party's Council Communist ultra-left, around half the membership many of whom formed the Communist Workers' Party of Germany.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|10}} During the Kapp Putsch Levi was in prison.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|12}}
[[File:Троцкий на II конгрессе Коминтерна 1920.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.2|Delegates to the 2nd World Congress of the Comintern in Moscow, 1920.<br /><small>'''Left to right:''' Giacinto Serrati, Leon Trotsky, Alfred Rosmer, '''Paul Levi''', Grigory Zinoviev, Nikolai Bukharin, Mikhail Kalinin, Karl Radek.</small>]]
Levi headed the German delegation to the 2nd World Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow in 1920, where he threatened that the KPD delegation would leave due to the presence of representatives of the KAPD.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|13}}
He led the party away from the policy of immediate revolution, orientating it to wider layers of workers. These efforts were rewarded when a substantial section of the USPD joined the KPD after a debate at their Halle congress, making it a mass party for the first time with around 449,700 members.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|13}} This was followed up by an 'Open Letter' which Levi, alongside Radek, convinced the KPD Zentrale to issue to other working class organisation to join in a joint struggle around their common interests, based on a successful initiative of Communists in Stuttgart.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|15}}
Levi attended the 1921 Livorno Congress of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) which had joined the Comintern, where Levi had supported Giacinto Serrati against the faction around Antonio Gramsci and Amadeo Bordiga who went on to form the Italian Communist Party (PCI) supported by Comintern representatives Mátyás Rákosi and Khristo Kabakchiev.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|15–16}} Following a debate at the Zentrale over Italy where Levi and his supporters lost the vote by a small majority after being opposed by Radek and Rákosi, he resigned from the chairmanship of the Communist Party in early 1921, alongside his co-chairman Ernst Däumig and Clara Zetkin, Otto Brass and Adolph Hoffmann also resigned from the Central Committee.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|17}}<ref name="Broué" />{{rp|487}} This had been preceded by the "small bureau" of the Comintern condemning the "Open Letter"<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|15}} and awarding the KAPD sympathising section status.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|14}} Shortly after, under the influence of Béla Kun, the party launched the March Action of 1921.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|18}}
As leader of the KPD, Levi frequently criticized "putschism," or the repeated efforts on behalf of Communists to take power without the broader support of the masses. He first observed this phenomenon in the failed revolutionary experiences in Bavaria and Hungary in 1919.<ref name="Fernbach" /> Later on, after the disastrous March Action, Levi wrote his most famous pamphlet ''Unser Weg: Wider den Putschismus'' ("Our Path: Against Putschism"). In it, he laid out his criticisms of the Comintern, the KPD, and what he called the "Bakuninist" influence behind what he argued were numerous premature attempts to take state power. Levi cited both Engels and Marx on insurrection, showing how other Party members of the KPD had overlooked the careful preparatory work of the Bolsheviks leading up to the October 1917 Revolution. He simultaneously criticized Comintern representatives such as Béla Kun, Grigory Zinoviev and Karl Radek for their encouragement of these accelerationist policies both in Germany and Italy. Levi's criticism of the Comintern and "putschism" served as an early attempt to explain the failure of European Revolutions in the 1918-1923 period.
Following the failure of the uprisings Levi was expelled from the Communist Party for publicly criticizing party policies in his pamphlet ''Unser Weg''.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|20}}<ref name="Broué" />{{rp|516}} Lenin and Trotsky substantially agreed with his criticisms, but not the way in which he had made them. Lenin sent him a private letter through his friend Clara Zetkin,<ref>See [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/apr/16.htm "To Clara Zetkin and Paul Levi"]</ref> in which he asked Levi to accept the expulsion for "breach of discipline" and then adopt a friendly approach towards the KPD and cooperate with it in the class struggle in a loyal manner. If Levi would do so, Lenin would then push for his reinstatement in the party.<ref name="Broué" />{{rp|517–18}} Levi did not accept this proposal and continued to criticize the party sharply and condemn its leaders.<ref>Frédéric Cyr: Paul Levis Kampf um die KPD, in: Jahrbuch für Forschungen zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, No. I/2010 (German language),</ref> This led Lenin to revise his previously still favourable attitude towards Levi.<ref>Lenin, V.I. [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/feb/x01.htm Notes of a Publicist], February 1922</ref>
===Later life, death, and legacy=== [[File:Paul Levi 1920.jpg|thumb|right|Levi's official Reichstag portrait, 1920]] After being expelled from the Communist Party, Levi formed the Communist Working Group (KAG) with supporters expelled from the KPD at its Jena congress in September 1921, which included 13 of the KPD's Reichstag deputies (including Levi himself).<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|23}} In 1922 he joined the USPD, with whom he subsequently rejoined the SPD.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|24}}
Levi began rethinking his previous policies and wrote introductions to Rosa Luxemburg's ''The Russian Revolution'' and Leon Trotsky's ''Lessons of October,'' which were sharply critical of the Bolsheviks.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|25–26}} In the summer of 1921 Levi founded a monthly magazine named ''Unser Weg'' ("Our Way"), which he later replaced with a weekly ''Sozialistiche und politische Wochentliche'' (also known as ''Levi-Korrespondenz'') when he rejoined the SPD.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|27}}
Because of his Jewish roots, he became the target and symbol of a campaign in the press. He responded by attacking prominent Nazis, such as Adolf Hitler, Ernst Röhm, Alfred Rosenberg, and Wilhelm Frick in left-wing publications.
[[File:Paul Levi 1924.jpg|thumb|left|Levi's official Reichstag portrait, 1924]]
In 1924, Levi was re-elected to the Reichstag in Zwickau for the SPD, where he held meetings in remote village, conducted some legal cases and held education classes.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|28}} Although his interventions were restricted in the Reichstag, he represented the SPD on the Reichstag's legal committee and spoke on issues of civil liberties.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|28}} Levi also began to specialise in defending writers and newspapers that disclosed government secrets, but took up other civil liberties cases, including those of KPD members such as Willi Münzenberg.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|29}}
Levi died on 9 February 1930 in Berlin after succumbing to injuries suffered when he fell from the window of his fifth floor attic flat.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|30}} He had been taken to bed with pneumonia during a trial, where he had become feverish and delirious.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|30}} Levi received numerous obituaries, including from Albert Einstein.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|28}} However Lazitch & Drachkovitch relate: "He committed suicide in 1930 by jumping from a window at a clinic where he was being treated."<ref>Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern, The Hoover Institution Press, 1986, p.259.</ref> After his death the Reichstag held a minute of commemoration during which the representatives of the Communist Party and the Nazi Party ostentatiously left the assembly hall.<ref name=Fernbach />{{rp|28}} At his funeral, fellow dissident communist Valeriu Marcu presented the eulogy.<ref>Lazitch & Drachkovitch, Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern, The Hoover Institution Press, 1986, p.301.</ref>
== References == <references>
<ref name="Broué">{{cite book|first=Pierre |last=Broué |title=The German Revolution: 1917–1923 |location=Chicago |publisher=Haymarket Books |year=2006}}</ref> <ref name=Fernbach>{{cite book|first=David |last=Fernbach |chapter=Introduction |title=In the Steps of Rosa Luxemburg: Selected Writings of Paul Levi |year=2011 |editor=David Fernbach |location=Chicago |publisher=Haymarket Books}}</ref>
</references>
== Sources == {{refbegin}} * {{cite book|last=Grunwald|first=Henning|title=Courtroom to Revolutionary Stage Performance and Ideology in Weimar Political Trials|year=2012|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford, UK|isbn=978-0-19-960904-8}} {{refend}}
== Further reading == * Balabanoff, Angelica (1968). ''Impressions of Lenin''. * Hallas, Duncan (1985). [http://www.marxists.org/archive/hallas/works/1985/comintern/ch3.htm#s2 "The Comintern"]. Marxist Internet Archive. Accessed August 9, 2009 * Jones, Mike (1985). "The Decline, Disorientation and Decomposition of a Leadership". ''Revolutionary History'', Vol 2 No 3, Autumn 1989. On-line at [https://web.archive.org/web/20080905172207/http://www.revolutionary-history.co.uk/backiss/Vol2/No3/decline.html Revolutionary History] - accessed August 9, 2009 * Lenin, Vladimir (1921). [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/aug/14.htm "A Letter to the German Communists"]. Marxist Internet Archive. Accessed August 9, 2009 * Trotsky, Leon (1922). [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/ffyci-2/07.htm "Paul Levi and Some 'Lefts'". ''The First Five Years of the Communist International'']. Marxist Internet Archive. Accessed August 9, 2009 * Ben Fowkes, Communism in Germany under Weimar Republic. London: Macmillan Press, 1984
== External links == {{commons}} * [http://www.marxists.org/archive/levi-paul/index.htm Paul Levi Archive at marxists.org] * [https://web.archive.org/web/20080513114149/http://www.revolutionary-history.co.uk/supplem/Levlenin.htm Paul Levi, ''Leaving Leninism''], written in 1927 and translated by Mike Jones * Karl Radek, [http://www.marxists.org/archive/radek/1921/05/downfall_levi.htm ''The Downfall of Levi''] * Walter Held, [https://www.marxists.org/archive/held-walter/1942/12/germrev.htm ''Why the German Revolution Failed''] * Jean Van Heijenoort, [https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/otherdox/whatnext/heijgerm.html ''The German Revolution in the Leninist Period''] * Udo Winkel, [https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol5/no2/winkel.html ''Paul Levi and His Significance for the Communist Movement in Germany''] * Theodor Bergmann, [https://www.marxists.org/archive/bergmann/2006/paul-levi.htm ''The Tragedy of Paul Levi: A German Revolutionary Between Communism and Social Democracy''] * Todd Chretien, [http://www.isreview.org/issues/52/broue2.shtml ''Pierre Broué's German Revolution 1917-1923''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200921224056/http://www.isreview.org/issues/52/broue2.shtml |date=2020-09-21 }} * {{PM20|FID=pe/011342}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Levi, Paul}} Category:1883 births Category:1930 deaths Category:People from Hechingen Category:People from the Province of Hohenzollern Category:Jewish German politicians Category:Social Democratic Party of Germany politicians Category:Independent Social Democratic Party politicians Category:Communist Party of Germany politicians Category:Communist Working Group (Germany) politicians Category:Members of the Reichstag 1920–1924 Category:Members of the Reichstag 1924 Category:Members of the Reichstag 1924–1928 Category:Members of the Reichstag 1928–1930 Category:Members of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Germany Category:Executive Committee of the Communist International Category:German Comintern people Category:Jewish socialists Category:German Army personnel of World War I Category:Deaths from falls Category:Politicians affected by a party expulsion process