The
ISK [Militant Socialist
International] and its relationship to
Vegetarianism and Esperanto
Text of a lecture for the Vegan Meeting in Castle Gresilion Paris
on the 2018-05-11.
ISK
Vegetarianism in the ISK: History according to End the
Slaughter!
ISK, Esperanto and SAT
Sources
[Note; While translating the first section of Gary Mickle's text
I discovered that most of the first section had already been translated
into English and was being used as the English wikipedia page entry for
the ISK. So I used that and translated the parts that were not in it.
Section 1's Political ideas through to the end is my translation.
Reddebrek]
1.
ISK
The Internationale Sozialistische Kampfbund (ISK) was a
socialist split from the Social Democratic Party (SPD) during the
Weimar Republic period, and it was active in the resistance against
National Socialism (Nazism). Internationally it used the names
Militant Socialist International (in English), Internationale
Militante Socialiste (in French) and in Esperanto the name
Internacio de Socialista Kunbatalo.
History
Founded in 1925 the ISK was the
political organisation and platform for a circle that had gathered
around the philosophy of Göttingen Leonard Nelson and his
collaborator Minna Specht. It was preceded by an organization the
International Socialist Youth League (ISJ) that arose in the context
of the youth movement of the turn of the century, founded by Nelson
and Specht in 1917 with the support of Albert Einstein. Leonard
Nelson, philosophically speaking heavily tied to Neo-Kantianism-
wanted to become a University Professor whose political impact
surpassed the limits of the University. He was a defender of an
ethically motivated, anti-clerical, anti-Marxist, but also
anti-democratic oriented socialism, which included strict compulsory
adherence to animal protection and vegetarianism. Nelson decided to
found the ISK, after the ISJ were expelled from both the Communist
Party (KPD) in 1922 and the SPD in 1925.
The ISK took over the ISYL's publishing
label, Öffentliches Leben, which published the ISK newsletter
beginning January 1, 1926. Beginning January 1929, an edition in
Esperanto was
added, and in April, a small circulation quarterly in English was
added as well. It was usually eight pages and editions ran an average
of 5,000 to 6,000 copies. Nelson moved his main published works there
as well, his philosophical and political series Öffentliches
Leben and his 1904 treatises, "Abhandlungen der
Fries’schen
Schule, Neue Folge", re-reasoned with mathematician
Gerhard
Hessenberg and physiologist
Karl Kaiser, and which, after Nelson's death, was continued by Nobel
Prize winner Otto
Meyerhof, sociologist
Franz
Oppenheimer and Minna Specht until 1937.
With the growing electoral
success of the Nazis at the end of the Weimar Republic, the ISK
founded the newspaper, Der
Funke to confront the situation. Of particular note was the
"Urgent
Call for Unity" (Dringender Appell für die Einheit)
regarding the July
1932 federal election. It appeared in the newspaper and on
placards all over Berlin.
Calling for unity and support of the SPD and the KPD
in order to thwart further gains by the Nazis, it was signed by 33
leading German intellectuals, including scientists Albert Einstein,
Franz Oppenheimer, Emil
Gumbel, Arthur
Kronfeld, the artist Käthe
Kollwitz, writers Kurt
Hiller, Erich
Kästner, Heinrich
Mann, Ernst
Toller and Arnold
Zweig and many others.[3]
The ISK continued to work in the resistance
after the 1933 Nazi ban.
The ISK had destroyed all written party records and until 1938,
remained undetected, while the larger parties, the KPD and SPD, were
being battered by massive arrests. The ISK was therefore able to
continue its resistance work, helping political refugees leave the
country, conducting sabotage
and distributing leaflets. In 1938, however, a wave of arrests hit
the ISK.[4]
A main focus of the work was the attempt to build a clandestine trade
union, the Unabhängige Sozialistische Gewerkschaft
("Independent Socialist Union"), which also supported the
Internationale
Transport Workers' Federation.[5]
The ISK's best known act of resistance was the sabotage of the
opening of the Reichsautobahn
on May 19, 1935. The night before Hitler's trip to inaugurate the new
highway, ISK activists wrote anti-Hitler slogans, such as
"Hitler = War" and "Down with Hitler",
on all the bridges along the route between Frankfurt
am Main and Darmstadt,
where he was to travel.[6]
The Nazi
propaganda film produced of the event had to be edited numerous
times.
In exile, the ISK also published the Reinhart Briefe
("Reinhart Letters") and Sozialistische
Warte, which were then smuggled into Germany. Because of
their factual and unpolemical reporting, these were valued by various
members of the German Resistance. The ISK was linked with the
Socialist
Vanguard Group in England and the Internationale Militante
Socialiste in France.
ISK members
after 1945
After World
War II, the ISK was merged into the SPD on December 10, 1945
after talks between Willi
Eichler, chairman of the ISK and Kurt
Schumacher, then chairman of the SPD. Most of the former ISK
members then joined the SPD.[5]
One prominent member of the ISK, Ludwig
Gehm, was later the national vice chairman of the Committee of
Formerly Persecuted Social Democrats (Arbeitsgemeinschaft ehemals
verfolgter Sozialdemokraten) and a Frankfurt
am Main city council member from the SPD. Eichler, who was
chairman of the ISK for many years, represented the SPD in the
Bundestag from
1949 to 1953 and is considered one of the main authors of the
Godesberg
Program. Alfred
Kubel was a member of the Lower
Saxony state government for many years and was Ministerpräsident
from 1970 to 1976. Hamburger ISK member Hellmut
Kalbitzer was elected to the Bundestag several times, served in
the Hamburg
Bürgerschaft
and from 1958 to 1962, was vice president of the European
Parliament. Fritz
Eberhard, who was in the ISK until 1939, was a member of the
Parlamentarischer
Rat ("Parliamentary Council") and was involved in
writing the postwar constitution,
including the right to conscientious
objector status in the new laws
of the Federal
Republic of Germany.
Eichler also published a monthly magazine from 1946 until his
death in 1971, Geist und Tat, which was devoted to "rights,
freedom and culture" and he had a publishing house, Europäische
Verlagsanstalt until the 1960s.
Structure
The ISK never set out to amass a large membership, but rather to
become an active and hard-hitting organization. Membership
requirements for prospective candidates included adherence to a
certain ethical
socialism that were more stringent than for the major parties.
Members were to abstain from
nicotine, alcohol and meat, were to be absolutely punctual and
orderly, and because of the anti-clerical position of the
organization, withdrawal from church affiliation was mandatory
Participation in a trade union,
the ISK and the labor movement was general requirement for members
(eliminating passive membership)
Instead of a membership fee, there was a "Party tax,"
which all members with an income over 150 Reichsmarks
had to pay
The ISK never had more than 300 members, largely because of the
strict requirements for membership. These members were organized into
32 local groups. However, its political work involved sympathizers,
between 600 and 1,000 in 1933. A survey in 1929 revealed that 85% of
ISK members were under 35 years of age.
Chairmen of the ISK (formerly, the ISYL)
1922–1927, Leonard Nelson and
Minna Specht
1927–1945, Willi Eichler and Minna Specht
From 1924 to 1933, the ISK (and its forerunner, the ISYL)
maintained its rural school, the Walkemühle in the
Adelshausen quarter of Melsungen,
Hesse and from 1931
to 1933, its own newspaper, Der Funke, both of which were
banned by the Nazis.
Political Ideas
The relationship
between the rank and file ISK membership and its founder and chief
ideologue Leonard Nelson has been described as a “personal cult”.
Nelson rejected the democratic principle, in which the majority
decision is to be treated as rational. In its place he used what he
called a rational-leader-principle, which has some obvious
problematic elements. Nelson promoted the concept of a rational
dictatorship, believing that it was possible to ascertain in an
objective manner what needed to be done. The ethics of science would
become the foundation of a politics of science. Nelson believed that
science could show what is just, i.e. in accordance with moral law,
so the rational individual who has a keen enough grasp of science
will know the moral and intellectually best ways to run society they
must be free from limits. An all-powerful state should carry out any
and all reforms deemed necessary.
Nelson opposed the
Marxist teachings of the historical necessity of capitalism to the
development of socialism and communism. Instead he promoted human
responsibility and the necessity of a “moral compass”. He based
these beliefs in his readings of Immanuel Kant.
Since its creation
ISK was strictly anti-nationalist and anti-militarist. During the war
Eichler publicly expressed opposition to the dogma of national
sovereignty. The ISK also practiced sexual equality amongst its
membership by promoting equality of rights for women.
The group promoted
a mix of non-authoritarian and authoritarian structures within its
orbit. On the one hand its educational service Walkemühle instructed
both adults and youths on the importance of critical thinking and
some of the latest concepts of the time. While on the other hand ISK
described the training of civil servants as an example of
authoritarianism.
 |
Poster of the “Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund” (ISK),
a foundation of
Leonard Nelsons for the parliament elections in 1932. Signed by Kronfeld,
Albert Einstein
and Franz Oppenheimer and well known artists like Kurt Hiller, Erich
Kästner, Karl and
Käthe Kollwitz, Heinrich Mann, Ernst Toller and Arnold Zweig. |
2.
Vegetarianism in the ISK and the anti-Fascist Resistance
As described, a vegetarian way of life was a mandatory membership
condition in ISK. Through its publications it propagated
vegetarianism in Germany and abroad. It organized group visits in
slaughterhouses to convince the workers to renounce their work and
the other violent ways humans relate to animals. Willi Eichler ISK
co-president since 1927 documents one of these visits in his 1926
essay “Even Vegetarians?” Recently that essay
has been circulated again by social democrats acting in the group
Sozis für Tiere (Social Democrats for animals). Willi Eichler would
join the SPD in the aftermath of the Second World War and moderate
his politics. He led the commission that developed the social
democratic Program of Godesberg (accepted in 1959), in which the idea
of socialism appeared only in a very diluted form, and which many
later regarded as a road map for the right-wing in that party. I
could not find out if he remained a lifelong vegetarian.
Nelson agreed with Eichler: "A worker who
wishes more than a guarantee he will not become a capitalist and for
whom the fight against all exploitation is a serious matter, he does
not bow before the pressure of public opinion toward the habit of
exploiting harmless animals, he does not participate in the daily
millionfold murder."
The resistance activity of the ISK against the
Nazi rule was effective, if we consider the enormous difficulties and
the small membership. Cunning means were applied, and one of them
made use of vegetarianism - more on that later.
At the beginning of Nazi rule, the ISK
formulated 4 objectives for resistance activity: information,
propaganda, anti-Nazi actions, and security for the group. One means
was illegal leafleting. The Nazis held elections of worker
representatives in companies, admitting only "suitable"
candidates. The ISK campaigned for a vote of no confidence against
all candidates - until the Nazis gave up on the elections in 1936 due
to the lack of popular support for their picked candidates. (Only
50-60% voted for the official list.) Also in 1936, ISK members also
collected money in workplaces for the resistance in Spain.
At the inauguration of a highway, it was
discovered that the bridges were painted overnight with chemicals
that can be seen only when daylight hits them, and the speaker
systems had been sabotaged. Two SS members were later executed for
insufficient vigilance. Invisible paint, which is visible in
daylight, was also used for to daub slogans
on the pavement, using suitcases with a special mechanism. A grassy
hill next to the Berlin railway was chosen
for an action using fertilizer poured from
canisters. After a few weeks the hill was
marked with the slogan "Nieder mit
Hitler" [Death to
Hitler].
The ISK also
discussed a plan to kill Hitler via a suicide attack, but the plan
was opposed by some members and did not go beyond discussions.
The anti-Nazi activity included a set of vegetarian restaurants,
which ISK members operated in several cities and used for clandestine
purposes. Some had opened before 1933, the remainder opened after the
rise to power from the Nazis. Large restaurants were founded in
Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt am Main and Bochum. According to one
report, the Hamburg restaurant prepared 120 lunches a day.
They were often led by women, but both men and women worked in
them. The working day was long and the pay low. The restaurants
served several purposes: to provide work to the unemployed, to
generate a profit that was used for resistance activity, enable
contact between resistance agents in a relatively unsuspicious place,
serve as bases for production and distribution of illegal printing
material etc. However, they also served for promote vegetarianism.
A wave of arrests in 1937 forced many restaurant workers to flee
abroad or to live in hiding. Two fugitives founded vegetarian
restaurants in Paris and London. The restaurant in Paris became a
contact point for exiled Germans and was also a source of funds. The
same for the restaurant in London. There they were supported by a
group linked to Nelson inside the Labour Party, the Socialist
Vanguard Group, the British affiliate to the Militant Socialist
International (ISK).
Here is a somewhat extensive quote from a document from the City
Archives of Göttingen, which captures the atmosphere of the era and
also paints a picture of the spread of vegetarianism in Germany at
the time and the political implications of it, e.g. the spread of the
legend about Hitler being “Vegetarian”:
Next to the premises of the ISK in the city, the
vegetarian restaurant can be seen, operated by the mother of Fritz
and Helmut Schmalz on Weenderstraße 71/72. August Schmalz was member
in the ISK since 1927; she had already led vegetarian cooking courses
in the Walkemühle. Vegetarian restaurants were a financial pillar of
the organization, although more profitable and useful for that
purpose were the restaurants in the bigger cities like Berlin,
Hamburg (Anna Kothe worked there since 1934, who for a long time
worked in the headquarters in Göttingen as a housekeeper), Cologne
or Frankfurt. Auguste Schmalz's vegetarian luncheonette has been
around since at least 1931 and was a regular meeting place. Hannah
Vogt recalled: “I remember a place in Weender Straße – which was
led by the mother of trade unionist Fritz Schmalz – where everyone
had a vegetarian lunch. Many of them regularly met there.” Since
spring of 1933 the premises were observed, however the police failed
to prove that the guests of the Schmalz lunchroom participated in
anti government discussions.
The income opportunities that opened up with such a
restaurant also attracted the greedy gaze of the "Volksgenossen"
[Nazi term, roughly means People’s comrades, used as a term for
correct i.e. Nazi behaviour]. In a letter to the rector of the
university at the end of October 1933, someone proposed a remedy
against an urgent lack of food for the students. He said that among
the 4,000 students there are at least 150 vegetarians, "who now
wish to live according to the way of life of our people's
chancellor", but can't, because "the only vegetarian lunch
place here (...) is run by the ex-communist Schmalz". According
to the writer, he even makes an advertisement by posting it on the
blackboard of the auditorium, despite the fact that it is possible to
prove, "that the students are being influenced by propaganda
there, acting at that in a very refined manner”. The author of the
letter thought his “most noble task to provide the students of the
University of Göttingen with the cheapest high-quality food, in
accordance with the new theory of nutrition". Of course he hoped
for the support from the rector for his "valuable idea, also
represented by Hitler, Rudolf Hess, Göbbels (!) and even many
professors in Göttingen". Schmalz's lunchroom survived despite
these attacks and denouncements at least until the beginning of the
war.
3.
ISK, Esperanto and SAT
The ISK attempted to spread beyond the borders of Germany in their
early days and adopted Esperanto as one of the means to achieve this.
Registered in bibliographies is the edition of the quarterly
Esperanto-language Organo de Internacio de Socialista Kunbatalo since
1929 (before the appearance of a similar publication in English).
After the Autumn of 1933 it appeared in Paris under the name The
Critical Observer: magazine of politics and culture. It
continued to be published until the end of 1939 if not longer.
Hermann Platiel was credited as its editor after the move to Paris,
but its possible that he occupied that position earlier.
The ISK published a daily
newspaper Der Funke
[The Spark] for 14 months, between 1932-01-01 and 1933-02-17. Then it
was banned. The release necessitated great sacrifices, inevitable for
such a small organization. Notable in it is the striving for a
working class united front against the looming fascism and the very
critical reporting on nationalism in general. The complete journal
collection is now archived online. There you can find three kindly
written articles about SAT and its congress from 1932 in Stuttgart.
Although one would expect that their author would be Hermann Platiel,
the authors used initials ("M. H.", "Rpt.", "O.
W.") do not match that assumption.
Some excerpts from the articles:
Party political
neutrality among the Worker Esperantists
(from Der Funke 1932-06-05) In the Esperanto Labour movement, whose
most important, global organization is SAT (World Anti-national
Association), the party political disputes, especially between the CP
and the SP, was not missing. In Germany there are already in many
cities separate communist and social democratic Esperanto groups. All
the more gratifying that the president of SAT, Lanti, who also
publishes the Esperanto newspaper Sennaciulo, stands entirely on the
ground of the party political neutrality of SAT. In an open letter to
many SAT members he assumes a position against the communist attempts
to link SAT to a definite political program, by which the CP wants to
secure for itself a better foundation for its domination. The CP
wants first, that SAT compels all members to recognize Marxism as
“the correct basis on which the firm unity of the proletarian
Esperantists can be founded".
[…]
In addition, Lanti quite rightly throws back the opinion
that non-Marxist viewpoints such as those of Nelson, Kropotkin or
Gesell should remain undiscussed in the newspaper, because "the
vast majority of organized workers recognize Marxism as the
theoretical basis for their class struggle”. That is totally
incorrect - let's think about England, Spain or India!
[…]
It is desirable that Lanti's positions continue to be
guiding SAT and its newspaper, so that the very desirable propaganda
for Esperanto as an international means of understanding, especially
as a tool for a fighting working class should not be hindered by a
dogmatic and party-politically narrow framework.
We greet the Esperantists in Stuttgart [title
originally in Esperanto] (from Der Funke 1932-08-06) In the second
week of August, the 12th congress of ... SAT meets in Stuttgart. […]
SAT for two reasons is particularly called to work on the
creation of the socialist united front: Its members are linked by the
bond of a common language. […] SAT also fulfills an important
prerequisite for the collaboration in the creation of united front of
the various workers parties. The management of SAT has been resisting
firmly and successfully for years against the disrespect of party
political neutrality within the Association. [...]
The working Esperantists in Stuttgart (from Der
Funke 1932-09-01) The 12th congress of the world association of
working Esperantists (SAT) 250 comrades from 12 countries
participated despite the bad economic situation.
[…]
The most important result of the congress was the
re-securing of the party political neutrality of SAT.
[…]
Also the efforts to change the current structure of SAT –
a union of all the proletarian Esperantists without regard to their
nationality or race - by associating national associations, were
unanimously rejected.
With the exception of the proposers, all the comrades
emphasized the necessity right now, of a front between the workers
and the growing wave of nationalism, not only emphasizing the
international connectedness of the proletariat, but also to
practically realize it, for which purpose the present stateless
organizational form offers the best basis.
[...]
Its known that Hermann Platiel
was both an ISK and SAT member. Born in 1896 (or possibly 1886) and
died in 1980, Platiel was hired as an administrator for the SAT
office in Leipzig from the 8th
of May 1929 until 1932. In Leipzig he also led the local ISK branch.
After Lanti stood down from the post it was Platiel who became the
President and Director of SAT from 1933-35. SAT published his text
History of the schism in the Workers Esperanto-Movement:
Documentation which shows the causes and responsibilities and
prepares the foundation for united action. He
then became the secretary of the French Esperanto section of ISK
1938-39. I do not know if he has been active in SAT since the 40s or
maintained any relationship with Esperanto at all. Petro Levi who
joined SAT shortly after the war does not remember seeing him when I
asked, and I was not able to find anything online, though of course
there are still other sources to check,
In 1943 he illegally fled to
Switzerland, and worked for the "Schweizer Hilfswerk"
(Swiss Relief Fund) and wrote reports for the London foreign
leadership of ISK. Before the escape to Switzerland he was located in
the southern French city of Montauban, to which he fled from the
internment camp in Gurs. There he married with well-known ISK member
Nora Platiel (née Block). In 1949 they settled in the German city of
Kassel, where Nora began a career as a court jurist and then a
representative of the Hesse parliament (for the SPD). Hermann worked
as a director of a theatre in Kassel, according to reports with great
commitment.
This summary of facts about ISK's
relations with Esperanto and especially with SAT is very incomplete.
Further research would be worthwhile. Research in the archive of SAT
in Paris should provide insights about that, also about Hermann
Platiel personally, and would answer the question whether he and
possibly others ISK members played a role in the then Vegetarian
Section of SAT, which we can guess, but do not know now.
4.
Sources
• Das Schlachten beenden!, Verlag Graswurzelrevolution,
Nettersheim 2010 [GWR estas
monata ĵurnalo kaj eldonejo dediĉitaj al senperforta anarkiismo,
kun ekologia emfazo kaj
simpatianta kun veganismo; pli ĉe www.graswurzel.net]
• Heiner Lindner: Um etwas zu erreichen, muss man sich etwas
vornehmen, von dem man
glaubt, dass es unmöglich sei – Der Internationale
Sozialistische Kampf-Bund (ISK) und
seine Publikationen, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung 2006,
http://library.fes.de/pdf-
files/historiker/03535.pdf
• Vikipedio germanlingva: ISK, Nora Platiel kaj esperantlingva
pri Hermann Platiel
• urba arkivejo de Göttingen:
http://www.stadtarchiv.goettingen.de/widerstand/texte/isk-
goettingen_1933-1935.html
Gary Mickle
Translated into English by Reddebrek
