Ernst Niekisch

Ernst Niekisch (May 23, 1889 – May 27, 1967) was a prominent German exponent of National Bolshevism.

Born in Trebnitz (Silesia), and brought up in Nördlingen, he became a school teacher by profession. He joined the SPD in 1917 and was instrumental in the setting up of a short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919. He left the SPD soon after and joined the USPD for a time, before returning.

During the 1920s he stressed the importance of nationalism and attempted to turn the SPD in that direction. He was vehemently opposed to the Dawes Plan, the Locarno Treaties and the general pacifism of the SPD, so much so that he was expelled from the party in 1926.

Upon his expulsion Niekisch joined and took control of the insignificant Old Socialist Party of Saxony which he converted to his own nationalist form of socialism, launching his own journal "Widerstand" (Resistance). Niekisch and his followers adopted the name of "National Bolsheviks" and looked to the Soviet Union as a continuation of both Russian nationalism and the old state of Prussia. The movement took the slogan of "Sparta-Potsdam-Moscow". He was a member of ARPLAN - the Association for the Study of Russian Planned Economy - along with Ernst Jünger, Georg Lukacs, Karl Wittfogel and Friedrich Hielscher, under whose auspices he visited the Soviet Union in 1932. He reacted favourably to Jünger's publication "Die Arbeiter" which he saw as a blueprint for a National Bolshevik Germany.

Although anti-Semitic and in favour of a totalitarian state, Niekisch rejected Adolf Hitler as he felt he lacked any real socialism, and instead looked to Joseph Stalin and the industrial development of the Soviet Union as his model for the Führer Principle. After a time in the underground he was arrested in 1937 and was sentenced to life imprisonment two years later at the "Volksgerichtshof" for 'literary high treason'. He was released in 1945, by which time he was blind.

Embittered against nationalism by his war-time experiences he turned to orthodox Marxism and lectured in sociology in Humboldt University in East Germany until 1953 when, disillusioned by the brutal suppression of the workers' uprising, he moved to West Berlin, where he later died.

Works

* "Entscheidung" (1930)
* "Hitler Ein deutsches Verhängnis" (1932)
* "Geheimes Reich" (1937)
* "Das Reich der Niederen Dämonen" (Berlin, 1957)

References

* "Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890" edited by Philip Rees, (1991, ISBN )
* "The Appeal of Fascism: A Study of Intellectuals and Fascism " by Alastair Hamilton (London, 1971, ISBN )
* "The Beast Reawakens" by Martin A. Lee (1997, ISBN )