A Jewish Communist in Weimar Germany: The Life of Werner Scholem (1895 –
1940)

Ralf Hoffrogge

Walter Benjamin derided Werner Scholem as a ‘rogue’ in 1924.. Josef Stalin
referred him as a ‘splendid man’, but soon backtracked and labeled him an
‘imbecile’, while Ernst Thälmann, chairman of the Communist Party of
Germany (KPD), warned his followers against the dangers of ‘Scholemism’.
For the philosopher and historian Gershom Scholem, however, Werner was first
and foremost his older brother. The life of German-Jewish Communist Werner
Scholem (1895–1940) had many facets. Werner and Gerhard, later Gershom,
rebelled together against their authoritarian father and the atmosphere of
national chauvinism engulfing Germany during World War I. After inspiring his
younger brother to take up the Zionist cause, Werner himself underwent a long
personal journey before deciding to join the Communist struggle. Scholem
climbed the party ladder and orchestrated the KPD's ‘Bolshevisation’
campaign, only to be expelled as one of Stalin's opponents in 1926. He was
arrested in 1933, and ultimately murdered in the Buchenwald concentration
camp seven years later. This first biography of Werner Scholem tells his life
story by drawing on a wide range of original sources and archive material
long hidden beyond the Iron Curtain of the Cold War era.

First published in German by UVK Verlagsgesellschaft as Werner Scholem - eine
politische Biographie (1895-1940), Konstanz, 2014.

*Ralf Hoffrogge*, Dr. phil. (2013), University of Potsdam, is Postdoctoral
Researcher at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany) and has published widely on
German labour history. His latest publication is /Working-Class Politics in
the German Revolution: Richard Müller, the Revolutionary Shop Stewards and
the Origins of the Council Movement/ (Brill, 2014).

http://www.brill.com/products/book/jewish-communist-weimar-germany [1]

[1] http://www.brill.com/products/book/jewish-communist-weimar-germany

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