Käte and Hermann Duncker’s Correspondence between 1915 and 1917

Heinz Deutschland (ed), ‘Ich kann nicht durch Morden mein Leben erhalten’: Briefwechsel zwischen Käte und Hermann Duncker 1915 bis 1917 [‘I cannot save my life through murdering’: Käte and Hermann Duncker’s Correspondence between 1915 and 1917], (Bonn: Pahl-Rugenstein), 2005, pp210. ISBN 3-89144-364-1. €19.19..

Who are Käte and Hermann Duncker? What does their correspondence between 1915 and 1917 tell us about their pioneering role in the foundation of the communist party of Germany? Alongside Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and Franz Mehring, Käte and Hermann Duncker constituted the very core of resistance to the First World War by the forerunners of the German Communist Party (KPD), the Gruppe Internationale / Spartakusbund. The leadership of the Spartakusbund fell to Käte Duncker: Hermann was called up to front line service; Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were imprisoned; and Franz Mehring’s advance years limited his activism. It was in her flat that the weekly meetings were held to discuss the Spartakusbriefe (Spartakus Letters), the organ of the Gruppe Internationale.

Käte Duncker, born 1871 and a member of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) from 1898, was a leading activist in the women’s movement. During the war she represented the Spartakus group at the national conference of the SPD in September 1916, and the Internationale group at the third Zimmerwalde Conference in Stockholm in September 1917.

Hermann Duncker, born 1874 and member of the SPD from 1893, was the great education officer – Wanderlehrer – of the party and the trade unions from 1907. In 1925 he became head of the Education and Propaganda Department of the KPD and organised the famous MASCH (Marxistische Arbeiterschule, the Marxist Workers’ School). He was forced into exile in the US, arriving via Denmark, Britain and France, and returned in 1947 to the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany, to become dean of the faculty of social sciences at the University of Rostock, and from 1949 to 1960 rector of the Bundesschule des Freien Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes, college of the East German trade unions.

The correspondence between Käte und Hermann, which covers the time between 25 August 1915 and 28 September 1917 is not so much about political events as about their motivations. It is a testimony to the intimate relationship between Rosa, Karl, Franz, Käte und Hermann and, thus, deepens the understanding of the division into three factions of the SPD, Spartakus Bund, Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (USPD), and Mehrheitssozialdemokratie (Majority SPD). Käte’s letters in particular express the deep moral indignation against the party majority which kept supporting the imperial war while Hermann had to witness how millions of young men’s lives were sacrificed on the battlefields for the sake of capitalist international competition. Both Käte and Hermann sympathised with the revolution in Russia and regarded people like Bernstein and Kautsky, who opposed the war but disapproved of the revolution of the proletariat, as despicable traitors to the Socialist International. Political analysis, moral commitment, and emotional feelings were almost indistinguishably intertwined in their reflections on the increasing misery caused by the bloodshed in the trenches and hunger at home.

The letters were written in full consciousness of censorship. Hard information about political activities were to be avoided or encoded. The editor, Heinz Deutschland, has meticulously made annotations disclosing hidden codes in the text – such as the use of krankenhaus (hospital) to mean prison, familientreffen (family meeting) to indicate a meeting of the Spartakus Group, or Grossvater (grandfather) to refer to Franz Mehring. He also explains much of the context to the events and facts mentioned in the letters.

Deutschland has not only given a short biography of Käte and Hermann but also provided valuable additional information through a number of publications and papers written by them for the anti-war movement, and the Internationale and Spartakus groups between 1914 and 1917. Finally, for a better understanding of the socio-historical background, he has added a glossary of 150 persons mentioned in the letters.

This collection is foremost a moving document of the loving relationship between these revolutionaries in the centre of the birth of communism. At the same time two themes stand out as the inseparable message contained in these letters: the need for a reconstruction of the International as the organisation of the working classes; and the hope pinned on the Russian Revolution. Much to the credit of the editor, this publication makes an important contribution to understanding the split in the socialist movement during the First World War, itself critical to the global political development of the twentieth century.

Jörn Janssen