A very small group of anti-Nazis escaped to Britain and even fewer settled here. While around 55,000 people fled Germany in 1933 alone, only about 2000 came to the UK: Britain gained from Germany’s loss; amongst the refugees were a galaxy of leading scientists and many cultural figures. But, out of the roughly 10,000 political refugees who fled in 1933, probably only a few hundred active anti-Nazis of any political hue came here.
About twelve members of Neu Beginnen, a group formed in 1929 mostly by left-wing members, mostly ‘intellectuals’ of the SPD became exiles in Britain. Loewenheim, their main theoretician, unlike the others, remained in the UK.
Loewenheim first joined the Wandervogel (‘Wandering Bird’), the principal German youth group with around two million members, whose activities centred on hiking and nature and a Jewish youth group, the Judische Jugendbund.… read on...
Max Zimmering was a youthful member of the Jewish ‘Blue and White’ youth movement and, in a typical transition, joined the KPD Youth Association in 1928. He wrote for the KPD paper: Die Rote Fahne and was its agit-prop leader in Dresden, where he lived.… read on...
It is extraordinary that although John Heartfield was in exile in London for twelve years, he is hardly known about here, never mind celebrated. Probably the most famous of the German anti-Nazis artists, a founder of the Dadaist movement, a pioneer of photomontage and friends of Brecht, Ernst Toller, Georg Grosz and Piscator, who used art as a political weapon against the Nazis, he continued his anti-Nazi activities insofar as possible while in exile in the UK but it is as if he never had lived here.… read on...
Eichler was a leading member of ISK who campaigned tirelessly against the Nazis and for a united front, finally fleeing France to the UK in 1938. He deserves to be better known.
Eichler joined the SPD in 1923 but then became actively involved in the ISK, its chair and editor of Der Funke, its anti-Nazi paper.… read on...
I am including a brief biography of Hans Vogel .including references (including footnotes) to other Social Democrats refugees. It provides a window onto the Social Democrats exiles in the UK and their continuing bureaucratic orientation and ineffectiveness.
Vogel became an active Social Democrat from 1907.… read on...
Beyer was an active member of ISK who briefly lived in the UK before emigrating to the US in 1941.Little is known about Beyer’s time in the UK.1
Beyer actively supported the work of the ISK in one of its largest bases in Frankfurt where she lived.… read on...
Heinz Kamnitzer (1917-2001)
Kamnitzer, born in Berlin, became a member of the Socialist School Association in 1931.1 Aged only 16, he was arrested in 1933 because of hisillegal political work. After release, he fled to England and continued his studies at a Polytechnic in London.In… read on...
Dornemann almost does not fit in here. Although she spent about ten years in the UK after fleeing Germany, almost nothing is known about her time here. But I am including her because she represents a political current otherwise not touched upon here: the issue of sexual politics under Weimar.… read on...
an extract from Anti-Nazi Germans
Martin Monath was a Berliner of Jewish heritage who had been a leading member of the German section of the socialist zionist organisation Hashomer Hatzair. This organisation encouraged Jews to emigrate to Palestine to build a Jewish nation state, but they wanted the new country to have a socialist economy.… read on...
Jurgen Kuczinski is better known than most left-wing German refugees, partly thanks to the book by John Green, the work by Prof Brinson and partly because members of the family clan keep his memory alive in both the UK and Germany.… read on...