KPD chairman who called off a revolution; co-founder of the International Right Opposition
At the Chemnitz conference on 21 October 1923, Brandler saw the left-wing Social Democrats walk out and abruptly called off the planned insurrection. Word never reached Hamburg in time — workers there rose in isolation and were crushed within 24 hours.
Chairman of the German Communist Party (KPD) who led the party through the 1921 March Action and the 1923 'German October' uprising plan, which he ultimately called off, judging that revolutionary conditions were not ripe. Held responsible by the Comintern, he was summoned to Moscow and sidelined. After opposing Ernst Thälmann's leadership, he was expelled from the KPD in 1929 and co-founded the Communist Party Opposition (KPO) with August Thalheimer, becoming a central figure of the International Right Opposition. Following the Nazi seizure of power he lived in exile in France and Cuba, returning to West Germany in 1949 where he led the Gruppe Arbeiterpolitik, maintaining an independent communist line to the end of his life.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1897–1901Began trade union activity as a bricklayer; joined the SPD
- 1914–1916Anti-war agitation; founding member of the Spartacus League; arrested and deported
- 1918.12Founding member of the KPD; elected to the Central Committee
- 1921–1924KPD Chairman; led March Action and 1923 'German October,' summoned to Moscow after failure
- 1924–1928Comintern and Profintern work; exiled to Kazakhstan; worked at VSNKh in Moscow
- 1929Expelled from KPD; co-founded KPO with Thalheimer; built the International Right Opposition
- 1933–1948Exile in France and Cuba; advocated an anti-fascist united front
- 1949–1956Returned to West Germany; founded and led Gruppe Arbeiterpolitik
Related historical events
The Saxony coalition and the October 1923 insurrection plan
In 1923 the leadership of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), in consultation with the Comintern, linked participation in Saxony’s Social Democratic (SPD) state government to preparations for a nationwide bid for power. The Saxon SPD government depended on Communist deputies for its parliamentary support. The Moscow consultations proposed that the KPD enter the government, organize workers, and prepare to resist intervention by the national government. Brandler became a state secretary in Saxony on October 10; that same day the KPD also negotiated with SPD and trade-union representatives over a national joint-action body. But on October 21, a conference of factory-committee delegates in Chemnitz did not adopt Brandler’s proposal for a general strike. It instead appointed a commission to examine the proposal, and the SPD-KPD government in Saxony fell without mass resistance.
In Hamburg, several hundred party members rose on October 23 after central party leader Hermann Remmele falsely reported that an uprising was being prepared in Saxony. Brandler’s planned nationwide rising did not go ahead, but local Communists rose without having received word that the proposal had been rejected. They occupied more than a dozen police stations and erected barricades, but police and military forces suppressed the revolt. About 100 people were killed in the fighting, most of them non-combatants. Only a tiny fraction of the Hamburg KPD’s 14,000 members took part, and the revolt did not spread beyond Hamburg and its environs.
After the defeat, Brandler and August Thalheimer stressed unfavorable objective conditions, arguing that the masses were no longer willing to fight. Clara Zetkin criticized the united-front tactics in Saxony as a compromise between opposing party tendencies, while Ruth Fischer’s faction blamed the defeat on Brandler’s leadership and its alliance with the Saxon SPD left. The ensuing dispute within the KPD and Comintern concerned both the limits of the united-front strategy through the Saxon coalition and responsibility for calling off the insurrection.