Political leader of the Hamburg Uprising who led the Leninbund, the KPD left opposition
A farmer's son from Dithmarschen and a schoolteacher, Urbahns joined the KPD via the Spartacus League. He led the Hamburg party with Thälmann in 1921–1924 and was political leader of the Hamburg Uprising of 1923. Sentenced in 1925 to ten years for taking responsibility for the rising, he was freed by his Reichstag immunity. A spokesman of the party left who criticised the Stalinist line, he was expelled in 1926 and led the Leninbund from 1928 to 1933. His view that the USSR was moving towards capitalism caused a break with Trotsky in 1929–1930. After the Nazi takeover he fled to Sweden, where he died.
Activities and affiliations
-
1918
Spartacus League (Spartakusbund)
Social movements and organizing -
1919–1926
Communist Party of Germany (KPD)
Political and party leadership -
1924–
Germany state institutionsMember of the Reichstag
Legislature and state representation -
1928–1933
Political and party leadership
Career Timeline
- 1921–1924In the Hamburg party leadership with Thälmann; Hamburg city deputy.
- 1923.10Political leader of the Hamburg Uprising.
- 1924Arrested; elected to the Reichstag in May.
- 1925.01Sentenced to ten years' fortress confinement for the uprising.
- 1925.10Released by parliamentary immunity.
- 1926.11Expelled from the KPD.
- 1928–1933Chairman of the Leninbund.
- 1929–1930Broke with Trotsky over the nature of the USSR.
- 1933Fled via Czechoslovakia to Sweden.
- 1946.11.16Died near Stockholm.
The Leninbund and the break with Trotsky (1926–1933)
Urbahns belonged to the party's left, but unlike most of the KPD left he did not reject cooperation with the SPD in concrete actions. Released at the end of 1925, he became, with Ruth Fischer and Arkadi Maslow, the best-known spokesman of the left and began to criticise the Stalinist line of the party and the Comintern. He was expelled in November 1926; the "Declaration of the 1000" in his support failed. In Berlin he became a leader of the parliamentary group of the Left Communists, the German Left Opposition, and in 1928 he led the founding of the Leninbund, which he headed until 1933.
The Leninbund was for a time linked to Trotsky's International Left Opposition. But Urbahns held that the Soviet Union was moving towards capitalism and pursuing an imperialist policy towards China, which Trotsky fiercely attacked; in 1929–1930 they broke. In What Next? (1932) Trotsky criticised Urbahns again for opposing the Communist Party's claim to lead the working class and wanting to replace the party by soviets, a "crude soviet fetishism"; the Bolshevik-Leninists, he wrote, never deny the party's right to lead the soviets. From 1929 Urbahns himself concentrated on building an anti-fascist united front against the Nazis.
After the Nazi takeover in 1933 he was stripped of his citizenship and, via Czechoslovakia, settled in Sweden, scraping a living as a wood worker and printer and trying to keep the Leninbund's exile structures going. When he sharply attacked the Moscow Trials, the Soviet envoy in Stockholm, Alexandra Kollontai, sought his expulsion, which was averted only because no other country would take him.