Communist journalist of the Münzenberg network who produced the Brown Book and was executed after the Slánský trial
Born into a German-speaking family in southern Bohemia, he joined the KPD in 1922. Working in Willi Münzenberg’s propaganda network, he produced the Brown Book in Paris in 1933 and gathered material in the Netherlands for its chapter portraying van der Lubbe as a homosexual. In the Spanish Civil War he ran the Agence Espagne as André Simone. Back in Czechoslovakia from 1946, he worked for Rudé právo and the foreign ministry until he was sentenced to death at the Slánský trial of 1952 and hanged. He was rehabilitated in 1968.
Also known as: André Simone · Andre Simone
Activities and affiliations
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1922–1939
Communist Party of Germany (KPD)Main
Ideology and propaganda -
1948–1952
Czechoslovakia state institutionsHead of the foreign ministry press department
Ideology and propaganda
From Berlin and Paris to Prague
Born into a German-speaking family in Jistebnice in southern Bohemia, he moved to Berlin in the autumn of 1921, wrote art criticism and joined the KPD in 1922. In 1927 he became administrative director of Erwin Piscator’s theatre, and when it closed in 1929 he went to work in Willi Münzenberg’s publishing and propaganda network. From late 1930 he worked at the Moscow film studio Mezhrabpom and attended the International Lenin School. In 1933 Münzenberg sent him to Paris, where he produced the Brown Book for Éditions du Carrefour and served as secretary of the World Committee for the Victims of Hitler Fascism. He gathered material in the Netherlands for the chapter portraying van der Lubbe as a homosexual; the Red Book published in Amsterdam that year accused him of falsifying quotations from documents. He founded the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and during the Spanish Civil War ran the Agence Espagne under the name André Simone. Expelled from France in 1939, he went by way of New York to Mexico. Returning to Czechoslovakia in 1946, he became foreign editor of Rudé právo and after the communist takeover of February 1948 head of the foreign ministry’s press department. Arrested in June 1952, he confessed to every charge under torture, was sentenced to death at the Slánský trial in November and hanged in Prague on 3 December. He was rehabilitated in 1968.