WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
A conversation with Professor Hermann Weber
Prof. Hermann Weber during the conversation at the University of Mannheim, October 2011
Professor Hermann Weber, aged 83, is regarded in Europe as the doyen of research into the communist movement and Stalinism. From 1975 to 1993 he held the Chair of Political Science and Contemporary History at the University of Mannheim. He has published numerous standard works on the history of the Communist Party, East Germany’s ruling SED party, the Communist International, and the Stalinist terror. His book Die DDR 1945—1990[i] (The German Democratic Republic 1945—1990) is still a bestseller. A revised fifth edition has just been published. In his role as head of the “Comintern” research project, which is being conducted by the German-Soviet Historical Commission at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research, and as founder of the Yearbook for Historical Studies on Communism, he remains active in historical debates and research more than 18 years after his retirement as university professor. Together with Helmut Dahmer and twelve other prominent historians, Weber co-authored a letter to publisher Ulla Unseld-Berkéwicz strongly opposing the decision by the Suhrkamp Verlag to publish a German-language edition of the Trotsky biography written by Robert Service.
On behalf of the World Socialist Web Site, Wolfgang Weber conducted the following conversation with him.
WSWS: As a historian you have undertaken intensive research into Leon Trotsky and Trotskyism, but you are not yourself a supporter of the ideas of Leon Trotsky?
Hermann Weber: Yes, that’s correct. In my youth I was a functionary of the Communist Party youth organization in West Germany, for which I landed in prison for 6 months. I had come into conflict with the party leadership as a critic of Stalinism already before my imprisonment and then, in 1954, I was expelled from the party together with my wife Gerda. During those years I concentrated on looking for political organizations which advocated socialism and fought against Stalinism from that standpoint. In the early 1950s, the then-leading members of the Trotskyist organization in Germany, such as Georg Jungclas[ii], had many conversations with me, but ultimately they could not convince me politically. When they had been active within the UAP[iii] in 1951, they had painted a too rosy picture of Titoism, which I myself regarded as just another variant of Stalinism.
After Khrushchev’s revelations about Stalin’s crimes (1956), there was a sort of Trotsky renaissance in the 1960s, amidst the economic and political crisis and the rebellion by youth. This receded, however, about 10-15 years later. For several years now I have noted a renewed interest in the figure of Trotsky and his ideas, but notably also in anarchism and its representatives, such as Max Stirner. In a way both, Trotsky and Stirner, are “heretics” in comparison to the prevailing political opinions. Both criticize capitalism, albeit with different theories of society and different political perspectives. Given the global crisis of capitalism, both are now moving back more into the centre of intellectual and political interest. I deal with this phenomenon in an article for the next edition of the Yearbook of Historical Studies on Communism. In preparing this article, I dealt extensively with the biography of Trotsky by Robert Service and the book In Defense of Leon Trotsky[iv] by David North.
WSWS: What was your first impression of the book of Robert Service?
Hermann Weber: When I first heard from you about the critique undertaken by David North of Robert Service and the plans of the Suhrkamp publishing house, I thought: let Service write about Trotsky and let Suhrkamp publish whatever they want after all. But the more I read and studied, the more appalled I was by this book, not because it argues against Trotsky’s political actions and views—that everyone is indeed free to do. But Service deals in lies, falsifications of history, dubious references and even anti-Semitic prejudices. Such pamphlets should not have a place in an academic publishing house with a liberal tradition and a history such as Suhrkamp.
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