ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the international efforts to free Ernst Thälmann, the head of the German Communist Party, from his imprisonment by the Nazis. Rabinbach compares this campaign with the acquittal of four of the Reichstag fire defendants. Juxtaposing these events, Rabinbach argues that, in contrast to the Reichstag fire trial, the Thälmann case was incredibly divisive. Additionally, the apathetic, quiet figure of Thälmann contrasted greatly with the fiery persona of Georgi Dimitrov, one of the Reichstag fire defendants. Rabinbach illustrates that the main strategy undertaken by those involved in the campaign to free Thälmann in the late 1930s was attempting to visit him in prison. As these visits became limited and eventually impossible, the absent, voiceless figure of Thälmann was shaped into a pastiche of iconography and symbolically linked with German volunteers in Spain during the Civil War.
