ABSTRACT
Münzenberg worked night and day pulling activists together and sending out appeals for aid and solidarity. Well before the idea of Popular Front politics became official policy, he was putting the ideas into practice. He brought in leading cultural and scientific figures from Germany and abroad, like Käthe Kollwitz, Albert Einstein, Georg Grosz, Leonard Frank, the Danish writer, Martin Andersen Nexø, Bernard Shaw, Anatole France, and Henri Barbusse from France to support his work.
Through the Workers’ Relief organisation, defying the numerous left sectarians within the KPD (German Communist Party), he attempted to bring about a collaboration between the Second (Socialist) and Third (Communist) Internationals, appealing to Ramsay MacDonald, secretary of the Second International, to come on board.
This chapter concludes with a short section on his relationship with the woman who would become his lifelong partner, Babette Gross, and on the key role she played in his life.
