16 Facts About Ernst Niekisch

Ernst Niekisch was a German writer and politician.

Ernst Niekisch joined the Social Democratic Party in 1917, returned to Augsburg as a teacher and was instrumental in the setting up of a short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919.

Indeed, for a time at the start of the year, after the resignation of Kurt Eisner and immediately before the establishment of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, Niekisch wielded effective power as chairman of the central executive of Bavarian councils, an interim governing body.

Ernst Niekisch left the SPD soon afterward and joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany for a time before he returned to his former party.

Ernst Niekisch served a brief spell in prison in 1925 for his part in the abortive Bavarian coup.

Ernst Niekisch was so vehemently opposed to the Dawes Plan, the Locarno Treaties and the general pacifism of the SPD that he was expelled from the party in 1926.

Ernst Niekisch launched his own journal, Widerstand, and he and his followers adopted the name of "National Bolsheviks" and looked to the Soviet Union as a continuation of both Russian nationalism and the old state of Prussia.

Ernst Niekisch was a member of ARPLAN with Ernst Junger, Georg Lukacs, Karl Wittfogel and Friedrich Hielscher, under whose auspices he visited the Soviet Union in 1932.

Ernst Niekisch reacted favourably to Junger's publication Der Arbeiter, which he saw as a blueprint for a National Bolshevik Germany.

Ernst Niekisch believed in the necessity of a German-Soviet alliance against the "decadent West" and the Treaty of Versailles.

Ernst Niekisch was particularly ill-disposed towards Joseph Goebbels and, at a meeting between the two facilitated by their mutual friend, Arnolt Bronnen, Niekisch and Goebbels had almost come to blows.

Ernst Niekisch discussed his opposition to the new regime with Ulrich von Hassell although Niekisch did not join the German Resistance.

Ernst Niekisch was allowed to visit Rome in 1935 and held meetings with Benito Mussolini, who told Niekisch that he considered Hitler's aggressive stances towards the Soviet Union to be foolish and would later discuss opposition groups with the Italian Consul General while Italo-German relations were somewhat strained.

In 1939, Ernst Niekisch was found guilty of 'literary high treason by the Volksgerichtshof, along with fellow National Bolsheviks Joseph Drexel and Karl Troger, and sentenced to life in prison.

Ernst Niekisch remained in prison until April 1945, when he was liberated by the Red Army.

Subsequent to his death, Ernst Niekisch was one of a number of writers, including the likes of Oswald Spengler, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Vilfredo Pareto and Carl Schmitt, whose works were promulgated by the likes of the Groupement de recherche et d'etudes pour la civilisation europeenne and others involved in the Conservative Revolutionary movement.