1. Ruth Fischer was an Austrian and German Communist, and a co-founder of the Austrian Communist Party in 1918.
16 Facts About Ruth Fischer
1. 2.
Ruth Fischer's father was Jewish and her mother was Lutheran.
3.
Ruth Fischer was the elder sister to noted film and concert composer Hanns Eisler and fellow communist activist Gerhart Eisler.
4.
Ruth Fischer studied philosophy, economics and politics at University of Vienna, where her father was working.
5.
Ruth Fischer claimed in her memoir, Stalin and German Communism, that she was listed as member number one.
6.
Ruth Fischer opposed the failed attempt to seize power in Austria in June 1919 instigated by the Hungarian communist Erno Bettelheim, and during the recriminations that followed, she left her husband and moved to Berlin.
7.
Ruth Fischer visited the Comintern representative Karl Radek many times while he was interned in Moabit prison, acting as his contact with the Communist Party of Germany.
8.
In 1921, Ruth Fischer became leader of the Berlin branch of the Communist Party of Germany, and she and Arkadi Maslow emerged as leaders of the left of the communist party, who blamed the party's over-cautious leadership for the failure of the March Action in 1921, and opposed the tactic of a 'united front' with the German Social Democratic Party.
9.
Ruth Fischer was elected to the Reichstag under her then legal name Elfriede Golke, and to the Prussian House of Representatives.
10.
Ruth Fischer was ordered to stay in Moscow, and Thalmann took over the leadership of the German party.
11.
Ruth Fischer lost her Reichstag seat in 1928, and fled to Paris in 1933 and in August the same year the Nazi government annulled her naturalisation of 1923.
12.
When Trotsky founded the Fourth International in 1938, he 'set great store' by the accession of Ruth Fischer, who visited him frequently in France, though her opposition to Stalinism went further than his.
13.
Ruth Fischer testified that Gerhart was an important Comintern agent.
14.
Ruth Fischer's tasks included getting intelligence on Stalinists, Marxists and socialists in Europe, Africa and China.
15.
In 1955, Ruth Fischer returned to Paris and published her books Stalin and German Communism and Die Umformung der Sowjetgesellschaft.
16.
Ruth Fischer died in Paris in 1961, aged 65, from undisclosed causes.