by Andreas Peglau[1]

For a better understanding of this text and what Reich called „Sexpol“, it is recommended to read in advance The Unified Associations for Proletarian Sexual Reform and Maternity Protection and Wilhelm Reich’s real role in the German „Sex-pol“

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Already during his lifetime Reich was the victim of intense slanders. They never stopped. Peter Bahnen has the merit of being the first to reconstruct Reich’s sexual reform activities in Berlin. However, this was done on the basis of a clearly negative bias against Reich. Bahnen also doubted Reich’s figures about the „German Sex-pol“. Weiterlesen →

by Andreas Peglau[1]

For a better understanding of the following text, it is recommended to read first The Unified Associations for Proletarian Sexual Reform and Maternity Protection and Wilhelm Reich’s real role in the German „Sex-pol“.

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Even before Reich moved from Norwegian exile to the U.S. in 1939, the final failure of what Reich had called the „Sex-Pol movement“ had occurred. The reasons for this were, on the one hand, harassment by the Norwegian authorities and defamation by various media and academics in the country. In addition, there were internal conflicts within the Norwegian sex-pol group and some elitist ideas of Reich. For example, he wanted only those who had been trained by him in character analysis to be considered „core troops“ of the movement. Already when Reich planned the work program for the following year in the summer of 1937, the „Sex-Pol“ was no longer mentioned.

But does what was disintegrating there really deserve the title „movement“? Weiterlesen →

by Andreas Peglau[1]

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CP mass organisations

Through the creation of mass organisations, the KPD attempted from 1924 onwards to reach broader sections of the population and at the same time to draw them away from the SPD. With this aim in mind, for example, the Kampfgemeinschaft der Arbeitersänger, the Arbeitermandolinisten or the Verband Proletarischer Freidenker Deutschlands came into being. This was not always accompanied by large membership numbers, which was often concealed by „corporate memberships“: other associations joined as members – which made the membership numbers skyrocket on paper. Nevertheless, these organisations as a whole had an impressive following. The Freidenker (Freethinkers) had 170,000 members in 1932, the Rote Frontkämpferbund between 100,000 and 250,000, and the Rote Hilfe Deutschlands had an estimated 530,000 members in 1933. The Internationale Arbeiterhilfe (IAH, International Workers‘ Aid) had „in March 1931 602 associations and organisations with 1,225,000 members“. However, even the IAH only had a few tens of thousands of individual members, i.e. „natural persons“. Weiterlesen →