by Andreas Peglau
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Wilhelm Reich was friends with the communist and anti-fascist Theodor Neubauer (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Neubauer), who was executed in 1945.
Reich mentions him in reference to dogmatic KPD officials:
„My friend Neugebauer [sic], who was a Reichstag deputy of the Communist faction and a brilliant, scientifically trained sociologist and a decent fellow, once said to me: ‚What should one do?‘ They should be thrown out, but will there be better things to come? We lack the trained intelligence.
For the time being, there is nothing to do but grit our teeth.'“
(Reich 1995, p. 160)
Reich, his wife Annie, and Neubauer also spent a short vacation together at the Baltic Sea in 1932.
On July 10, 1932, Neubauer wrote to his wife Elisabeth about this:
„With Reichs I was at the Baltic Sea. I followed them by train because I still had a few hours of work to do in the afternoon, met them in Ducherow before Anklam, where they were waiting for me at the station, and spent the next day with them: Swinemünde, Bansin, Zinowitz. Unfortunately, no sun. But we did bathe.“
(BA NY 4041)
Ducherow is located in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Here is a photo of the train station there from 1906:
Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ducherow
Like many smaller stations on former GDR territory, the building lost its use in the years after the annexation of the FRG. Since 1995 it has been empty and decaying (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnhof_Ducherow).
In 2013, it still looked like this:
Source:https://www.bahnbilder.debild/Deutschland~Bahntechnische+Anlagen+und+Kunstbauten~Sonstige+Hochbauten/747837/das-ehemalige-empfangsgebaeude-des-bahnhofs-ducherow.html
Meanwhile, the condition is even more deplorable:
Photos: Gudrun Peters (2022)
Nevertheless, the place remains associated with Reich’s stay in the northeast of what is now Germany.
It may not have been his only visit to the region. Reich reports that he and other comrades-in-arms of the „Einheitsverbände für Proletarische Sexualreform und Mutterschutz“ (Unity Associations for Proletarian Sexual Reform and Maternity Protection) traveled, presumably for lectures, to, among other places, the then German, now Polish city of Szczecin (Peglau 2017, pp. 120f.).
Literature
Bundesarchiv, File number BA NY 4041, Estate of Theodor Neubauer, Correspondence.
Peglau, Andreas (2017): Unpolitische Wissenschaft? Wilhelm Reich und die Psychoanalyse im Nationalsozialismus, Gießen.
Reich, Wilhelm (1995) [1982]: Menschen im Staat, Frankfurt/M.