Heinz Neumann (politician)

Heinz Neumann (6 July 1902 – 26 November 1937) was a German politician from the Communist Party (KPD) and a journalist. He was a member of the Comintern, editor in chief of the party newspaper Die Rote Fahne and a member of the Reichstag.

Born in Berlin into a middle-class family, Neumann studied philology and came into contact with Marxist ideas. In 1920, he was admitted into the Communist Party by Ernst Reuter, then General Secretary. August Thalheimer took him under his wing. Neumann began writing editorials for various KPD newspapers in 1921. He dropped out of university in 1922 and became editor of the Rote Fahne (Red Flag). He was arrested and spent six months in prison, during which he took up Russian, learning it so well, he could speak to Soviet party officials without an interpreter. In 1922, he met Joseph Stalin on a trip, speaking to him in Russian. From that point until 1932, he was a strong supporter of Stalin.

He first belonged to the left wing of the KPD, led by Ruth Fischer. In 1923, he aligned himself with Arthur Ewert and Gerhart Eisler and became the political leader of the party's Mecklenburg district. He participated in the Hamburg Uprising and in 1924, had to flee to Vienna, from where he was expelled to the Soviet Union in 1925. There, he succeeded Ivan Katz as Communist Party representative to the Comintern. From July to December 1927, he represented the Comintern in China. Working with Georgian communist Vissarion Lominadze, he organized the uprising in Guangzhou on 11 December 1927, where 25,000 communists died.

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