Rotfrontkämpferbund
|
Roter Frontkämpferbund
Roter Frontkämpferbund |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Leader |
Ernst Thälmann Willy Leow |
| Founded | July 1924 |
| Dissolved | May 1929 |
| Newspaper | Rote Front |
| Youth wing | Rote Jungfront |
| Membership | 130,000 by 1929 |
| Political position | Far-left |
The Roter FrontkämpferbundGerman: [ˈʁoːtɐ ˈfʁɔntˌkɛmpfɐˌbʊnt], "Alliance of Red Front-Fighters"), abbreviated RFB, was officially a non-partisan and legally registered association, but in practice a paramilitary organization under the leadership of the Communist Party of Germany during the Weimar Republic.
The first local groups of the RFB were established in July 1924 and Ernst Thälmann was elected the first leader of the federal committee during the first nationwide meeting in February 1925 in Berlin. Die Rote Front (English: The Red Front) was the newspaper of the RFB. The greeting of “Rot Front!” (English: Red Front!) while rising a clenched fist was responsible for the expression Rotfront, often used among friends and foes to refer to the organization instead of using the entire title of the alliance. The clenched fist "protecting the friend, fighting off the enemy" (German: "schützend den Freund, abwehrend den Feind") was the symbol of the RFB used on all its insignias and its registered trademark since March 1, 1926.
Founded as a proletarian defense organization for the working class, over the years the RFB engaged more and more in violent street fights with the police, the Nazi party's Sturmabteilung (SA) as well as other political rivals and after their participation in the bloody protests following the ban to celebrate the International Workers' Day in Berlin 1929, during which more than 30 people were shot and killed by the police, the organization was banned in 1929 and all its assets confiscated by the government. At the time of the ban, the RFB had close to 130,000 members of which a large part continued their activities illegally or in local successor organizations such as the Kampfbund gegen den Faschismus (English: Fighting-Alliance Against Fascism), while others retired from the political scene. Contrary to a self-perpetuating legend spread by later historians, defections to the SA were rare.
...
Wikipedia