Ruth Fischer
| Ruth Fischer | |
|---|---|
Fischer as she appeared in June 1924.
|
|
| Born |
Elfriede Eisler 11 December 1895 Leipzig |
| Died |
13 March 1961 (aged 65) Paris |
| Alma mater | University of Vienna |
| Occupation | politician, member of Reichstag (1924–1928) |
| Years active | 1919–1961 |
| Known for | charter member of the Austrian Communist Party, anti-communism |
| Spouse(s) | 1915–1921 Paul Friedländer (1891–1942 or 1943 in Auschwitz) 1923–1929 Gustav Golke (1889–1937, Great Purge) |
| Partner(s) | 1919–1941 Arkadi Maslow |
| Children | Friedrich Gerhart Friedländer / F.G. Friedlander (1917–2001) |
| Parent(s) | Rudolf Eisler (father), Marie Edith Fischer (mother) |
| Relatives | Gerhart Eisler and Hanns Eisler (brothers), Paul Friedlander (grandson) |
Ruth Fischer (11 December 1895 – 13 March 1961) was an Austrian and German Communist and a co-founder of the Austrian Communist Party in 1918. She later became a staunch anti-Communist activist and, according to secret information declassified in 2010, was a key agent of the American intelligence service known as "The Pond".
Fischer was born Elfriede Eisler in Leipzig in 1895, the daughter of Marie Edith Fischer and Rudolf Eisler, a professor of philosophy at Leipzig but of Austrian nationality. Her father was Jewish and her mother was Lutheran.
She was the elder sister to noted film and concert composer Hanns Eisler and fellow communist activist Gerhart Eisler. She studied philosophy, economics and politics at University of Vienna, where her father was working.
At an undisclosed time, before March 1921, she adopted her mother's maiden name as part of her writer's name, "Ruth Fischer."
Fischer moved to Berlin in 1919. In 1921 she became leader of the Berlin branch of the Communist Party of Germany. The German authorities tried to forcibly repatriate her to Austria. Thus she married the fellow communist Gustav Golke (1889–1937, executed in the Soviet Great Purge), in order to be naturalised as a German.Heinrich Brandler was the national leader of the Communist Party of Germany. In the early months of 1923, Ruth Fischer and Arkadi Maslow urged Brandler to organize an uprising on the model provided by the Bolsheviks in 1917. Together they developed the "theory of the offensive". Fischer denounced the leadership for "making concessions to social democracy", for "opportunism" and for "ideological liquidationism and theoretical revisionism". Chris Harman, the author of The Lost Revolution (1982) has pointed out: "Articulate and energetic, they were able to gather around them many of the new workers who had joined the party."
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