Arthur Crispien (1875–1946) is among the forgotten historical personalities of German social democracy. This is rather strange, since Crispien was elected co-chair of the Independent Social Democratic Party (Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, USPD) during its peak of political relevance in the early days of the Weimar Republic. He opposed Bolshevik leader Grigory Zinoviev at the USPD’s convention in Halle in 1920, where the party was split between those joining the Communist Party (KPD) and those remaining independent. He was one of the chairs of the United Social Democratic Party (Vereinigte Sozialdemokratische Partei, VSPD) from its formation in 1922 to the end of the Weimar Republic in 1933 and held leading roles in the Socialist Workers’ International during the same period. Hartfrid Krause has therefore done scholars a great service by writing this biography – the first major work on Crispien. The author is an expert on the history of the USPD and its key figures, having published one of the most comprehensive studies on the USPD.Footnote 1 He has also edited two collected volumes on Crispien.Footnote 2
In the first part of this book, Krause gives a chronological account of Crispien’s life. Arthur Crispien was born into a deeply deprived family environment in Königsberg, in what was then East Prussia. He became a house painter’s apprentice and was exposed to the workers’ movement by his father while the repressive Anti-Socialist Laws (Sozialistengesetz) were still in place. Soon afterwards, he began to engage with the trade union movement and the Social Democratic Party, and became acquainted with future leaders of the party, including Hugo Haase, who would become co-chair of the party in 1911 and whom he admired throughout his life. Crispien started as editor of a local party newspaper and as a local party manager. In 1912, he moved to Württemberg in southwestern Germany, where he continued to work as a journalist. At this point, he already considered himself to be on the left of the party. In July 1914, it was Crispien who opened a large public rally in Stuttgart to introduce a speech by Paul Levi, Rosa Luxemburg’s lawyer at the time. Levi talked about abuses within the military that Luxemburg had helped to make public (and was put on trial for). The decision of the SPD’s parliamentary group to approve the war credits and to support the Burgfriedenspolitik was met with Crispien's strong disapproval from the beginning. In the appendix, Krause cites from diary entries from 1 August, where Crispien notes that the revisionists had taken charge while the left had been taken by surprise. Crispien was among the founders of the Spartacus League (Spartakusbund), and became an active organizer of inner-party opposition. He later became co-chair of the USPD alongside Huge Haase. And, after the revolution, he briefly served as Minister of the Interior in his home state of Württemberg.
Krause points out that, at the outset, Crispien was not against collaborating with the communists. He was, however, part of the USPD delegation that attended the 2nd Congress of the Communist International in Moscow in July and August 1920. By then – if not earlier – he must have recognized the authoritarian direction in which the international was heading. Crispien therefore opposed the merger with the Communist Party subject to the infamous twenty-one conditions, which would have meant cleansing the party of all those deemed “social democratic” and total submission to directives from Moscow. After the convention in Halle in 1920, Crispien, along with most of the parliamentary group as well as the newspapers, left the convention and continued as the USPD. To Krause, this split was not entirely inevitable, but he acknowledges that keeping all wings inside the party would have required the development of a “third way” between social democracy and communism – a path that none of the inner party factions would have been able to formulate or advance. Unlike other older USPD leaders, such as Rudolf Hilferding or Rudolf Breitscheid, Crispien did not gain much political influence within the re-unified social democratic party after 1922. He shifted his political activities to foreign politics, both in parliament as well as in the new socialist international. A member of the Reichstag from 1920, he was forced into exile in Switzerland after the Nazis seized power in 1933. His exile was difficult both in financial terms (he was not permitted to work) and politically, since he was not allowed to engage in political activities and was kept under surveillance by the Swiss authorities. A return to Germany after the end of the war was prevented by his death in Switzerland in 1946.
Krause remains somewhat doubtful about the evolution of Crispien’s political views, arguing that Crispien himself was never completely clear about his own development. Krause supposes three steps. In the first half of his life, Crispien seems to have been impressed by political figures – first his father; then, in his initial years as a journalist, Hugo Haase, as well as August Bebel from pre-war social democracy, and Rosa Luxemburg and Paul Levi from the revolutionary wing. Haase mentions a second step concerning his relation to the communists and the Communist International in particular, where Krause sees a continuous evolution of sceptical positions with regard to communist tactics. Crispien switched from being a sympathizer to being a staunch opponent of the communists. With regard to Crispien’s lifelong achievements, Krause contrasts a perspective that consigns him to the second rank of Social Democratic chairmen, behind Hugo Haase in the USPD or Otto Wels and Hermann Müller in the SPD, with a view that highlights his behind-the-scenes efforts to strengthen international cooperation across the workers’ movement. This would put Crispien more in line with political figures like Willy Brandt.
The second part of the book contains a number of Crispien's autobiographical papers from the archives of the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation, as well as some articles and letters. His autobiographical notes emphasize the years until the outbreak of World War I, when he became involved in politics in East Prussia. Of particular interest is the reproduction of the private journal he kept from 31 July to 26 September 1914, i.e. for roughly the first two months of the war. Included are two articles from 1920 and 1923, and a few letters to Karl and Luise Kautsky. Another article recounts Crispien’s speech at an antifascist rally in Berlin in February 1932. Finally, an obituary offered by the Social Democratic Press Service in 1946 is included, which depicts Crispien as a humble servant of the movement, who would have wanted to return to Germany had death not intervened, and who had been a staunch opponent of anti-Semitism. The criteria for selecting these materials remain somewhat unclear; nevertheless, they offer interesting insights.
The tragedy of Crispien’s political life may have been that he was in his prime when the USPD collapsed after the split in Halle. Reunification in 1922 came at a point when the party was already in deep trouble. Krause subtitles his book “Vom Spartakusanhänger zum sozialdemokratischen Reformsozialisten” (from Spartacus adherent to social democratic reform socialist). Since Crispien’s time in the unified party is only briefly mentioned, Krause’s line of argument is not entirely convincing. It may be more accurate to say that Crispien kept out of inner-party dealings, but that he was also kept out. Krause offers no clear evidence that Crispien completely changed tack with regard to his political convictions – and it is entirely possible that the old centre within the party, associated with personalities like Bebel, and later Haase, vanished, and Crispien was simply unable to adjust to that. One might find a hint of this in the letters he wrote to Karl Kautsky. In a letter to Kautsky on his eightieth birthday, on 14 October 1934, Crispien writes that, while socialist organizations were unfortunately suffering setback, he remained confident that socialism would win in the end. “Trotz alledem!” Moreover, in a letter to Luise Kautsky from December 1934, he added that he saw no contemporary thinker who came close to her husband's importance for the development of socialist analysis.
Hartfrid Krause presents a well-written biography of the politician and political person Arthur Crispien. It is a respectful memoir of a party leader who is often overlooked in studies of Weimar social democracy, and it encourages the reader to engage more closely with Crispien’s work and writing when dealing with social democracy during World War I and the Weimar Republic.
