Human Rights Leagues in Europe (1898–2016) 3515116273, 9783515116275

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Geschichte Franz Steiner Verlag

h i s to r i s ch e m it te i lu ng en – b e i h e f te 9 8

Human Rights Leagues in Europe (1898–2016) Edited by Wolfgang Schmale and Christopher Treiblmayr

Human Rights Leagues in Europe (1898–2016) Edited by Wolfgang Schmale and Christopher Treiblmayr

h i s to r i s c h e m it t e i lu ng e n – b e i h e f te Im Auftrage der Ranke-Gesellschaft. Vereinigung für Geschichte im öffentlichen Leben e.V. herausgegeben von Jürgen Elvert

Wissenschaftlicher Beirat: Winfried Baumgart, Michael Kißener, Ulrich Lappenküper, Ursula Lehmkuhl, Bea Lundt, Christoph Marx, Jutta Nowosadtko, Johannes Paulmann, Wolfram Pyta, Wolfgang Schmale, Reinhard Zöllner

Band 98

Human Rights Leagues in Europe (1898–2016) Edited by Wolfgang Schmale and Christopher Treiblmayr

Franz Steiner Verlag

Printing funded by the Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna, the research focus “Historical and Cultural European Studies” at the same faculty, and the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism.

Coverpicture: A significant number of women participated actively in the work of the various European human rights leagues. Among them was Dorota Kłuszyńska (1874–1952) in the Polish League. Source: National Digital Archives, Poland

The editors: wolfgang schmale is Full Professor for Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Vienna. christopher treiblmayr is a lecturer in Contemporary History at the University of Vienna. The contributions in this volume were submitted to a peer review process.

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek: Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über abrufbar. Dieses Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist unzulässig und strafbar. © Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2017 Druck: Laupp & Göbel, Nehren Gedruckt auf säurefreiem, alterungsbeständigem Papier. Printed in Germany. ISBN 978-3-515-11627-5 (Print) ISBN 978-3-515-11634-3 (E-Book)

TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ................................................................................................ 7 Barbara Helige Foreword by the President of the Austrian League for Human Rights ................. 9 Florence Bellivier Foreword by the Deputy Secretary General of the Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l’homme (FIDH). The Death Penalty as an Area of Activity of the FIDH and the Leagues for Human Rights ................................... 11 Wolfgang Schmale / Christopher Treiblmayr The History of Human Rights Leagues. An Introduction .................................... 15 Appendix: Human Rights Leagues in the Interwar Period .................................. 24

CONTRIBUTIONS William D. Irvine War, Peace and Human Rights. The Dilemma of the Ligue des droits de l’homme ................................................................................ 35 Gilles Manceron The French Ligue des droits de l’homme’s Interest in International Issues from 1898 to the 1980s. Founding and Supporting the Fédération internationale des droits de l’homme ................................................ 45 Emmanuel Naquet The LDH and the Bund Neues Vaterland. The Convergence of Two Human Rights Associations, 1914 to 1939 ................................................. 79 Lora Wildenthal The Reincarnations of the German League for Human Rights in Occupied and West Germany .......................................................................... 95 Paul Aubert The Spanish League of Human Rights .............................................................. 123

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Michalis Moraitidis The History and the Interventions of the Hellenic League for Human Rights (1918–2016) .............................................. 139 Izabela Mrzygłód The League for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights in Interwar Poland (1921–1937) ........................................................................ 157 Eric Vial The Lega italiana dei diritti dell’uomo (Italian Human Rights League) ........... 173 Stilyan Deyanov The Romanian League for Human Rights – a “Child of the Comintern”? (and possible comparison with the Bulgarian League) ...................................... 195 Christopher Treiblmayr The Austrian League for Human Rights and its International Relations (1926–1938) ...................................................... 223 Osman İşçi The History of 20th-century Human Rights Movements in Turkey ................... 257

FORUM David Morelli The Belgian League for Human Rights. A First Outline for Future Research .................................................................. 283 Paul Fonck The Luxembourgish League for Human Rights ................................................ 293 Doris Leuenberger / Patrick Herzig A Brief History of the Swiss League for Human Rights ................................... 303 Contributors ....................................................................................................... 311 Index of Names .................................................................................................. 315

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to thank the Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies of the University of Vienna, the research focus “Historical and Cultural European Studies” at the same Faculty as well as the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism. Without their generous support, the present volume would not have been published. It is the result of a cooperation with the Austrian League for Human Rights, which has been supporting our research on the history of human rights leagues for many years now. We would particularly like to thank its president, Judge Barbara Helige, its vice-president, former member of the Austrian Parliament Terezija Stoisits, and its current and former secretary generals, Kira Preckel and Feliks J. Bister. We also received valuable support from Florence Bellivier and Elena Crespi of the Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l’homme (FIDH) as well as the European Association for the Defense of Human Rights (AEDH). The volume is based on a workshop that was organised in May 2014 in cooperation with the Austrian League for Human Rights at the University of Vienna and supported by the Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna and its research foci “Historical and Cultural European Studies” (under its former First Speaker Philipp Ther), “History of Women and Gender” (First Speaker Gabriella Hauch), and the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism. Acting as chairs, our colleagues from the Department of History, Birgitta Bader-Zaar, Thomas Angerer, Peter Becker and Thomas Fröschl, provided important input for this workshop. Eva Hein, Birgit Nagy-Glaser and Brigitte Keltner offered invaluable help in administrative matters. For information, archive material and images as well as their friendly advice, we would like to thank Cyril Burte and Franck Veyron (BDIC, Paris-Nanterre), François Rognon (Musée, Archives, Bibliothèque Grande Loge de France, Paris), Thomas Maisel (Vienna University Archive), Peter Prokop (Picture Archives and Graphics Department of the Austrian National Library), the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (Paris), the National Digital Archives, Poland, Andreas Brunner and Hannes Sulzenbacher (QWIEN – Center for gay/lesbian culture and history, Vienna), and Balázs Abloncy, Włodzimierz Borodziej, Zuzana Candigliota, Alexander Emanuely, Bernd Gallob, John Hodgshon, Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, Catherine Horel, Artak Kirakosyan, Günter K. Kodek, Manuel Malheiros, Robert Minder, Marcus Patka, Peter Stadlbauer, Harald Tersch, Mantas Viselga, Claude Weber and Joëlle Weis. Jürgen Elvert has our gratitude for accepting the manuscript into the series. We owe our thanks to the translators and proofreaders Brita Pohl and Stephan Stockinger for their excellent work, and to Thomas Tretzmüller for his exception-

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Acknowledgements

al commitment in research and editorial support and in assembling the typescript. We finally would like to thank the Franz Steiner Verlag, in particular Katharina Stüdemann and Harald Schmitt, for their efficient and friendly cooperation. Vienna, 1 March 2017 Wolfgang Schmale and Christopher Treiblmayr

FOREWORD BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE AUSTRIAN LEAGUE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS In 2016, the Austrian League for Human Rights – the oldest and most traditional human rights organisation in Austria – celebrated its 90th anniversary. Its history is closely connected to the awakening of an awareness of human rights that began with the foundation of the French Ligue française pour la défense des droits de l’hommes et du citoyen in 1898. There have been and still are significant interdependencies as well as separate and joint developments in many European countries that are inextricably linked to the political history of the respective nations – in fact, of all of Europe and beyond. All national leagues for human rights display on their banners a reference to the universal human rights, which have in the meantime been enshrined in many international and national documents as well. On the other hand, every country also has its own particular history and characteristics and its own pressing problems; hence every history is related to the respective political, social and geographical situation. To revisit and closely examine the past was a key purpose of the workshop organised by the University of Vienna in cooperation with the Austrian League for Human Rights in May 2014. Probably for the first time in history, representatives of so many human rights leagues and scholars took the opportunity to come together and engage in scientific exchange. In this context, I would like to thank the Faculty of Historical and Cultural Studies of the University of Vienna as a whole, and in particular project head o. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schmale, who not only enabled the organisation of the symposium, but also played a very active role. I also want to thank Dr. Christopher Treiblmayr, lecturer at the University of Vienna, who for many years has been devoting his time to researching the history of the Austrian League for Human Rights. In doing so, he has also directed his attention to the global interdependencies, thereby providing the conference with a more than adequate scientific framework. We were very pleased that this commitment brought together experts from across Europe and beyond with the goal of fostering intensive scientific discourse and sharing knowledge not only about the first and leading human rights organisation, but also about its wide international network established over many decades. Thanks to the scholars and scientists who not only participated in the conference, but have drafted their lectures into contributions to this volume, we are now able to make the results of this research available to the public. My gratitude likewise goes out to the scientists who have written articles on the development of the human rights leagues in certain countries despite being unable to attend the meeting.

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Barbara Helige

These contributions have made it possible to compile a book dedicated not just to the history of the Austrian League, but also to the developments in the various countries represented at the conference, thus reflecting contemporary history in the individual countries as well as the overall political and social situation across Europe and beyond. Future research will undoubtedly profit greatly from the results of this exchange. The cooperation effected in this project is also of significant value in a different context, however: It exemplifies a way forwards in terms of how internationally established institutions like the network of leagues for human rights can work together more efficiently. We live in times where national mechanisms often fail in the handling of human rights issues, and many existing problems can be understood and processed only in more general and global contexts. The exchange of experiences and a better understanding of the history as well as of specific features of the individual leagues represent the keys to even closer collaboration, and I am confident that our conference and this volume can help to unleash some of that potential. Dr. Barbara Helige Former President of the Austrian Association of Judges

FOREWORD BY THE DEPUTY SECRETARY GENERAL OF THE FÉDÉRATION INTERNATIONALE DES LIGUES DES DROITS DE L’HOMME (FIDH) The Death Penalty as an Area of Activity of the FIDH and the Leagues for Human Rights The slow but steady process of the abolition of the death penalty provides insights into how national and international human rights movements interact in order to achieve this goal. That the abolitionist community can proudly state that two thirds of the world’s countries have eliminated capital punishment is a result of the involvement of activists fighting simultaneously on two fronts: national and international. Abolitionists face two obstacles: Firstly, criminal law is a matter of sovereignty, and each state has the right to determine its own criminal law offenses and sanctions. Secondly, and in a broader context, even if states are bound by international human rights, the death penalty is stricto sensu not forbidden by international law.1 Neither top-down nor bottom-up, the abolition campaign must therefore be conducted on two hopefully converging parallel paths – against geometrical truth. Formally, the abolition of capital punishment requires an act of parliament expressly stating that the penal code no longer includes the death penalty as a possible sanction for a crime. Nevertheless, there is generally a gap between the formal simplicity of abolition and its spectacular performativity (literally giving life to people condemned to die) on the one hand and the process leading to the adoption of such legislation on the other, which involves many twists and turns as demonstrated by the history preceding the enactment of Article 1 of the French law abolishing the death penalty (“The death penalty is abolished”) on 9 October 1981.2 The question of abolition in France goes back to the Revolution of 1789 and has been topical throughout the country’s history ever since. The push towards abolition lost momentum for several decades after 1908 when the abolitionists, including the French “ligueurs” and politicians close to the French Ligue

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2

The Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is the only universal international treaty to prohibit executions and provide essential mechanisms to entrench the abolition of the death penalty in the world. States must sign and ratify it to be bound by it, however. Loi n° 81-908 du 9 octobre 1981 portant abolition de la peine de mort, in: JO, 10 October 1981, Article 1: “La peine de mort est abolie.”

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Florence Bellivier

des droits de l’homme (LDH), were defeated. But side by side with numerous other organisations and persons of standing, the French League remained intensely engaged at the international level, for example by lending its full support in 1953 to the vain attempts to spare Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, found guilty of spying for the U.S.S.R. in the U.S., the electric chair. Beyond this individual case, the LDH has regularly called for the universal abolition of the death penalty since the 1950’s, denouncing executions wherever they take place. At least three actors have played central roles in the French League’s embracing of the fight against the death penalty. Firstly, the founding of the League in 1898 occasioned by the trial of Alfred Dreyfus (condemned to deportation, the death penalty for political crimes having been abolished in 1848) was intimately tied to the issue of wrongful conviction. Today, wrongful convictions are a favourite target of activists in countries which have retained the death penalty. Secondly and more broadly, the League has always been a forum for political leading lights, whether they were members or just supporters of the League. Thus Robert Badinter, former French Minister of Justice, paid homage to the LDH as well as to other organisations in his famous speech on 17 September 1981 – the speech in which he outlined to parliamentarians his draft proposal for the abolition of the death penalty.3 Thirdly, it is not coincidental that the set of arguments against the death penalty became internationalised during the 1950s. These were years of reawakening for the International Federation, which had been founded in 1922 by the French and the German leagues but had been forced to terminate its activities due to World War II.4 In conjunction with the growth of the international human rights corpus, this reawakening would provide renewed momentum to the abolitionist movement. Today, national leagues and international federations have joined forces under the auspices of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty – an entity serving both as an umbrella and a platform for assorted activists who wish to use all available means to achieve their objective. The Guinean story, closely followed by the Coalition and its members, is a telling example of how domestic and international mechanisms are intertwined in the process leading to abolition, and of how gradual that process can be. In effect an abolitionist country with a moratorium on executions since 2002, Guinea finally took it to the next level on 4 July 2016 when its parliament adopted a new penal code and a new penal procedure, in both of which mention of the death penalty is conspicuously absent. This was a clear victory for the struggle against the death penalty – a victory that could not have been achieved were it not for the very specific international context in which it took place and the treaties to which

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Available, for example, on the website of the French National Assembly, http://www. peinedemort.org/document/4738, consulted 20 August 2016: “Comment ne pas souligner que toutes les grandes associations internationales qui militent de par le monde pour la défense des libertés et des droits de l’homme – Amnesty international, l’Association internationale des droits de l’homme, la Ligue des droits de l’homme – ont fait campagne pour que vienne l’abolition de la peine de mort?” See Gilles Manceron’s contribution in this volume.

Foreword

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Guinea is a signatory. It is indeed noteworthy that the final step towards the abolition of capital punishment in Guinea occurred shortly after the 6th World Congress Against the Death Penalty, held in Oslo from 21 to 23 June 2016 and coordinated by the French organisation Ensemble contre la peine de mort. Acknowledging the event’s impact, Guinean Member of Parliament and congress participant Fode Amara Bocar Marega stated: “The benefits from Oslo continue (…). The fight goes on with even more conviction.”5 As to be expected, the national and international movements which have most definitely played an essential role in the abolitionist struggle are now facing new and old problems. Amongst these problems are: obtaining funding – an increasingly difficult task in light of the growing competition between organisations; identifying leaders with broad appeal and legitimacy in an internationalised civil society; and eliciting the participation of academics and intellectuals to the cause. In this respect, the recent creation of international academic networks deserves special mention.6 The arguments against the death penalty were formulated some time ago. 7 If today’s politicians are to be influenced or constrained by them, however, they need to be examined periodically and maybe even elaborated anew. In Europe, like elsewhere, many a politician would seize any opportunity and latch onto any pretext to resort to or even reinstitute the death penalty as a means of scoring political points and silencing opponents. Unfortunately, this scenario seems to be currently unfolding in Turkey and the Philippines, notwithstanding their respective strong civil societies. In summary, the abolition of the death penalty, far from being “natural” or “obvious”, is part of a slow and difficult process of “civilisation”. Without dedicated commitment and willingness to learn from the past, this process is subject to setbacks and reversals. Learning from the past in order to shape a European civil society so urgently needed in the euro-sceptical times we are experiencing: That is the remarkable intent of the present volume, the outstanding result of a workshop held at the University of Vienna in May 2014. Not only does it provide insights into particular domestic instances of a common universal idea (the defence of human rights), it also explains the birth, fall and spectacular rebirth of that idea’s umbrella organisation: the FIDH, which since the 1980s has become truly international, not just European. Decisive for the leagues in question, often too immersed in their

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Quoted from Maurice Gauer, Abolition of the death penalty in Guinea, published 5 July 2016, http://www.worldcoalition.org/Abolition-of-the-death-penalty-in-Guinea.html, consulted 20 August 2016. See the websites of the International Academic Network for the Abolition of Capital Punishment (REPECAP), http://www.academicsforabolition.net, and Universities Against the Death Penalty – A Worldwide Network, http://www.uio.no/english/about/collaboration/universitiesagainst-death-penalty, both consulted 20 August 2016. See for example Benoît Basse, De la peine de mort en philosophie. Quel fondement pour l’abolition?, Paris 2016.

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current problems to stop the clock and reflect about themselves, this analysis also offers a unique vision of the past century making it deserving of the attention of the broadest possible audience. Florence Bellivier Professor of Law at University of Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense Former President of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty

THE HISTORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS LEAGUES An Introduction Wolfgang Schmale / Christopher Treiblmayr The study of the history of human rights leagues in Europe (and beyond) in the 20th and early 21st centuries promises interesting insights into various fields of interest: the development of democracy, the strength or weakness of human rights in constitutional practice, the forming of national and transnational networks between individuals as well as between different associations such as human rights leagues, the establishment of certain values in society (like peace as opposed to war, or de-colonisation as opposed to colonialism), charity issues closely linked to the practice of human rights, the building of a European or even global civil society, and so forth. The French Ligue des droits de l’homme (LDH), founded in 1898 in the context of the Dreyfus affair, was the first such league and provided the model for all further leagues for human rights in Europe. For nearly half a century, it served as the keystone for an emerging transnational network of human rights activists. Nearly a third of all leagues mentioned in various documents from the first half of the 20th century had been founded in France by exiles, and another fifth continued their activity in French exile after their respective home countries had fallen under dictatorship. Without a doubt, the most notable case is that of the Italian League during the interwar period. The French League, with some involvement by the German League, was also the driving force behind the foundation of an international umbrella organisation, the Ligue internationale or Fédération internationale des (ligues des) droits de l’homme (FIDH)1, in 1922. The various leagues share their commitment to a universal ideal of human rights based in the revolutionary concept of human rights embodied in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789.2 To this day, the archives of the French League for the interwar period are the most comprehensive of all the known archives, although Emmanuel Naquet

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In the era before World War II, both names were used for the International Federation. See the contributions by Gilles Manceron and Christopher Treiblmayr in this volume. See Wolfgang Schmale, Grund- und Menschenrechte in vormodernen und modernen Gesellschaften Europas, in: Margarete Grandner / Wolfgang Schmale / Michael Weinzierl (eds.), Grund- und Menschenrechte. Historische Perspektiven – Aktuelle Problematiken, Vienna / Munich 2002, 29–76, 69f. We would like to thank John Hodgshon, Brita Pohl, Stephan Stockinger and Thomas Tretzmüller for their translation and proofreading support.

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bemoans a number of lacunae.3 Not all leagues established and kept archives; others did, but their archives have been lost or are presumed lost. The French League’s archives were returned by the Russian Federation after the fall of the Eastern Bloc. They had initially been confiscated by the Nazis and later by the Red Army; they were transported to Moscow, where they disappeared in the Special Secret Archives of the Soviet Secret Services for several decades. 4 This is also where parts of the pre-war archives of the Austrian League, founded in 1926, had ended up, as Christopher Treiblmayr shows in his contribution to this volume. Within the scope of a research project by the two editors, we were able to locate these files in Moscow.5 There are at least two leagues today whose archives cover the entire period from the year of their foundation up to the present day – the French and the Austrian League for Human Rights. With regard to other leagues, the situation varies from a near complete lack of documents available for the period before World War II to a considerable number of documents dispersed among different archives, libraries, institutions, private estates etc. The French League’s journal, “Les Cahiers des droits de l’homme”, provides information about various pre-World-War-II leagues, but as a source is no substitute for a league archive. The pre-war archive of the French LDH also contains documents concerning other leagues.6 On the whole, this information is precious but nevertheless unsatisfactory, to say the least. The present volume provides an apposite description of the variety of archive situations. All contributions (except for the one on the Belgian League) are based on archive material. Tenacious research promises to prove rewarding, as Izabela Mrzygłód shows for the Polish League, Paul Fonck for the Luxembourgish League, Michalis Moraitidis for the Greek League, Stilyan Deyanov for the Romanian League, or Doris Leuenberger and Patrick Herzig for the Swiss League, among others. Some of these authors were the first persons ever to search for archive material on the respective leagues, and they were able to fill gaps by ‘data mining’ newspapers, magazines and other periodicals. After the completion

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Emmanuel Naquet, Pour l’Humanité. La Ligue des droits de l’homme de l’affaire Dreyfus à la défaite de 1940, Rennes 2014, 30. See Geneviève Dreyfus-Armand, Les archives de la Ligue des droits de l’homme à la BDIC, in: Sonia Combe / Grégory Cingal (eds.), Retour de Moscou. Les archives de la Ligue des droits de l’homme 1898–1940, Paris 2004, 11–16. Sonia Combe, Paris-Moscou, aller-retour: historique d’une spoliation et d’une restitution, in: ibid., 17–26. The project under the participation of Thomas Brendel was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF, Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung, project number P 20475). Both are to be found in the Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine (BDIC), Paris-Nanterre, http://www.bdic.fr/, consulted 6 December 2016. The following boxes, summed up in the inventory as “relations extérieures” of the French Ligue des droits de l’homme, contain portfolios relating to various leagues: BDIC, F delta res 0798/54 – F delta res 0798/60. In fact, sometimes the documents of one particular league are to be found not only in the respective portfolio, but also scattered across the portfolios of other leagues.

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of the Europeana newspaper digitisation project, this may become a practicable option, although the inner balance of the project is far from satisfactory.7 An international workshop at the University of Vienna in May 2014, organised by the two editors of the present volume, assembled scholars and activists from eight countries, all concerned – some through historical research, some through human rights activities – with human rights leagues. This workshop was the first attempt to cross-link research on different human rights leagues and instigate further and more in-depth investigation where little or no historical research had been carried out before.8 The present volume presents the revised conference papers as well as supplementary articles dealing with (in alphabetical order) the Austrian League, the Belgian League, the Bulgarian League, the French League, the pre- and post-war German Leagues, the Hellenic League, the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues, the Italian League, the Luxembourgish League, the Polish League, the Romanian League, the Spanish League, and the Swiss League. Table 1 lists the leagues resp. organisations represented in the volume in the order of their foundation. The “Forum” section contains contributions that provide a first insight into a particular league’s history and thus aim to motivate further research. Year of foundation 1898 1901 1913 1918 1921 1922 1923 1926 1928 1986

Country France Belgium Spain Greece Poland Bulgaria; Germany; International Federation; Italy (in French exile) Luxembourg; Romania Austria Switzerland Turkey9

Table 1.

The majority of the leagues were forced to interrupt their activities at some point, especially during National Socialism. The first league thus affected was the German League, which was forcibly dissolved by the Nazi regime. Others, like the Austrian League, were prohibited or dissolved themselves in 1938 or 1939, and the French League was unable to function after 1940/41. Many league members 7 8 9

See http://www.europeana-newspapers.eu/, consulted 6 December 2016. See also Wolfgang Schmale / Christopher Treiblmayr, Human Rights Leagues and Civil Society (1898–ca. 1970s), in: Historische Mitteilungen 27/2015, 186–208. İnsan Hakları Derneği (İHD/Human Rights Association).

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became victims of National Socialist persecution and extermination. This is one of the reasons why much knowledge regarding the pre-war history of the human rights leagues is lost, and the long-term success of the National Socialist extinction of the memory of the leagues and the personalities who shaped them is a sad fact demonstrated by the contributions collected in this volume. It therefore also aims to counteract this loss of memory. Some leagues succeeded in founding exile organisations outside their country. In order to continue their human rights activities, for example, European emigrants founded a new governing body in New York, called the International League of the Rights of Man and for the New Democracy, in 1941. In this they collaborated with the civil rights activist Roger N. Baldwin, whose name also appears among the subscribers of “Les Cahiers des droits de l’homme”.10 As a small lobbying group, its members initially saw its role in an intellectual contribution to the liberation of Europe from National Socialism. Democracy and freedom were among their core values, as they believed that disregard for human rights and basic freedoms had been one of the fundamental causes of World War II. The group began to expand its focus toward the end of the war, starting to campaign for worldwide respect for human rights as part of a universal approach to the notion. Regional committees were founded for Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa, which dealt with the question of an International Bill of Rights among other things. The “Jewish question” also played a large role in their deliberations.11 This new umbrella organisation continued its activities after the end of World War II. In 1947, besides organisations like the International Arbitration League in London and the Comité Mexicano contra el Racismo in Mexico, its affiliates included an Argentinian and an Italian league, a league in Belgian Congo, a Haitian league, a German exile league in London, a Hungarian and a Spanish exile league in Paris, and the Swiss, Luxembourgish and Austrian leagues.12 By 1944/45, the French League had also resumed operations 13 and was working on the re-establishment of the international umbrella organisation. After the end of World War II, the latter referred to itself only as FIDH and not as Ligue internationale so as to avoid being confused with the New York International League. Shortly before the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations in 1948, the efforts to reunite the leagues were announced in a circular of the re-established Austrian League. The members listed there were the leagues of Germany, Argentina, Austria, Spain (in exile), France,

10 See BDIC, F delta res 798/46. 11 See Jan Eckel, The International League for the Rights of Man, Amnesty International, and the Changing Fate of Human Rights Activism from the 1940s through the 1970s, in: Humanity. An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 4/2013, no. 2, 183–214, 184ff. See also Schmale / Treiblmayr, Human Rights Leagues, 206. 12 See folder Presenting the International League for the Rights of Man, 1947, Folder I.L.H.R. (New York) I, XXI/1, Archives of the Austrian League for Human Rights. 13 See Les Cahiers des droits de l’homme, 1945, no. 1.

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Hungary (in exile), Italy, Luxembourg, Holland and Switzerland, as well as the International League in New York.14 The latter would not remain a member of the FIDH for long, however. The two umbrella organisations began to compete for member leagues, some of which avoided the conflict by joining both organisations. The United Nations also settled on this diplomatic solution: as early as 1947, the International League had achieved “consultative status”15; the FIDH, which progressively re-established itself, was given the same status in 1952.16 Two international umbrella organisations thus contributed to the process of universalisation and codification of human rights, which is characteristic of the second half of the 20th century and found its expression (for example) in the creation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in 1950, the establishment of the European Court of Human Rights in 1959, or the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1966. After two catastrophic world wars and the horrors of the Holocaust, the idea of basic human rights became the doxa of our time – at least on the level of discourse, as Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann put it.17 In petitions, memoranda and expert opinions, the International League and the FIDH advised institutions like the United Nations of cases of human rights violations around the globe and submitted opinions on planned legal documents or agreements.18 This universalisation of the very idea of human rights naturally did not mean there were no more ‘national’ cases of human rights violations, but universal respect for human rights increasingly gained importance. Germany and Austria, both occupied by the four allied powers after 1945, had to deal with specific problems resulting from this situation. In Germany, the separation into a western and an eastern part aggravated the problems, causing the ‘German League’ (for details, see the contribution by Lora Wildenthal), at least in Berlin, to evolve into something of a charity organisation for East German refugees as well as for displaced persons, dispersed families etc. in general. In addition, the German League also had to deal with spies threatening to undermine the organisation. Most of the leagues were menaced by political circumstances both during the interwar period and after World War II. Their general political orientation was obviously more or less leftist and to some extent cosmopolitan, but between the 14 See Liga-Korrespondenz XI/1948, Folder FIDH I, XX/1, Archives of the Austrian League for Human Rights. 15 See letter by Fritz Kaufmann, International League for the Rights of Man, to the Austrian League for Human Rights, 14 May 1947, Folder I.L.H.R. (New York) I, XXI/1, Archives of the Austrian League for Human Rights. 16 See for example a letter by Leopold Zechner and Hermann C. Mühlberger to the Fédération Internationale des Droits de l’Homme, 9 July 1952, Folder FIDH I, XX/1, Archives of the Austrian League for Human Rights. 17 Stefan-Ludwig Hoffman, Einführung. Zur Genealogie der Grund- und Menschenrechte, in: idem (ed.), Moralpolitik. Geschichte der Menschenrechte im 20. Jahrhundert, Göttingen 2010, 7–37. 18 On the International League, see Eckel, The International League.

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wars the delineations between various political movements and orientations were anything but sharp and clear. As this volume’s contributions show, the cosmopolitan orientation of the human rights leagues was significantly – if not exclusively – influenced by international Freemasonry. The latter’s guiding idea of tolerance had already led it to take an active part in the American and French declarations of human rights.19 The nature of these close personal ties between Freemasonry and human rights leagues, however, is hitherto clearly established only for the pre-war Austrian League by Christopher Treiblmayr’s contribution as well as for the prewar Spanish League by Paul Aubert’s contribution. In general, the leagues’ members were forced to cope with their political classification by other parties for reasons of propaganda aimed at disqualifying the human rights activists and obstructing their activities. A close look at the history of the human rights leagues also shows that the effectiveness of their work suffered from internal conflict and competition between the organisations, i.e. that the leagues were by no means homogeneous entities. William D. Irvine, for example, shows in his contribution that even Hitler and the Nazi regime in Germany were not met with unanimous rejection by all members of the French League. Similarly, the evaluation of Stalinism and the Soviet Union in general remained a point of discord. And for long periods of the 20th century, the dominance of the French League meant that the transnational public spheres that established themselves within the league network were organised according to a logic of centre and periphery.20 This, of course, corresponded to the respective leagues’ actual importance. Without a doubt, the case of the French League is unique in the early history of human rights leagues. It owes its foundation to a major political, social, and of course legal issue: the Dreyfus affair. This fact contributed to the focusing of its activities on monitoring and legal aid as well as the fight against anti-Semitism, which was also typical of many other leagues. It is a well-known fact that the Dreyfus affair, while primarily a national affair of the French Third Republic in crisis, provoked an echo across Europe, if not the entire Western world.21 But what is the historical significance of the interwovenness of the Dreyfus affair and the foundation of the LDH? Naquet concludes: “The foundation of the LDH reacted to a crisis of a republican state imperilled by a form of anti-republicanism (…)”.22

19 See Helmut Reinalter, Die Freimaurer, Munich 2006, 44. 20 On the structure of transnational public spheres in general, see Andrea Komlosy, Globalgeschichte. Methoden und Theorien, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2011, 33f. 21 The French research literature is discussed by Naquet, Pour l’Humanité, Introduction and chapter 1. International research literature is abundant. Details are not listed here as a simple search using the keyword “Dreyfus affair” in the world’s most important national library catalogues (we used Karlsruhe Virtual Catalogue) provides evidence of the global interest in the issue. 22 Naquet, Pour l’Humanité, 83: “la fondation de la LDH répond à une crise de l’État républicain en butte à une forme d’antirépublicanisme”.

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The Spanish League also owes its initial23 foundation to a court case, namely that of Francisco Ferrer Guardia, which similarly gained some European and Western notoriety. Apart from a 655-page volume published in Madrid in 191024, the Australian Catholic Truth Society, for example, published a booklet of 32 pages on “Ferrer the anarchist: the facts of his life and trial”.25 Other contemporary pamphlets, booklets and books were published in 1909, 1910 or later. Nearly every European national library lists “Juicio ordinario seguido ante los tribunales militares en plaza de Barcelona contra Francisco Ferrer Guardia”, Madrid 1909, in its catalogues26, and the French Grande Loge de France likewise collected material on the Ferrer case.27 These are some formal indicators of the notoriety of the Ferrer affair, but according to Paul Aubert (in this volume), the Spanish League in the proper sense of its name was founded as Liga Española para la Defensa de los Derechos del Hombre y del Ciudadano in 1913. The origin of most other leagues is less spectacular than that of the French and Spanish organisations. As mentioned above, the Italian League (LIDU) was founded in French exile in 1922 (the most probable date) under the instigation of FIDH vice-president Aline Ménard-Dorian (see Eric Vial’s contribution in this volume). One of the LIDU’s leading figures, Luigi Campolonghi, “participated in the LDH’s protests against the legal assassination of the libertarian pedagogue Francisco Ferrer in Barcelona in 1909” (Vial in this volume). Like the Italian League, the majority of human rights leagues in interwar Europe were founded in close relation with the Ligue internationale resp. the FIDH. The key role of the anti-clerical, leftist republican and salonnière Ménard-Dorian in the FIDH, the involvement of Ernesta Cassola, Luigi Campolonghi’s wife, in the Italian League, and the contributions of many other female activists mentioned in this volume all indicate that a significant number of women actively participated in the work of the leagues. Many of them were women’s rights activists, and the leagues provided them with an opportunity to network – a fact we wanted to emphasise with the cover image (Polish Dorota Kłuszyńska). At any rate, it should be noted that only the French League developed a stable structure and organisation even before World War I and was able to maintain it up to the moment of the creation of the État français in 1940 under Maréchal Pétain. 23 The history of the foundation of the Spanish League is difficult to elucidate. See the contribution by Paul Aubert in the present volume. Aubert mentions the connection between the first foundation and the Ferrer case, but does not provide any details. 24 Luis Simarro, El proceso Ferrer y la opinión europea, Madrid 1910. The book is listed by library catalogues in Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, etc. 25 M. H. MacInerny, Ferrer the anarchist. The facts of his life and trial, Melbourne [1910?]. Bibliographical reference: http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2466133, consulted 6 December 2016. 26 Reprint available: Juicio ordinario seguido ante los tribunales militares en plaza de Barcelona contra Francisco Ferrer Guardia, Palma de Mallorca 1977. 27 See archives of the Grande Loge de France (GLDF), “Russian Archives”, Fonds 93, Opis 1, Boite 66. Wolfgang Schmale would like to thank the GLDF and especially Mr. François Rognon, who cordially welcomed him in the Freemasonic archives and helped him with orientation.

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Its famous origin and sense for historicity28, its conscience of having a mission beyond France, its growing role in French political affairs, especially in the 1930s, its huge membership (as many as 180,000 at times), its role of providing a focal point for political exiles from several European countries made it unique in comparison to all other leagues. This must be kept in mind when attempting a European history of human rights leagues up to World War II. And such a history, in fact, still remains to be written, even though Naquet begins his subchapter on the creation of the FIDH with an optimistic statement by referring to Victor Basch, a key figure of the LDH and of French civil society, and the pre-1914 situation: The period before 1914 is characterised by the emergence of sister associations of the French League in many countries. The conflict revived the idea of founding an ‘International of Human Rights’ in a polycentric universe: the humanitarian territory is brimming with networks rooted in an ever more internationalised civil society. 29

The present volume represents merely a further step in this research direction, nothing more. The “ever more internationalised civil society” is, until now, not a fact but a question to be answered by future investigations. International research is already focused on the French LDH, and it is often French scholars who investigate the history of other leagues (see the contributions by Paul Aubert on the Spanish League, by Emmanuel Naquet on the German Bund Neues Vaterland, and by Eric Vial on the Italian LIDU)30; but by no means exclusively, as the present volume shows. Among the many books dealing with human rights leagues, Emmanuel Naquet’s history of the French LDH from its beginnings in 1898 to the French defeat in 1940 is an outstanding study and can be taken as a model. Christopher Treiblmayr is currently writing a history of the Austrian League. We need more such monographs, however, as it will otherwise continue to be difficult to answer the question whether or not an internationalised civil society was developing in the interwar and post-World War II period. In both periods, all leagues were characterised by ideological frictions between leading members, not all were unequivocal enemies of anti-Semitism, and the general divergence of political interests at the national as well as at the European and international level occasionally sparked conflicts between the leagues. It is probable that the internationalisation of civil society was considerably advanced on the eve of World War I, but the Great War broke these dynamics. The interwar period saw many initiatives that strove to re-establish the pre-war level, but the times were not right – and the same holds true for the relaunch after 1945. 28 See Naquet, Pour l’Humanité, Introduction. 29 Naquet, Pour l’Humanité, 303: “L’avant 1914 est caractérisé par l’émergence dans nombre de pays d’associations sœurs de la Ligue française. Le conflit réactualise l’idée de fonder une ‘Internationale des droits de l’Homme’ dans un univers polycentrique: le territoire humanitaire est débordé par les réseaux qui plongent dans une société civile toujours plus internationalisée.” 30 A research overview is provided in Schmale / Treiblmayr, Human Rights Leagues.

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This is the first time that a dozen European leagues, the FIDH and the Turkish İHD are collectively examined in the same volume. In addition, some colleagues provided us with information on several leagues that still await more in-depth research: Armenia, Czechoslovakia, England, Hungary, Portugal, and Russia. Stilyan Deyanov, in his article on the Romanian League, touches on the Bulgarian League as well.31 The table in the appendix also lists some basic information on all interwar leagues we have been able to identify so far. As a guideline for this volume, we used affiliation to the FIDH. It therefore also includes the Turkish İnsan Hakları Derneği (İHD) (in English: Human Rights Association) examined by Osman İşçi and affiliated with the FIDH. For the first time ever, Osman İşçi provides an outline of the civic engagement for human rights in post-World War II Turkey. Founded in 1986, İHD proves to be the human rights organisation with the longest tradition in Turkey so far, and it is deeply concerned about the authoritarian developments under President Erdoğan’s administration. Despite the analogies İşçi identifies, however, İHD is not a human rights league in the strict sense. It is representative of those human rights organisations which, while members of the FIDH, have no immediate links to the human rights leagues that were founded in the tradition of the French mother league since the end of the 19th century. The admission of İHD into the international umbrella organisation of leagues thus constitutes proof of the more global orientation of the FIDH starting in the 1980s and mentioned by Gilles Manceron and Florence Bellivier in their contributions. From the 1980s onward, it increasingly detached itself from its close links with the French League, which had been a constitutive element of the association since its foundation. This was accompanied by an expansion in the number of member organisations; currently its membership spans 184 human rights organisations in 112 countries.32 While the International League in New York seems to have more or less ceased operations in the 1980s, the FIDH was able to stand its ground in the process of differentiation within the civil society sphere that began in the 1970s. The media presence of the FIDH and of the various human rights leagues that still exist is obviously not as prominent as, for example, that of Amnesty International. The current and historical role of the leagues as protagonists of “international governance” in the implementation of human rights should not be underestimated, however – and not only because of their nearly 120-year tradition. The present volume aims to contribute to the study of these historical traditions.

31 Deyanov is currently conducting research on both leagues. 32 See https://www.fidh.org/fr/qui-sommes-nous/le-mouvement-mondial-des-droits-humains/, consulted 6 December 2016.

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APPENDIX Human Rights Leagues in the Interwar Period, Part of the Ligue internationale des droits de l’homme (LIDH) or Fédération internationale des droits de l’homme (FIDH)33 Sources (unless otherwise indicated): Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine (BDIC), Paris-Nanterre, and “Les Cahiers des droits de l’homme”, periodical of the French Ligue des droits de l’homme (LDH) and of the Ligue internationale des droits de l’homme (LIDH) (1920/1922–1940). These sources list the names of persons mostly in a French spelling, which differs from that in the original language. The appendix assembles basic information on human rights leagues during the interwar period. Leagues discussed in detail in the present volume are in most cases only listed in alphabetical order with reference to their year of establishment as well as to the respective contribution and its author. 1. Albanian League Established in 1923? This league is mentioned as such at the LIDH congress 1923, Paris, see Cahiers des droits de l’homme, 1923. See BDIC, F delta res 0798/58, portfolio Albanian League. This portfolio contains an inventory of documents concerning 1922–1928 and listing 28 numbers. These documents, with the exception of an address list, do not figure in the portfolio. It contains a letter dated 20 October 1939 and addressed to Émile Kahn. The letter is anonymous but signed by “un groupe d’Albanais”. A document valid for 1928 states Tirana as the registered office, but the Albanian League’s president Bahri Omari was an emigrant in Paris. Listed as “correspondent”: Madame de Villa, Paris. Useful information concerning persons such as Bahri Omari can be found in: Ștefan Popescu, L’Albanie dans la politique étrangère de la France (1919–juin 1940), in: Bulletin de l’Institut Pierre Renouvin 41/2015, no. 1, 121–125.

33 As mentioned above, both names were used during the interwar period. Wolfgang Schmale would like to thank the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme for a grant in October and November 2016, which enabled him to conduct research on the history of human rights leagues in various Parisian archives. The complete results will be published separately, but it seemed useful to the authors to establish this overview of the interwar leagues and publish it here in this volume.

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2. Argentinian League Established in ? See BDIC, F delta res 0798/58, portfolio Argentinian League. Contains one copy of “Informativo Semanal de la Liga Argentina por los derechos del Hombre” (“N°.-20 (51), Lunes 13 de Junio de 1938 Año II”). Members of the bureau: President Dr. Mario Bravo, Secretary Dr. Arturo Frondizi (Buenos Aires). 3. Armenian League Established in 1922? in Paris. This league is mentioned at the LIDH congress in 1922 with Alexandre Khatissian as representative, see Cahiers des droits de l’homme, 1922. Khatissian was the first Foreign Minister and the second Prime Minister of the first Armenian Democratic Republic. After the occupation of Armenia by Ataturk Turkey and the Russian Red Army in 1920, he was in exile in France. There is no direct connection between this Armenian League and the Armenian Civil Society Institute established in 1998, although the latter is a member of FIDH.34 See BDIC, F delta res 0798/58, portfolio Armenian League. Letter by Khatissian, delegate to LDH or LIDH, dated 22 December 1932, reporting that the Armenian League numbers 32 members. The violation of human rights of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and in Turkey was an issue for the French LDH and has been discussed by Naquet and other authors in their studies on the LDH. 4. Austrian League Established in 1926, but contacts with LDH/LIDH as early as 1923 through Rudolf Goldscheid. See contribution by Christopher Treiblmayr. 5. Belgian League Established in 1901, dissolved in World War I, re-established in 1923. See contribution by David Morelli. Additional information on the Belgian League during the interwar period is to be found in BDIC, F delta res 0798/58, portfolio Belgian League. 34 Information kindly provided by Artak Kirakosyan, Chairman of the Board, Civil Society Institute, Yerevan. Email to Christopher Treiblmayr, 17 February 2014.

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6. Bulgarian League Established in 1922. See Stilyan Deyanov, La Ligue bulgare à travers les archives de la Ligue française, in: Grégory Cingal / Sonia Combe (eds.), Retour de Moscou. Les archives de la Ligue des droits de l’homme 1898–1940, Paris 2004, 71–82. 7. Chinese League Established in ? Present at the first LIDH congress, represented by Mademoiselle Tcheng35, see Cahiers des droits de l’homme, 1922. 8. Czechoslovakian League Established in 1926.36 See BDIC, F delta res 0798/60, portfolio Czechoslovakian League. Contains N° 1 of the journal “Menschenrechte. Organ der Liga für Menschenrechte in der Tschechoslowakischen Republick [sic!]” (Prague, January 1934, in German. There must also have been a Czech edition of this league journal). 9. Danish League Established in ? This league is mentioned at the LIDH congress in 1922, see Cahiers des droits de l’homme, 1922. 10. Danzig League Established in ? This league is first mentioned as attending the meeting of the LIDH Council in Paris on 30 May 1925, see Cahiers des droits de l’homme, 1925, 351. For 1926, the Cahiers, 185, list a Dr. Nichbenstein as representative of the Danzig League. It is also mentioned in 1928 and 1929 (Cahiers, 1928, 1929).

35 Naquet, Pour l’Humanité, 304, gives Ho Lien Tchen. 36 Information kindly provided by Zuzana Candigliota, Brno. Workshop at the University of Vienna, 24 May 2014.

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11. Egyptian League Established in ? This league seems to have been active only in Parisian exile. See F delta res 0798/58, portfolio Egyptian League. A document (24 February 1930) lists as secretary general Mr. K. Boubli (Paris), as secretary Tewfik Salib, as treasurer El Sayed Abou-Bakr Ratib (Paris). 12. English League An English league is mentioned as such, represented by Mr. Cox and Mr. Haskins, at the LIDH congress in 1923 (Paris), see Cahiers des droits de l’homme, 1923. Until 1929, Mrs. Bethell, Paris, is listed as representative. Further correspondence shows that this league was never established as an organisation that was a member of LIDH. It seems that the National Council of Civil Liberties (NCCL) and the Union of Democratic Control (UDC) in particular had close relations to LDH and LIDH. 13. French League Established in 1898. See the contributions by William D. Irvine, Gilles Manceron and Emmanuel Naquet. 14. Georgian League Established in 1923? This league is first mentioned as being present at the LIDH congress in 1923, see Cahiers des droits de l’homme, 1923. See BDIC, F delta res 0798/58, portfolio Georgian League. This league seems to have been active in Parisian exile. Datiko Sharashidze was its secretary and delegate to LIDH. 15. German League Established in 1914 as Bund Neues Vaterland. See contributions by Emmanuel Naquet (Bund Neues Vaterland) and Lora Wildenthal (German League for Human Rights).

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16. Greek League Established in 1918. See contribution by Michalis Moraitidis. In BDIC, F delta res 0798/58, there is a portfolio Greek League, but it does not provide any information beyond that given by Moraitidis. 17. Haitian League Established in 1924, see Cahiers des droits de l’homme, 1924. See BDIC, F delta res 0798/58, portfolio Haitian League. This league was active in Port-au-Prince. On 14 November 1929, the bureau was composed of: President L. C. Lherisson, ancien sénateur Port-au-Prince; Vice-President Dr. H. Brigord; Secretary Generals W. Bellegarde and G. H. Jacob; Treasurer André Faubert, ancien consul d’Haïti à Port-au-Prince. 18. Hungarian League Established in 1923, present in 1923 at the LIDH congress, mentioned as Hungarian League. See BDIC, F delta res 0798/58, portfolio Hungarian League. This portfolio contains an inventory of documents concerning 1927–1930 listing 42 numbers, and a second for 1930 listing six numbers. These documents do not figure in the portfolio. N° 1 in the first list mentions a letter concerning the theft of 700 documents of the Hungarian League. The registered office was settled in Boulogne s/Seine. Members of the central committee were (no date indicated): Ernest Bóta, Alexandre Balogh, Adolphe Loffler, Nuitray Kloman, Jean Szucs, Alex Karolyi, Emeric Horvath. Delegates to LIDH: Ernest Bóta, Adolphe Loffler, Alexandre Balogh. Among the first presidents was Imre Veér, a left-wing politician and controversial figure of the Hungarian emigration. In the interwar period, the League’s prime concern was to support Hungarian political refugees in obtaining visas or permits to stay in France.37 19. Italian League Established in 1922 in French exile. See contribution by Eric Vial.

37 Information kindly provided by Balázs Abloncy, who is conducting research on the Hungarian League.

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20. Ligue internationale des droits de l’homme Established in 1922, Paris, also called Fédération internationale des droits de l’homme. See contribution by Gilles Manceron. 21. Luxembourgish League Established in 1923. See contribution by Paul Fonck. 22. Norwegian League Established in ? This league is mentioned as present at the first LIDH congress in 1922 with Mr. Robert Lange as representative, see Cahiers des droits de l’homme, 1922. BDIC, F delta res 0798/60 contains a portfolio Norwegian League, but it remains unclear whether the only document in it, a letter written by a lawyer to Victor Basch regarding the Trotsky affair, is connected to a Norwegian league. 23. Palestinian League The LIDH congress 1922 debated the proposition by some Zionists living in Paris to establish a Palestinian league; the congress refused because it should find its members among Jews, Christians and Arabs [sic!], see Cahiers des droits de l’homme, 1922. A Palestinian league (Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem) appears later in LIDH correspondence, but is affiliated with the National Council for Civil Liberties. 24. Polish League Established in 1921 in Warsaw. See contribution by Izabela Mrzygłód. Additional material see BDIC, F delta res 0798/60, portfolio Polish League. In 1936, the Polish League maintained an office or section in Paris with Dr. Adam Stein (Faculté de Médecine, Paris) as secretary. In 1937, it had 14 members in Paris, with some of these being French (naturalised?) citizens. Central committee: President Herman Liebermann (ancien député polonais, member of Exécutif de l’Internationale Ouvrière Socialiste), Secretary General Thadée Oppman (docteur en droit, French citizen), VicePresident Mme Docteur Wanda Causse (médecin, French citizen), Vice-President

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François Sobecki, Treasurer Mme Irène Domanski-Dubois (docteur ès-Sciences, French citizen). 25. Portuguese League Established in 1920 or 1921.38 See BDIC, F delta res 0798/60, portfolio Portuguese League. Active in Lisbon. The portfolio reveals no special interest. This league was represented at the LIDH congress in 1922 by Mr. Fabra Ribas, see Cahiers des droits de l’homme, 1922. 26. Rumanian League Established in 1923 in Bucharest. See contribution by Stilyan Deyanov. 27. Russian League Established provisionally in Paris in 1922. This league is mentioned at the LIDH congress in 1922 with Mr. Minor as representative, see Cahiers des droits de l’homme, 1922. The central committee was elected in 1924, see Cahiers, 1924. See BDIC, F delta res 0798/60, portfolio Russian League. Contains an inventory for 1917–1928 with 90 numbers, and a second one for 1929–1930 with six numbers. The documents are not in the portfolio. Leading figures were Nicolai Avxentieff, Jacob L. Rubinstein, Boris Mirkin-Getzevich, et al. There seems to have been a strong Menshevik influence on this league.39 28. Spanish League Established in 1922 (two precursors: 1909; 1913–1922). Active in Spain (Madrid and Barcelona) and in French exile. See contribution by Paul Aubert.

38 According to the information kindly provided by the Liga Portuguesa dos Direitos Humanos – CIVITAS for the workshop at Vienna University in May 2014, it was established in 1921 by Freemasons with links to the republican and socialist political spectrum. In cooperation with our research team, Manuel Malheiros is the head of a working group carrying out research on the Portuguese League’s history. 39 Mantas Viselga, Erasmus trainee from the University of Vilnius, carried out research on this league under the editors’ supervision.

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29. Swedish League Established in ? This league is mentioned at the LIDH congress in 1922, see Cahiers des droits de l’homme, 1922. 30. Swiss League Established in 1928, but contacts with LDH/LIDH as early as 1922. It was present at the LIDH congress in 1922, see Cahiers des droits de l’homme, 1922. See contribution by Doris Leuenberger and Patrick Herzig. 31. United States League Established in ? Mrs. Loeventhal-Mardfin (the spelling varies in the Cahiers des droits de l’homme) is mentioned as representative of the U.S. League. It was probably not a league in the strict sense of LIDH, but there was a strong intent on the part of LDH to establish such a league. Mrs. Loeventhal-Mardfin seems to have attempted to do so. 32. Yugoslavian League Established in ? This league is mentioned in 1927, see Cahiers des droits de l’homme, 1927, 234. See BDIC, F delta res 0798/60, portfolio Yugoslavian League. Names given for March 1933: President Svetozar Pribitchevitch, Secretary Vladimir Raditch (journaliste), Treasurer Charles Valenszak (négociant), to convoke: Pribitchevitch, Dr. Vorkapitch.

CONTRIBUTIONS

WAR, PEACE AND HUMAN RIGHTS The Dilemma of the Ligue des droits de l’homme William D. Irvine Alexis de Tocqueville legendarily noted that the French declaration of August 1789 was called the Declaration of the Rights of Man and not the Declaration of the Rights of French Men. The association, the Ligue des droits de l’homme founded 109 years later took that point seriously. True, it was founded to defend the rights of a French army officer, Captain Dreyfus, wrongly and illegally convicted of treason. But throughout its history the League paid special attention to human rights abuses beyond the frontiers of France. Whether it was the execution of a Spanish anarchist, Sacco and Vanzetti in the U.S.A., or the victims of the Italian Fascist regime or the Nazi regime, the League was at the forefront in protesting human rights abuses. And these protests carried some weight because the League was by a wide measure the largest and most influential in the world. Three things stand out about the French League for Human Rights. It was very large, very political and very politically connected. Starting with a few hundred members at its foundation, within ten years it had grown to 80,000. At its peak in the early 1930s it had 180,000 members, organized in some 2,500 local sections. In France, a nation of “non-joiners”, this was a large number and probably more than all French political parties put together. Members of the League came from all walks of life, but civil servants and public school teachers were overrepresented as were, in increasing levels of importance, Jews, Protestants and Freemasons.1 The League was always very political. This requires some explanation because it officially always claimed to be above politics. It was not, it often asserted, on the left or the right but on the ceiling, concerned only with the defense of the rights of man and above the partisan political fray. “Ici on ne fait pas de la politique” (we do not do politics here) was a standard League mantra. In fact, however, this was a polite fiction. Rather more accurate (and more candid) was the 1930 assertion by the president of one of the League’s larger departmental federations that the League did not care about the political orientation of its members “provided that they are red”.2 Here he was simply making the obvious point 1

2

For general histories of the League, see: Emmanuel Naquet, Pour l’Humanité. La Ligue des droits de l’homme de l’affaire Dreyfus à la défaite de 1940, Rennes 2014. William D. Irvine, Between Justice and Politics. The Ligue des droits de l’homme, 1898–1945, Stanford 2007. Notre Action. Bulletin mensuel de la Fédération de l’Aisne, December 1932.

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that by the interwar years, virtually all members of the League supported left wing parties ranging from the Radicals to the Socialists. To be sure, this had not always been the case. Many of the League’s founders and early leaders had been moderately conservative republicans. They shared the leadership with representatives of the Radical party, the principal left-wing party in the late 19th century that was eventually pushed to the center-right by the emerging Socialist party by 1900. Socialists initially expressed reservation about the League, not finding the defense of a bourgeois army officer to be exactly their issue. Soon though the more astute of them recognized that, broadly interrelated, the defense of human rights could be extended to causes they did care about: anti-clericalism, anti-capitalism and pacifism. This did require a certain amount of dialectical ingenuity given that the League’s charter, the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man, was actually silent on those issues. But Socialists insisted that the Declaration was a living document which could be interpreted to deal with issues which were congruent with the spirit of the older document, if not its literal wording. The conservatives in the League, not at all interested in anti-capitalism or pacifism, saw this development as part of a socialist take-over and by about 1911 had largely quit the organization. At any time thereafter, the League belonged to those – ranging from Radicals to Socialists – who identified themselves as being on the left. The League was also well-connected politically. In 1932, no fewer than 222 (out of just shy of 600) of the parliamentarians in the Chamber of Deputies belonged to the League. Given the size of the League, it is likely that many of those who packed a membership card did so because they saw it primarily as a useful electoral accoutrement. Many others, however, held offices in the local or national branches of the League and had done so long before they ran for national office (thereby inevitably giving rise to the suspicion that they regarded League activity as an electoral springboard). To the extreme exasperation of the more militant League rank and file, most League members in the legislative body saw no particular reason to ensure that their parliamentary votes conformed to League principles. Even worse, the public deportment of some betrayed an absolute indifference to even the most elastic of the League’s basic principles. A graphic illustration of this is provided by the Stavisky scandal that engulfed France in the early 1930s. Serge Alexandre Stavisky was a charming rogue, but also a ruthless financial swindler. His name was on the police blotter by the mid-1920s, but his well-deserved appointment with the judicial system was delayed for the better part of a decade until his all too convenient suicide at the end of 1933. In time it transpired that the principal reason for this delay had been the interventions of assorted deputies and ministers whom Stavisky had assiduously cultivated. This was the kind of corruption that the League, forever calling for an open and more honest democracy, would love to have denounced. Its protests, however, were muted by the awkward fact that eight of the nine parliamentarians implicated in the scandal unfortunately happened to belong to the League. The political influence of the French League for Human Rights went beyond deputies in parliament and extended to ministers. This was so because France had a multi-party political system in which no party had a majority, and consequently

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all governments were coalitions. By virtue of being the largest party in France and located near the middle of the political spectrum, the Radical party was indispensable for the formation of any government. Sometimes the governments were center-left ones, with the Radicals governing with the more or less reliable support of parties to their left. Rather more often, though, governments were center-right governments running from the Radicals on the left through to parties on the right and even the extreme right. The presence of League ministers in such governments was always a sore issue with the more militant members of the League, who were unhappy to learn that between 25 and 40 per cent of the ministers in what they took to be unqualified reactionary governments in the mid-1930s belonged to the League. This led to a protracted series of bitter feuds in the interwar years that tied down a great deal of the League’s energy. Some, but not all, of this internecine quarrelling ended in 1936, when for the first time a genuine left-wing government – Léon Blum’s Popular Front – came to power, dominated by the Socialists. In this government, no fewer than 29 of the 34 ministers belonged to the League. Many, like Blum himself and his Foreign Minister Yvon Delbos, had been members of the League’s central committee; a further five were sitting on the central committee upon being offered a portfolio. In many critical respects, this was the League in power, and the fact was not lost on rank and file leaguers. If the sheer size of the League attracted politicians, the political clout of the League attracted members. As the organization’s copious files reveal, many of its members considered the League to be primarily a patronage organization. Whether it was admission to or advancement within the civil service, or help with individual legal problems, membership in a politically well-connected organization had an obvious appeal.3 The League also had a very broad definition of the rights of man. Among the rights it identified was the right not to be killed in a foreign war. As many League members would argue in the interwar years, if the illegal conviction of a single army officer should be a concern for the League, then surely too should be the death of 1.4 million young men in what many believed to have been an utterly unnecessary war. Thus the issue of war and peace would loom large in the League’s history – and it would, paradoxically, have dire consequences for the League’s general commitment to the rights of man. To be sure, prior to 1914 the issues of war and peace played a minor role in the League’s internal debates. For the most part, the League limited itself to platonic resolutions to the effect that mediation was a better solution to diplomatic disputes than was war. But 1914 changed all that. During the war, the League strenuously opposed the wartime restrictions on civil liberties and tenaciously defended the victims of the often brutal treatment of soldiers subjected to military court martials. But with respect to the war itself, the official League position was that France was fighting a legitimate defensive war against a bellicose neighbor currently occupying large parts of its territory. By 1915, however, a small but vociferous minority in the League began to challenge that assessment. Based on 3

See Irvine, Between Justice, ch. 5.

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their reading of the diplomatic record, at least as it was known at the time, this minority did not believe that Germany was primarily responsible for the war’s origins. From their perspective it appeared that France and (above all) its ally Russia were at least partially, if not rather more, responsible for what had gone wrong in the summer of 1914. So rather than continuing this slaughter, the minority would argue, League traditions dictated a call for a negotiated, or mediated, settlement. These were courageous but also wildly unpopular sentiments in a nation at war, rejected outright by the vast majority of League members. Peace did not bring an end to the internal tensions within the League, however; on the contrary, they intensified. The League’s majority did recognize the imperfections in the post-war settlement, but generally agreed that in balance it was both judicious and legitimate. For the minority, however, the post-war settlement was merely a Carthaginian peace imposed by the victors, and predicated on the unwarranted assumption of German war guilt codified in the notorious Article 323 of the Versailles treaty. This was in their view both very bad history – and even worse public policy – because this kind of unfair and punitive peace was calculated to ensure yet another murderous go around. The internal debates in the League on this subject were both intense and viperous, but until 1933 they also had a somewhat academic quality. This was to change in 1933, however. For the majority in the League, Hitler’s seizure of power simply confirmed their suspicion that Prussian militarism and nationalism had not, alas, been extirpated with the German defeat of 1918. The only way to preserve the peace was to quarantine Germany with an international cordon sanitaire, initially called a “club of the democracies” and later labeled as “collective security”. But the increasingly influential minority was having none of this: Yes, Hitler was a problem, they said, but France had no one to blame but herself. Had it not been for the punitive Versailles settlement and the obtuse allied diplomacy of the 1920s, Hitler would still be eking out a living painting postcards. Nor were Hitler’s demands all that unreasonable. As the League minority read it, Hitler was principally concerned with getting rid of the armament and territorial clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. Yes, multilateral disarmament was a good idea, but why was Germany alone expected to disarm? And Hitler’s territorial demands with respect to the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland and even Danzig were surely not much more than the expectation that the principle of national selfdetermination, so piously articulated by Wilson, be evenly applied. Having lost 1.4 million young men as a result of an obscure quarrel in the Balkans, did it really make sense to do it all over again just to prevent Hitler from annexing a bunch of Germans who – for the most part – wanted to be annexed? Given the looming threat of war, surely there were more powerful reasons than ever for sincere negotiations with Germany. Nor would it do to argue that one could not do business with the Nazi dictatorship, since France had notoriously not been willing to seriously engage the demands of its previous democratic regime. All of the talk about collective security struck the minority as but a disingenuous euphemism for the famous entangling alliances which had done so much harm in 1914, dragging France into a war over some obscure dispute in the Balkans.

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Many of these arguments were, on the face of them, valid. But they were difficult to make in the League context. After all, the League prided itself on being the conscience of democracy and had of course been founded to defend Captain Dreyfus from anti-Semitic animosity. And Hitler had not only destroyed German democracy, but was obsessively anti-Semitic. So these were issues that the League’s growing minority needed to address, and there began a campaign to put the Hitler regime into “perspective”. Perhaps the most moderate attempt at this exercise came from the head of one of the more important League sections in Paris. While he claimed to deplore Hitler’s dictatorship, he was also quick to note that it was rapidly putting people back to work, something that French democracy was not doing. Yes, the Nazi government had destroyed the free press; but how was this different from France where, he believed, the press was effectively controlled by the “puissances d’argent”, i.e. the power of money. And perhaps France should not be lecturing Germany about democracy given that France had just witnessed the Stavisky scandal, which featured significant French parliamentarians corrupted by a notorious crook and scoundrel.4 All this was a bit of a stretch, of course: The condition of the French press was not remotely similar to that of its German counterpart, and the complete destruction of German democracy was something very different from the corruption of a handful of French parliamentarians – almost all of whom, although he chose to overlook this fact, were members of the League. Others went further, excoriating the League majority for focusing only the negative dimensions of fascism, apparently unaware that fascism had “a positive aspect, capable of seducing the masses”.5 The secretary general of the League’s powerful federation of the Rhone, a former communist, declared Nazism to be a “popular movement” and part of the “revolt of the youth against the old beards”.6 As for Nazi anti-Semitism, a writer for the League’s student organization belligerently wondered if German Jews had given any thought to the reasons behind their “eternal grievances”. Could it be that their “ethnic pride” and “sense of superiority” had separated them from “the popular masses”? And just perhaps German Jews “should be smart enough to understand that certain privileged occupations are not exclusively reserved for them”.7 The passage of time and Hitler’s continued aggression did nothing to alter the thinking of the minority. At the time of the Munich crisis of 1938, Félicien Challaye, a thirty-year veteran of the League’s central committee, had spent a week in Germany. What he brought back with him was open admiration for the regime. Any socialist, he opined, would be far more comfortable with Nazi Germany than with the decadent Weimar Republic. Yes, there was the troubling question of the German Jews, some of whom were incontestably good Jews paying the price for the domineering behavior of most German Jews. But surely at the time 4 5 6 7

Cahiers des droits de l’homme (CDH, house organ of the League), 1934, 79f. Libres Propos, 25 May 1934. CDH, 1933, 680–683. Université Républicaine, February 1935.

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of the French Revolution there had been good aristocrats who had paid the price for the evil behavior of the bad ones. Would one really want to deny the legitimacy of the French Revolution by decrying the execution of a handful of “good” aristocrats?8 Challaye was increasingly obsessed with Jews, especially French Jews who he believed wanted to “use the French army, the British navy and the Soviet and Czech air forces” to destroy a regime that was persecuting their coreligionists.9 He was not alone. His fellow central committee member, Gaston Bergery, insisted that in order to understand Nazi anti-Semitism, one would have to have been in Germany in 1923 (as he had been) and witnessed the “opulence of Jewish businessmen” riding around in their luxury automobiles, utterly indifferent to the starving masses of the population.10 This singularly indulgent attitude towards anti-Semitism reflected the fact that for many in the pacifist minority, French Jews were attempting to force France into yet another war. Upon learning of the protests of the majority concerning the Munich settlement, Elie Reynier, president of the important League federation of the Ardèche, resigned from the League and in the process denounced its leaders for being controlled by “Stalinist warmongers”. He provided a long list of these warmongers, most of whom he pointedly remarked were Jews.11 In fact, by the late 1930s members of the minority were in the habit of legitimizing the Nazi regime by comparing it favorably to the French Revolution, while simultaneously excoriating Jewish warmongers. As the uncontested leader of the minority and central committee member, Léon Emery would contend that there was much to admire in the “revolutionary dynamism” of the new Germany, every bit as revolutionary a regime as revolutionary France. Hitler had a “very wide popular base” attracted by his regime’s “egalitarian sentiments”, and Fascism was in fact a form of “authoritarian socialism”, preferable in all respects to the tepid socialism that prevailed in France. As for the German Jews, they were “a social class against which the people have mobilized”. This was a characteristic trait of revolutions, wholly analogous and just as legitimate as revolutionary France’s mobilization against the aristocracy or the Soviet mobilization against the Kulaks.12 Now, in all respects this was extraordinary language coming from prominent members of the League. Two points should be made here: Firstly, these were the views of a minority, though it was not a small one. The pacifist minority led by Emery carried the votes of 40 per cent of the League delegates at its 1935 congress, and 25 per cent two years later. Most of the people cited above held seats in the League’s central committee and/or its powerful departmental congresses. Secondly, the passage of time did not alter these views much. Many – though not all – 8 9 10 11

Huit jours de Septembre en Allemagne, Paris 1938. La Patrie humaine, 28 October 1938. La Flèche, 2 September 1938. Reynier to Victor Basch, 14 October 1938, Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine, Nanterre, Archives de la Ligue des droits de l’homme, carton 133. 12 Feuilles libres de la quinzaine, 10 September and 31 December 1938.

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members of the minority would welcome the Vichy regime after 1940, enthusiastically endorse its collaboration with Nazi Germany, and continue their vituperations against warmonger Jews. The League majority was properly aghast at the stance of their colleagues in the minority. But the majority had its own Achilles heel: Its preferred strategy for saving the peace was collective security, but this strategy presumed a number of diplomatic and military partners of whom there were not so very many in the late 1930s. The most obvious candidate was the Soviet Union, but it was inconveniently a dictatorship – and a rather murderous one at that. Members of the minority were given to wondering why exactly France could not do business with Nazi Germany because it was a dictatorship, but could ally itself with the equally dictatorial Soviet Union, which in the late 1930s was killing people at a rate that was several orders of magnitude greater than anything Hitler could muster at the time. This became a real issue in 1936 with the beginning of the notorious Moscow show trials in which old Bolsheviks, central architects of the Soviet Regime in the 1920s, were somewhat implausibly accused of conspiring with foreign and counter-revolutionary agents to destroy that very same regime. But the defendants were tried in open court in the presence of the foreign press – and all confessed to their crimes, often in lurid detail. They had no obvious motive for lying, since there was no possibility of mitigating the inevitable death sentence should they be convicted. The League majority was clearly discomfited by the trials, but clung gamely to the confessions as evidence of guilt, a position not in fact so very different from that of many progressive observers in the west. The minority, by contrast – accustomed by their years in the League to subjecting all judicial proceedings to critical scrutiny –, went over the transcripts with a gimlet eye. And they soon noted many obvious contradictions: The defendants had confessed to meeting and conspiring with people they could not have met, in places they could not have been. The majority was unmoved by all of this, and in a significant departure from League practice refused to publish the findings. They nevertheless commissioned a distinguished Parisian lawyer, Marc Rosenmark, to present a report assessing the trials. Rosenmark did concede that there were some procedural irregularities in the Moscow trials, but nonetheless stuck to his belief that those confessions provided sufficient evidence that innocent individuals had not been convicted. As for the inconsistencies in the confessions, he dismissed them as slips of the tongue or lapses in memory. But he also went a good deal further by concluding: It is permitted to think that there are times when a revolution can only be saved by extreme measures and that one should not, at certain times, abandon recourse to exceptional measures. The right to self-defense exists for individuals and, a fortiori, it exists for nations. To refuse a people the right to deal severely with those who make civil war and with conspirators linked to foreign powers would be to deny [the historical experience of] the French Revolution.

Yes, he conceded, most of the time “scrupulous respect for principles and exclusive recourse to civil courts” was to be desired. Nonetheless,

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William D. Irvine in times of crisis, of international or external danger, in the presence of terrorist activities, not only should one not blame but one should praise all peoples and regimes that have the courage to establish, if need be, revolutionary tribunals. 13

Three things are remarkable about this extraordinary language. One, Rosenmark simply and uncritically took the Soviet charges at face value. Two, he was using the classic language of raison d’état that would have been far more appropriate for the fin-de-siècle anti-Dreyfusards than for a member of an organization founded to defend Captain Dreyfus. Finally, he was emulating members of the minority in using the French Revolution to legitimate dictatorial regimes. For all of that, his report still received the support of 75 per cent of the League delegates at its 1937 congress. And Rosenmark’s rhetoric certainly also resonated with other leaders of the League. Émile Guerry, another member of the League’s central committee, would later observe: We must carefully restrain ourselves from overtly, or even indirectly, attacking the leaders of the Soviet democracy. Even if their justice was summary, they are entitled to a good deal of understanding from the sons of the French revolution which was, at times and with good reason, a bit quick to judge and somewhat heavy of hand. Let us not forget that a regime that does not defend itself does not deserve to survive.

“Revolutionary periods,” he added, “do not lend themselves to abstract absolutes and for good or for bad one must be content with relative justice”. After all, one might usefully “recall the multiple executions which took place in France during the Revolution [at the time of] the threat of the European coalition”.14 Not everyone in the League felt entirely comfortable invoking the French Revolution to defend Stalin. Others took a more pragmatic approach: League secretary general Émile Kahn would later inform the members that it was not League policy to dispute the right of any government to dismiss civil servants who did not agree with that government’s policy. In fact, he wistfully noted, he rather regretted that Léon Blum’s government had not done of this kind of thing; had it done so, it might have lasted longer. At this point Kahn seems to have forgotten that it had never been League policy to permit governments to dismiss civil servants merely because they had different political views. He also seems to have overlooked the fact that the officials in the Soviet Union had not been dismissed; they had been executed. And while Kahn was manifestly not calling for Soviet style purges in France, it is astounding enough that he felt comfortable comparing the dismissal of a prefect with the judicial murder of Old Bolsheviks.15 So what do we conclude from all of this? What I conclude is that if one expands the definition of human rights broadly enough, then some rights are going to lose out to others. If the preservation of peace becomes the single most important human right, then depending on your strategy for keeping the peace, other human rights will have to be sacrificed. If pacifist appeasement is your strategy, 13 CDH, 1936, 750. 14 CDH, 1936, 762. 15 CDH, 1938, 126.

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then the fate of German Jews is not that big a deal – and frankly something of an annoying nuisance. If collective security is the chosen strategy, then let us not get too excited about all the people that Stalin is executing. It did not have to be this way. One might have made the case for the appeasement of Nazi Germany without seeking to legitimate its domestic policies. And with respect to Stalinist Russia, there is a compelling case for one holding one’s nose and saying “warts and all, he is the only ally we have”. But the League members I have cited here did not hold their nose; they breathed in the patent demagogy of one of the most evil regimes ever. At some point, someone in the League ought to have said: Judicial murders, whether committed by Jacobins, Hitler, or Stalin, do not justify one another and ought to be condemned out of hand. By the late 1930s, however, no one had. To be sure, these were difficult times and difficult choices. And as I have written elsewhere, the League had some fine moments – but this was not one of them. The post-war League would pay a price for what can only be described as its pre-war and, even more markedly, wartime moral ambivalence. Its membership, which had already declined by a third by 1939, effectively disappeared in the post-war period. Twenty years after the end of the conflict, it stood at about 7 per cent of what it had been in 1932. There are many reasons for this decline, but it is hard not to believe that the League’s moral authority, so esteemed in 1932, lost much of its luster when so many of its leaders, despite what were often good intentions, found themselves expressing a benevolent enthusiasm for two of the more murderous dictatorships of the century.

THE FRENCH LIGUE DES DROITS DE L’HOMME’S INTEREST IN INTERNATIONAL ISSUES FROM 1898 TO THE 1980s Founding and Supporting the Fédération internationale des droits de l’homme Gilles Manceron From its foundation in June 1898 at the time of the unjust conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus up to the 1980s, the French League for the Defence of the Rights of Men and Citizens (LDH) was much concerned with international issues. In particular, it founded the Fédération internationale des droits de l’homme (FIDH) in 1922 and took a lot upon itself to support it. But the history of its international work for human rights does not coincide with the memory of their past cultivated by both organisations, despite the work of Emmanuel Naquet on the period from 1898 to 1940, especially in his article “L’action de la Fédération internationale des Ligues des droits de l’Homme (FIDH) entre les deux guerres”.1 The FIDH might be described particularly well by a quote of historian Emmanuel Debono about another organisation, the International League against Anti-Semitism (LICA), when he wrote that its history “is shrouded in a myth-inspiring mist”.2 In fact, over the whole period from 1898 to the 1980s, the FIDH was the name of a loose network strongly linked to the French LDH and dependent on it for its choices and decisions. The only exception was the FIDH congress in Brussels in 1926, which the French LDH did not control, but already in 1927, the French LDH had again recovered its leading role which, as we will see below, may be due to the Belgian League all but withdrawing until World War II. There was a gap in the FIDH’s existence in and around the war; it was inactive from 1937 to 1951. Until the 1970s, its activities again were entirely dependent on the initiative of the French LDH to organise meetings, which it usually did on the occasion of its own conferences. Then, in the late 1980s, a major shift came about in the history of the FIDH when it gained its independence from the French LDH.

1

2

Emmanuel Naquet, L’action de la Fédération internationale des Ligues des droits de l’Homme (FIDH) entre les deux guerres, in: Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps 93/2009, 53–64. Also: Emmanuel Naquet, Pour l’Humanité. La Ligue des droits de l’homme de l’affaire Dreyfus à la défaite de 1940, Rennes 2014. Emmanuel Debono, Aux origines de l’antiracisme. La LICA, 1927–1940, Paris 2012. This historian shows that, in the case of the LICA, historical facts do not necessarily match the memory of its past cultivated within the organisation today – its history “est entourée d’une brume propice aux mythes” (11).

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1898–1922: THE FRENCH LDH TAKES CARE OF ALL THE WORLD While the French LDH was founded in reaction to a French event, the manifesto adopted by its first general assembly said that the League would provide “help and assistance” to “any individual whose liberty was threatened and whose rights were violated”.3 No detailed information was given about those concerned: did this phrase refer to French residents only, or to any human being no matter where he or she lived? In fact, during its first years of existence, the activities of the French LDH not only concerned internal French issues, but also human rights violations committed abroad.4 In 1898, for instance, the French LDH protested against the suppression of the Finnish constitution by the Tsar.5 In the following year, its president Ludovic Trarieux (1840–1904) went to Saint Petersburg and protested against the violation of public liberties in Finland.6 On 11 December 1899, the French LDH passed a resolution protesting against the massacres of Armenians committed by the Ottomans as well as against the crimes committed by the French in the Sudan (today’s Mali) in the course of colonial expeditions: Human rights are absolute for all human creatures and cannot be revoked, and no raison d’État is able to exclude these peoples from these rights in colonial expeditions, be it black or white inhabitants of the countries under the domination of France.

Its general assembly on 23 December declared that the “League” intercedes abroad in favour of the Finnish, the Jews of Romania, the Armenians, and the Transvaal, and in the colonies for the Jews of Algeria and the victims of colonial expeditions, for Prince Rakotomena and the Queen of Madagascar. 7

On 16 June 1900, the association organised a meeting in the Parisian Théâtre du Vaudeville in support of 80,000 Armenian orphans, victims of the massacres 3

4 5 6 7

Archives of the LDH. The French League’s archives from the period before World War II were returned by Moscow in 2001 and are now at the Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine (BDIC) at the Université Paris-Ouest-Nanterre, they contain 123 files about the meetings of the FIDH and its relations with foreign leagues: “Ligue internationale des droits de l’homme” (1930–1938). Meeting minutes, convening letters, congress of 1937, intercession files (16 files), and national leagues: Germany (31 files), Albania (2 files), England (2 files), Argentine (1 file), Armenia (2 files), Austria (2 files), Belgium (5 files), Bulgaria (6 files), Spain (5 files), Greece (1 file), Hungary (6 files), Italy (19 files), Luxembourg (2 files), Norway (1 file), Poland (9 files), Portugal (1 file), Russia (2 files), Switzerland (5 files), Czechoslovakia (5 files). The French League’s archives from the period after World War II have also been deposited at the BDIC and will be accessible in 2018. They contain only a small number of documents about the FIDH and the foreign leagues until the 1980s. Emmanuel Naquet, La Ligue des Droits de l’Homme. De la défense de l’individu à la défense des peuples? (1898–1919), in: Lendemains 89/1998, 14–27. Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 0842 (2), Minutes of the first meetings of the central committee of the French LDH (1898–1900). Minutes of the first meetings, 10 July 1899. Minutes of the first meetings, 11 and 23 December 1899.

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committed by the troops of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II.8 A few months later, the LDH protested against the massacres of the Chinese population in Peking committed by European troops.9 In 1904, the French LDH sent its president Francis de Pressensé (1853–1914) to the international congress for Armenia in Brussels, asked for European control in Macedonia and Armenia and demanded the liberation of Dervish Hima, an Albanian patriot illegally arrested by the Turkish authorities, who was liberated in 1909. At the time of the revolution in Russia in 1905, a resolution adopted on 25 January by its central committee condemned the Tsar’s army’s shootings of demonstrators in Saint Petersburg on 22 January.10 The LDH also protested against the arrest of Maxim Gorki and many of his compatriots and blamed the French government for having allowed the sale of Russian stocks in France. 11 In 1908, the LDH protested against the French authorities’ decision to ban Doctor Sun Yat-sen, an opponent of the Imperial Chinese regime, from staying in French Indochina, threatening his expulsion.12 During the Second Balkan War in 1913, the League condemned the atrocities committed by the Greeks, Bulgarians, and Turks.13 Until the outbreak of World War I, the LDH supported Jean Jaurès’ efforts, together with different European deputies in Germany and Belgium, to prevent the European conflict, and it honoured him after his assassination in 1914 for his stand against the impending disaster.14 During World War I, the LDH’s central committee created a commission to reflect on the war aims, and demanded the creation of a Société des Nations (League of Nations) based on justice.15 On 23 October 1915, its president Ferdinand Buisson (1841–1932) and the director of the newspaper “Pro Armenia”, Victor Bérard, wrote to the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, to condemn “the systematic extermination of the Armenian race”. 16 In the following year, the LDH demanded the restoration of freedom in Poland.17 And at its November 1916 congress in Paris, the League defined the conditions of a lasting peace and the role a Société des nations should play after the conflict.18 1917 was an important year because of the rising hope of re-establishing international contacts, especially through the project of an international socialist meeting in 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18

Minutes of the first meetings, 18 December 1899, 16 June 1900. Resolution adopted by the LDH’s central committee on 25 February 1901, in: Bulletin officiel de la Ligue des droits de l’homme, 1 March 1901, 169–173. Bulletin officiel, 1 February 1905, 68f. Bulletin officiel, 15 March 1906, 322, and 15 February 1909, 197. Bulletin officiel, 15 January 1909, 18. Bulletin officiel, 15 August 1913, 955. Bulletin officiel, 1 November 1915, 387f. Emmanuel Naquet, Guerre et droit. L’inconciliable? L’exemple de la Ligue des droits de l’homme de l’avant à l’après 14–18, in: Mil neuf cent. Revue d’histoire intellectuelle 23/2005, 93–110. Bulletin officiel, 1 October 1917, 593–656, 1–15 November 1917, 657–683, and 15 December 1917, 808–810. Bulletin officiel, 1 May 1916, 295f. Bulletin officiel, 1 June 1917, 514. Bulletin officiel, January 1917, 3–5.

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Stockholm that the vice-president and later president of the French LDH, Victor Basch (1863–1944) supported.19 Within the French LDH, a minority insisted on a French co-responsibility in starting the war and argued for ending it by a compromise peace through an arbitration agreement by neutral states.20 But the majority of the Paris congress in July adopted a motion demanding to continue the war to its end, without annexations except the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France, and a joint resolution about the organisation of a Société des nations. Just before the armistice in November 1918, LDH president Ferdinand Buisson insisted on the need for an immediate creation of such a League of Nations.21 This demand was approved by the LDH in 1918 on its December congress in Paris.22 At this congress, Gabriel Séailles presented a report on the principle of nationalities and its application.23 The French LDH proclaimed its strong support of the ideas of U.S. president Woodrow Wilson on the issue, and endorsed the right of peoples to selfdetermination, underlining the advantages of federalism. The report disapproved of “racial nationalism” and “linguistic nationalism”, both extremely strong in Germany at the time. Regarding the Bolshevik October Revolution in Russia, the congress reaffirmed that respect of liberty constituted the precondition for any democratic regime. This congress established an enquiry commission about Russia. In 1919, the French LDH demanded the election of a constituent assembly, which the Bolsheviks refused. Nevertheless, the League opposed any military intervention in Russia.24 In an article in the LDH periodical “Les Cahiers des droits de l’homme” published on 5 January 1920, Vice-President Victor Basch criticised the conditions imposed on Germany and other European countries by the peace conference held in Paris25, whereas, on the LDH congress in Strasbourg, a minority voiced a much more radical denunciation of the peace treaties.26 At the same time, the French LDH took a stand against a two-year military service and organised a meeting in support of Ireland.27 In 1922, it harshly condemned the imminent occupation of the Ruhr. From the conviction in 1921 of Ferdinando Sacco and Bartolomeo

19 Françoise Basch, Victor Basch. De l’affaire Dreyfus au crime de la Milice, Paris 1994, 152. 20 Emmanuel Naquet, La Société d’études documentaires et critiques sur la guerre, in: Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps 30/1993, 6–10. Gilles Manceron, Pacifisme et Défense nationale. Penser la Grande Guerre dans la période 1914–1945, in: Marie-Claude L’Huillier / Anne Jollet (eds.), Guerre et paix. Troisièmes rencontres d’Histoire critique, Paris 2015, 93– 103. 21 Bulletin officiel, 1–15 April 1918, 193–256, 1–15 June, 318–327, and 1–15 August 1918, 454–457. 22 Bulletin officiel, May 1919, 355–363, and August 1919, 219f. 23 Bulletin officiel, August 1919, 33–39. 24 Bulletin officiel, 5 February 1920, 3–12. 25 Bulletin officiel, 5 January 1920, 4–9. 26 Bulletin officiel, 20 May 1920, 11–18. 27 Bulletin officiel, 5 November 1920, 18.

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Figure 1. Victor Basch. Courtesy of Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine, Archives of the LDH.

Vanzetti, two Italian anarchist immigrants accused of murder during a robbery in the U.S.A., to their execution in 1927, the French LDH demanded clemency. 28

28 Bulletin officiel, 10 April 1927, 147–150, 10 September 1927, 432, 10 August 1927, 391– 406. Henri Guernut, Une affaire Dreyfus aux Etats-Unis. L’affaire Sacco et Vanzetti, Paris 1927.

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1922–1923: THE FOUNDATION OF THE FIDH IN PARIS In 1922, the French LDH took the initiative to found the FIDH29 in cooperation with the German association Bund Neues Vaterland. Thirty-one men and women, most of them members of the French LDH, participated at its founding congress in Paris on 28 May 1922, at the LDH head office at 10, rue de l’Université. In the meeting minutes reproduced in the “Cahiers des droits de l’homme”, the term “Ligue internationale” was also used, but only the term “Fédération internationale” figured in the adopted statutes.30 Nevertheless, especially during the 1930s and the 1950s, the term “Ligue internationale” was also sometimes used by the French LDH. Apart from the 18 members of the French delegation31 and the two members of the German delegation (Milly Zirker and the economist and demographer Dr Robert Kuczynski, in the absence of journalist and writer Hellmut von Gerlach), the meeting minutes mentioned eleven representatives of eight other leagues: the Bulgarian (Dimitri Karadjoff and Nicolai Nicolaeff), Chinese (Scie Ton Fa, Lin Hon Hong and Ho Lien Tchen), Spanish (independent deputy Augusto Barcia), Greek (Loukas Nakos), Norwegian (French Robert Lange), Portuguese (Fabra Ribas), Russian (Russian democrat in exile Ossip S. Minor, a SocialistRevolutionary Party leader, former chairman of the City Council of Moscow in 1917), and the Armenian League (Alexandre Khatissian, exiled in Paris). The meeting minutes said that the Polish, Swedish, Danish, Belgian and Swiss leagues had been unable to send representatives but declared their membership. At that time, Georges Lorand, one of the founders of the French LDH, was in the process of organising a Belgian league. The Danish League is also mentioned in the statutes (Article 1) as a founding member. The foundation of the FIDH, and often of its member leagues, was based on a European network of Masonic organisations; this seems to be especially true in Spain and Bulgaria.32

29 See Emmanuel Naquet’s contribution in this volume: “The LDH and the Bund Neues Vaterland. The Convergence of Two Human Rights Associations, 1914 to 1939”. 30 Cahiers des droits de l’homme (CDH), 25 June 1922, 301–305. The title is “Ligue internationale des droits de l’Homme”. Suzanne Collette-Kahn later said that “Fédération internationale” was definitely not used before but only after World War II to distinguish the French umbrella organisation from the one located in New York, but this is in contradiction with the FIDH’s founding statutes and with the names used in the “Cahiers des droits de l’homme” during the 1920s and 1930s: mostly “FIDH” and sometimes “Ligue internationale”. Naquet, L’action de la Fédération internationale, 56, reproduces the text of these statutes. 31 Ferdinand Buisson, Alphonse Aulard, Victor Basch, Gabriel Séailles, André-Ferdinand Herold, Henri Guernut, Aline Ménard-Dorian, Edmond Besnard, Paul d’Estournelles de Constant, Fernand Corcos, Henri Gamard, Émile Kahn, Jacques Hadamard, Léon Martinet, Mathias Morhardt, Pierre Renaudel, General Maurice Sarrail and Dr Justin Sicard de Plauzoles. 32 Stilyan Deyanov, La Ligue bulgare à travers les archives de la Ligue française, in: Sonia Combe / Grégory Cingal (eds.), Retour de Moscou. Les archives de la Ligue des droits de l’homme 1898–1940, Paris 2004, 71–82.

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Figure 2. Émile Kahn. Courtesy of Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine, Archives of the LDH.

The first statutes of the FIDH adopted at this founding congress demonstrate that the ideas of the French LDH were omnipresent. The only reference texts mentioned (Article 3) are the ones of the French Revolution: The aim of the FIDH is to spread and to implement the principles of justice, freedom, equality and popular sovereignty stemming from the French Declarations of Human Rights of 1789 and 1793.33

The meeting minutes mentioned that during the session on May 28, “Mr Émile Kahn proposed to connect the programme of the ‘Ligue internationale’ to the 33 CDH, 25 June 1922, 305.

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‘Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme américaine’”34 – the U.S. Bill of Rights – as well as the two French Declarations. This proposition was rejected. Furthermore (Article 4), the headquarters of the FIDH will be located in Paris, at the head office of the French League of Human Rights and the secretary of the federation will be, until any further decision at a congress, the one of the French League. 35

About the votes during the congress, the statutes stipulated that “[each] national league will have two proxies, plus one for every 20,000 subscribing members, or one for less than 20,000”.36 So, with its more than 100,000 members in 1922, the French League was sure to hold eight proxies, each of the other leagues having three. There was an interesting discussion about the possible membership of a league of Palestine. Victor Basch thought such an organisation should not be composed only of “Zionists from Paris” but should be representative of the whole population of Palestine; Henri Guernut, Fernand Corcos, Alphonse Aulard and Pierre Renaudel underlined that it should also welcome “Arabs and Christians” from Palestine.37 Some letters in the archives of the French LDH show that a Palestinian league existed during the 1930s, which was not represented at the FIDH congress, but there is no information as to whether it came up to these expectations.38 An “Appeal to the Peoples for Human Rights and Peace” was also discussed.39 Pierre Renaudel proposed it should be signed by each delegate in the name of the existing or emerging associations, but this appeal, drawn up in its final version by a commission composed of four LDH leaders – Gabriel Séailles, Aline Ménard-Dorian, Victor Basch, and Henri Guernut –, the French representative of the Norwegian League, Robert Lange, and the German Robert Kuczynski, was finally signed by the FIDH.40 Its first sentence introduces the idea of “internationalising” the French LDH: By internationalising the French LDH, we want to do our share in the huge effort made for their part by democratic forces, proletarian forces, pacifist forces of all countries with our own methods. Beyond dogma, sects, parties, classes, we call upon all those determined to end the era of violence. We don’t care what divides us, we care about what unites us: the respect for human beings and peoples. We refuse to let the soldier have the last word; we want the arbitrator to have it; we want disagreements between peoples as well as the disagreements between individuals to be submitted to a court, which should have moral authority and material power; we want the League of Nations strengthened, democratised, to become a real council of the peoples’ representatives.

34 35 36 37 38 39 40

CDH, 25 June 1922, 302. CDH, 25 June 1922, 305. CDH, 25 June 1922, 305. CDH, 25 June 1922, 301. Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 0842 (2/54–57). CDH, 10 June 1922, 267. CDH, 25 June 1922, 301.

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In April 1923, the French LDH protested against the military occupation of the Ruhr and pointed out that it strengthened the nationalist parties in Germany; in the “Cahiers des droits de l’homme”, it anonymously published an opinion piece by Hellmut von Gerlach on this issue, which was signed “a German”.41 It demanded the question of war compensations be submitted to the League of Nations and that Germany become a member – which became a reality in 1926. On 4 and 5 November 1923, the LDH organised the FIDH’s second congress in Paris, following its own congress (1 to 3 November), at the headquarters of the Grand Orient.42 Called International Congress of the Human Rights Leagues, it assembled 37 delegates from 14 leagues. In addition to the 15 representatives of the French LDH43, the meeting minutes mention participants from 13 leagues: England (Mr Cox and Mrs Haskins), Germany (Robert Kuczynski, Hans Schwamm, the journalist Otto Lehmann-Rußbüldt and Mr A. Freymuth), Armenia (Alexandre Khatissian), Austria (its vice-president, the socialist, pacifist and sociologist Rudolf Goldscheid), Belgium (Emile Vandervelde, Louis Piérard and Mrs Koopman-Lorand, the widow of Georges Lorand), Bulgaria (Mr Stoiloff), China (Mr Scie Ton Fa and Miss Tseng-Ki), Spain (Mr Santiago), Georgia (Mr Sabakhtarishvili), Hungary (Mr Kowacs), Italy (Colonel Ricciotti Garibaldi – soon to be be exposed as an agent in the pay of the fascist government44 – and Aurelio Natoli, a journalist exiled in Paris), Luxembourg (Paul Flesch) and Russia (the exiled representatives Ossip S. Minor, the jurist constitutionalist Boris MirkinGetzevich, the most prominent member of the Constitutional Democratic Party, the Kadets Pavel Milyukov, and the secretary of the former Russian Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky, Vladimir Fabrikant). The meeting minutes mention that the leagues of Albania and Poland were excused.45 When the French LDH’s central committee decided to organise this congress, one of the members suggested the congress could fix its agenda but this was considered to be a waste of time.46 A main resolution about the defence of peace in three parts was adopted: the first part concerned the demand to end the occupation of the Ruhr; the second part security problems; the third part the peoples’ right to self-determination. Aline Ménard-Dorian was elected as secretary general. Seven other resolutions were adopted: in support of Hungarian republicans, of Georgia invaded by the U.S.S.R., of national minorities, of Italian democracy, of Ireland, of political prisoners in the U.S.S.R., and of the Armenian people.47 41 CDH, 25 April 1923, 195. 42 CDH, 25 October 1923, 473. 43 Alphonse Aulard, Ferdinand Buisson, Victor Basch, Célestin Bouglé, Fernand Corcos, Henri Guernut, André-Ferdinand Hérold, Marius Moutet, André Gougenheim, Émile Kahn, Alfred Westphal, Pierre Renaudel, Théodore Ruyssen, Aline Ménard-Dorian and Séverine. 44 Eric Vial, LIDU 23–34. Une organisation antifasciste en exil, la Ligue Italienne des Droits de l’Homme de sa fondation à la veille des Fronts populaires, PhD diss., EHESS, Paris 1986, 35–45. 45 CDH, 25 November 1923, 507. 46 CDH, 25 October 1923, 473. 47 CDH, 25 November 1923, 507–518.

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The role of Aline Ménard-Dorian (1850–1929) must be highlighted. She was a member of the central committee of the French LDH from 1918 to 1922 and vice-president from 1922 to her death. At her home in Paris at 53, rue de la Faisanderie, in the sixteenth arrondissement, she hosted luxurious dinners and receptions that were a meeting place for artists, writers and prominent republicans and Dreyfusards. Her daughter Pauline was married to Georges Hugo, the grandson of Victor Hugo, and Aline had an important part in the education of their son, the writer Jean Hugo. She was especially committed to promoting a Franco-German rapprochement and gave shelter to many political exiles and refugees from Italy, Bulgaria, and Hungary, and any other European democratic opponents to dictatorship. One day in the mid-1920s, she counted as many as 32 nationalities among the guests at la Faisanderie.48 In 1924, the most important leaders of the French LDH undertook several trips to Germany for public meetings – its president Ferdinand Buisson visited Mainz and Berlin, its secretary general Henri Guernut Berlin, Hamburg, and Hagen, etc. – to voice their disagreement with the Article of the Versailles treaty that gave Germany complete responsibility for the war.49 On 1 October 1924, Victor Basch, who spoke fluent German, made a speech in Berlin that provoked a large nationalist demonstration against him.50 On 29 June 1924, the LDH held a public meeting in Paris to protest against the assassination of Deputy Giacomo Matteotti in Italy, where the president of the recently founded Italian League, the Lega Italiana dei Diritti dell’Uomo (LIDU), Alceste De Ambris, was present and the antifascist journalist Luigi Campolonghi made a speech.51 This Italian league had been founded in France by Italian exiles in 1923 and already had had to face the consequences of Ricciotti Garibaldi’s treason. On 13 January 1925, the French LDH held a meeting denouncing White Terror in Hungary, especially the prosecution of Count Michel Karolyi, former Prime Minister and President of the Republic, who had been condemned to death, whose property had been seized, and who was obliged to go into exile. The president of the Hungarian League, Dr Paul Szende, delivered an address.52 1926: THE FIRST CONGRESS OF THE FIDH OUTSIDE FRANCE On 26 and 27 June 1926, the third FIDH congress was held in Brussels at the Palais des Académies. It was three years after the second congress, instead of two in accordance with its statutes, and it was the first FIDH congress outside France. Thirty-one representatives of 18 leagues were present, and the five-strong Belgian 48 Naquet, Pour l’Humanité, 306–311. Françoise Blum, Aline Ménard-Dorian, du salon à la scène politique, in: Gilles Manceron / Emmanuel Naquet (eds.), Être dreyfusard hier et aujourd’hui, Rennes 2009, 139–142. 49 CDH, 25August 1924, 371–376. 50 Victor Basch, L’entente franco-allemande, in: CDH, 30 November 1924, 571–574. 51 CDH, 10 July 1924, 323–327, 338. 52 CDH, 20 February 1925, 110–112.

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delegation (Maurice Wilmotte, Louis Piérard, Jules Destrées, Mr De Brouckère and Mrs Tysebaert) was almost as numerous as the French one (seven)53; the other 19 delegates represented the leagues of Germany (Robert Kuczynski), Austria (Rudolf Goldscheid), Armenia (Alexandre Khatissian), Bulgaria (the French LDH’s secretary general Henri Guernut), Georgia (Datiko Sharashidze and Mr Sabakhtarishvili), Greece (Mr S. Oekonomos, exiled in Paris), Haïti (Mr La Fontaine), Hungary (Michel Karolyi), Italy (the vice-president of the LIDU, Ubaldo Triaca), Luxembourg (Paul Weber), Poland (Stanislas Posner), Portugal (Mr De Almada Negreiros), Romania (the lawyer Constantin Costaforu and Mr Labin), Russia (Jacob L. Rubinstein and Nicolai Avxentieff), Czechoslovakia (Mr Frichek and Mr Mink). Two representatives from England were present as observers: Mrs E. Bethell and Robert Deel, delegates of the Union of Democratic Control, which was not a member of the FIDH. From Spain, Mr Casanovas and José Lopez y Lopez arrived late and asked to excuse Miguel de Unamuno – the Rector of the University of Salamanca from 1900 to 1924 – and the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, who had been held at the Spanish border by the regime of General Primo de Rivera.54 The French historian Alphonse Aulard and the Austrian sociologist Rudolf Goldscheid both presented reports about the United States of Europe. The French LDH leader Roger Picard reported on monetary problems, the German representative Robert Kuczynski on the duty union, and Maurice Wilmotte, the president of the Belgian League, about intellectual cooperation and the organisation of peace in the future United States of Europe. The congress unanimously adopted a resolution in favour of the creation of a United States of Europe. There was also a discussion about the FIDH statutes. Robert Kuczynski – who was the only representative of the German League – pointed out that the key for the representation of the leagues at the Fédération internationale office privileged the French. Three commissions were elected, a political commission composed of ten members: Victor Basch as president, the Belgian Maurice Wilmotte as vice-president, the Russian Nicolaï Avxentieff, Cipriano Facchinetti, an Italian antifascist exiled in Paris, the Hungarian Michel Karolyi, and five French LDH members, Alphonse Aulard, Pierre Renaudel, Henri Guernut, Célestin Bouglé, and Théodore Ruyssen; a judiciary commission composed of the Parisian professor of law Gaston Jèze (1869–1953) as president, Marius Moutet and Jacob L. Rubinstein as vicepresidents, and Giuseppe Emanuele Modigliani – the elder brother of painter Amedeo Modigliani –, the Italian antifascist Claudio Treves, Boris MirkinGetzevich, Mr Wieland and Mr Starnik; and an economic commission composed of Francesco Saverio Nitti as president – a former council president in Italy, who opposed Mussolini, but was a monarchist and therefore not a member of the LIDU55 –, as vice-president the Hungarian Dr Paul Szende, and Maxime Leroy, 53 Alphonse Aulard, Victor Basch, Célestin Bouglé, Henri Guernut, Roger Picard, Pierre Renaudel, Théodore Ruyssen. 54 CDH, 25 September 1926, 411–430. 55 Vial, LIDU 23–34, 98.

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Roger Picard and Mr Zagorsky. They were supposed to meet four or five times a year.56 On 23 February 1926, the vice-president of the French LDH, Paul Langevin (1872–1946), made a speech at a Grand meeting antifasciste in Paris, at the Salle Bullier, chaired by Albert Einstein, to condemn Mussolini and his “justice”.57 One year later, immediately preceding the LDH congress in Paris (15–17 July, Salle des sociétés savantes) the fourth congress of the FIDH was held at the Hôtel de la Ligue de l’enseignement, 3, rue Récamier on 14 July 1927.58 Seventeen countries were represented, and among the 37 delegates, the French LDH had eight59, Russia six (Nicolai Avxentieff, Mr Gronski, Milyukov, Boris MirkinGetzevich, Jacob L. Rubinstein and Mr Zagorski) and Italy five (Luigi Campolonghi, now president of the LIDU, Mario Bergamo, Giuseppe Emanuele Modigliani, and Claudio Treves). The others represented Austria: Dr Paul Szende; Armenia: Alexandre Khatissian (exiled in Paris); Belgium: Maurice Wilmotte; Bulgaria: Henri Guernut; Czechoslovakia: Jan Frieb and Dr Leo Sychrava; Germany: Arthur Hollitscher and Robert Kuczynski; Georgia: Datiko Sharashidze (exiled in Paris); Haiti: Dr Deambrosis-Gartins; Hungary: Joseph Bano; Luxembourg: Mr Gillet; Poland: Mrs Zielinska and Henri Guernut; Portugal: Mr De Almada Negreiros (exiled in Paris); Romania: one anonymous delegate; Spain: Carlos Espla. After a report by Aline Ménard-Dorian on the FIDH’s activities since the Brussels congress, each delegate spoke on the situation in his country and Victor Basch summarised the problems of the current international situation. The main debates of the afternoon concerned the Soviet state, the situation of the Jews in Poland and the question of the evacuation of the Rhineland. After this fourth congress in 1927, there was one more meeting between delegates of foreign leagues in 1928, but the FIDH held no further congress until December 1932, in spite of the statutes stipulating a biennial congress. Financial reasons were given. Only the French LDH had an important membership – 169,340 members in 1930 – whose contributions yielded some funds.60 The lack of funds had been a problem for the FIDH from its inception. But another reason was the political situation in Europe. The Italian exile Lega italiana dei Diritti de l’Uomo, which had quickly grown among Italian workers and refugees in France and had about 3,000 members in 70 sections, was the only reasonably large league apart from the French and German ones, but still depended on the help of the French League and was subjected to the repression of fascist agents. In 1926, a joint delegation of the FIDH and the French LDH went to meet the French Président du conseil Aristide Briand to ask him to allow Luigi Campolonghi, and, in general, the many antifascist Italian refugees, especially in the south-east of 56 CDH, 20 November 1927, 531. 57 Gilles Manceron / Madeleine Rebérioux (eds.), Droits de l’homme. Combats du siècle, Paris 2004, 168. 58 CDH, 20 November 1927, 531. 59 Aline Ménard-Dorian, Alphonse Aulard, Victor Basch, Célestin Bouglé, André-Ferdinand Herold, Fernand Corcos, Marcel Bidegaray and Salomon Grumbach. 60 CDH, 20 April 1931, 252.

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France, to stay in the country. In July 1928, the Italian LIDU held its congress in Marseille.61 Everywhere in Europe, the leagues were activated by the rise of dictatorships and fascist regimes. Another reason may be some disagreements between the French and the Belgian LDH, which is apparent in the fact that no Belgian representatives attended the following meetings in 1928 and – as we will see below – in 1932. Nevertheless, on 20 July 1928, the French LDH organised a meeting of the “council” of the Ligue internationale in Paris – the designations Fédération internationale and Ligue internationale were used alternatively in the “Cahiers des droits de l’homme”, and it is difficult to say if there was a substantial difference between them at the time –, with the participation of two French LDH representatives – Aline Ménard-Dorian, the very active FIDH secretary general, and Alphonse Aulard –, and Mrs Loeventhal-Mardfin from the United States, Datiko Sharashidze from Georgia, Joseph Bano from Hungary, Mario Pistocchi from Italy, Mr Gillet from Luxembourg, Boris Mirkin-Getzevich and Jacob L. Rubinstein from Russia, and one anonymous delegate from Romania. The meeting minutes record that the Austrian League wanted the annual congress to be held in Vienna, but the council “considered it was not worth while organising a congress this year”. Jacob L. Rubinstein proposed the edition of a bulletin explaining the campaigns and activities of the different leagues against fascism and dictatorship. But he was answered that the cost of such a publication had been estimated at 60,000 francs; only 5,000 francs were available. Therefore, his proposition could not be realised.62 In 1927, just after his election as president of the French League in November 1926, Victor Basch was designated to join Alphonse Aulard to represent the LDH at the FIDH meetings. But he and the secretary general of the French League Henri Guernut at times represented the Austrian, the Bulgarian, the Polish, or the Greek leagues, whose representatives were not based in Paris.63 In May 1928, the yearbook of the LDH published by the “Cahiers” lists the names and addresses of the leaders of 23 foreign leagues under the heading Ligue internationale: nine of them had delegates residing in France.64 In October 1928, Victor Basch even used the word “filiales” – offshoots or local branches – when talking about the foreign leagues65, a word which would again be used by the secretary general of the FIDH in 1937.66 In 1928, the French LDH “resolutely recognises the right of Austria to seek a union with Germany”.67 This position conforms with the opinion of a long essay by Dr Friedrich Hertz, member of the central

61 CDH, 10–20 August 1928, 497. 62 CDH, 30 August 1928, 498. 63 Guernut represented the Bulgarian and the Polish League in 1926, see CDH, 25 September 1926, 411; and the Bulgarian League in 1930, see CDH, 30 November 1930, 719. 64 CDH, 10 May 1928, 283. 65 CDH, 30 October 1928, 640. 66 CDH, 15 November 1937, 731. 67 CDH, 30 November 1928, 714.

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committee of the Austrian League, defending the legality and benefits of the Anschluss to Austria, which the “Cahiers” had published previously.68 The death of Aline Ménard-Dorian in 1929 put an end to the important part she played in these efforts of the LDH to build an international network for the FIDH. However, the French League did not abandon its prerogatives: in 1930, its bureau declared that international affairs “must be transmitted to the Ligue internationale”, but that “the French League shall examine them beforehand and shall reserve its right to intervene if it should consider this appropriate, as it has always done since its foundation”.69 THE 1930s: THE NEW INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVES OF THE FRENCH LDH Several meetings of the conseil of the FIDH were held in Paris in 1930 and 1931. At a meeting in November 1930, for instance, the following representatives were present: Victor Basch and Henri Guernut (French LDH), Nicolai Avxentieff and Jacob L. Rubinstein (Russia), Mr Labin (Romania), Mr Stephanuy (Switzerland), Ernest Bóta (Hungary), Mr Gillet (Luxembourg), and the young French journalist Jacques Kayser (1900–1963) who for a short while worked as a secretary for the Federation. Mr Wieland (Germany) and Mr De Almada Negreiros (Portugal) were excused. Rubinstein was appointed treasurer. As proposed by Avxentieff, a protest note condemned the executions practiced by the GPU in the U.S.S.R.70 Acting on the demands the German League had voiced since the 1920s, the French LDH called for the evacuation of the Rhineland to be brought forward, arguing this would deprive German nationalists of their main subject for propaganda. On 24 December 1932, the International Congress of Human Rights Leagues was held in Paris, immediately preceding the French LDH congress. It was chaired by Victor Basch, representatives of the following leagues were present: France (five delegates71), Germany (the physiologist Emil Julius Gumbel), Armenia (Alexander Khatissian and Mr Aharonian), Austria (Oscar Loewith-Ladner), Bulgaria (Venelin Ganeff), Spain (José Lopez y Lopez), Georgia (Datiko Sharashidze and Mr Salakaza), Hungary (Ernest Bóta), Italy (Luigi Campolonghi, Mario Pistocchi, and Mario Angeloni), Luxembourg (Paul Flesch and Mr Gillet), Poland (Mr Motz), Portugal (Antonio Sergio de Souza and Mr Simoez), Russia (Boris Mirkin-Getzevich, Jacob L. Rubinstein, Andrei Mandelstam and Nicolai Avxentieff), Switzerland (Mr Borloz), and Czechoslovakia (Mr PanayotoffWeizman). The fact that the meeting minutes specify that Venelin Ganeff “especially came from Bulgaria” shows that many of them must have been exiled in Paris – Alexander Khatissian for instance was presented as a representative of 68 69 70 71

La question de l’“Anschluss”, in: CDH, 10 October 1928, 579–584. CDH, 20 December 1930, 757. CDH, 30 November 1930, 719. Victor Basch, Fernand Corcos, Suzanne Collette, Émile Kahn, and Jacques Kayser.

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“the Armenian section of the French LDH” in 1929.72 Two leagues were excused, the Egyptian and the Belgian ones.73 As mentioned above, the absence of Emile Vandervelde (1866–1938), the prominent president of the Belgian League, and of any other representatives from Belgium, where the only congress of the FIDH outside France had been held in 1926, cannot be explained by financial troubles alone. Its motives are probably related to the question of leadership in the FIDH. This assumption is supported by the fact that the meeting minutes of the previous conseil in Paris in 1928 explicitly state that, in the absence of the Belgian League, the council asks the latter to be present at the next meeting.74 There is no explanation in the file concerning the Belgian League kept in the French LDH’s archives. During the 1930s, the Belgian League repeatedly asked the French to publish their texts in the “Cahiers des droits de l’homme”, to no avail; is this significant?75 Maybe an explanation of the relationship between these two organisations is to be found in the archives of the Belgian League. During the international congress of 1932, reports on the right to asylum (Jacob L. Rubinstein)76, on the question of the Heimatlose (stateless refugees, Oscar Loewith-Ladner), on the international protection of human rights (Andrei Mandelstam)77, and on new tendencies in declarations of human rights (Boris Mirkin-Getzevich)78 were presented, and the discussion ended with the decision that the council would prepare a new declaration of human rights to be submitted to the different leagues.79 The federal council, which was supposed to meet every month, was re-elected.80 The philosophy teacher Suzanne Collette (1884–1975), a member of the central committee of the French LDH, acted as secretary general of the FIDH for a time. At the French LDH congress, which was held right afterwards, on 26 to 28 December 1932, also in Paris, international issues were again raised. Three reports were presented: one by Jules Prudhommeaux, a history teacher and founding member of the association Peace through Law (La Paix par le Droit), also secretary general of the Federation of French Associations for the SDN; one by Henri Guernut, secretary general of the French LDH, on “the defence of democracy against foreign interference”; and a third one by jurist René Georges-Etienne on the ideas of “international security” and “international collectivity”. A minority still demanded a more radical criticism of the Versailles Treaty.81 Until the end of the 1930s, the French LDH continued to devote a large part of the time of its own congress to international questions, and in particular to the 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

CDH, 10 July 1929, 443. CDH, 20 January 1933, 27. CDH, 30 August 1928, 497. Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798 (2/58). CDH, 10 November 1931, 658. CDH, 10 December 1931, 723. CDH, 20 November 1931, 685. CDH, January 1933, 27–37. Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798 (2/54). Congrès national de la Ligue des droits de l’homme de 1932, Paris 1933.

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problem of the organisation of peace. It received the leaders of foreign leagues in Paris, held meetings with them across France, and published their texts in the “Cahiers des droits de l’homme”. In 1932, it protested against the dismissal of Dr Emil Julius Gumbel by the University of Heidelberg.82 In 1933, during the French LDH congress in Amiens, its secretary general protested against “Russian terror”, the “massive violation of human rights in the U.S.S.R. (expulsions from cities, deportation of villages)”, and especially against the prosecution of the Russian dissident Victor Serge.83 On 16 January 1933, the French LDH held a meeting to condemn the Japanese aggression against China.84 In cooperation with the Paris section of the German League, it organised a campaign to support the anti-Nazi journalist Carl von Ossietzky, who had been detained in a Nazi camp since February 1933, for the Nobel Peace Prize, which he received in November 1936 (for 1935).85 Following his death in 1938 as a result of torture and the conditions of his detention, the French LDH organised a commemoration in Paris on 17 May. 86 When the Italian antifascist journalist Carlo Rosselli and his brother Nello Rosselli were assassinated in a small village in Normandy on 9 June 1937, it condemned this crime.87 When the writers Romain Rolland and Henri Barbusse launched an appeal for a world committee against the imperialist war, the so-called Amsterdam-Pleyel, Victor Basch joined it after some reflection in his own name and as president of the French LDH, overcoming his reticence owing to its pro-U.S.S.R. orientation. He sent a resolution to be read in the name of the French LDH to the Amsterdam congress in 193288, but he did not go, and the League decided against endorsing the 5 March 1934 manifesto of the Amsterdam-Pleyel committee, and against taking part in its demonstration on 20 and 21 May 1934.89 During those years, the questions of public liberties as opposed to dictatorships, refugees and the defence of economic and social rights were its main international preoccupations. In 1934, Jules Prudhommeaux (1869–1950) succeeded the late César Chabrun (1880–1934) as secretary general of the FIDH. In June 1935, at its congress in Hyères (Var), the French LDH began to work on a text to complement the two French human rights declarations of 1789 and 1793. For this task, the congress appointed a commission; its rapporteur was jurist René Georges-Étienne, and jurist René Cassin (1887–1976) was a member.90 An essay by René Cassin was published in the “Cahiers des droits de l’homme”, discussing 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

CDH, 30 August 1932, 500. CDH, 20–25 May 1933, 360; 10 June 1933, 363–366. Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798 (2/54). CDH, 10 February 1933, 75. CDH, 30 November 1936, 771–774. Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798 (2/54). CDH, 15 June–1 July 1937, 393–398. CDH, 30 August 1932, 500. Naquet, Pour l’Humanité, 573. Congrès national de la Ligue des droits de l’homme 1935, Paris 1936. A photograph of a probable meeting of this commission showing René Georges-Etienne and René Cassin (undated) is at the BDIC.

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the question of neutrality in international law, explaining that the notion of neutrality could not be applied to the conflict in Spain, as this was a conflict between a rebellion and the legal government of the Republic.91 On 14, 15 and 16 March 1936, the French LDH held a FIDH congress in Luxembourg, chaired by its president Victor Basch. Only a few representatives were able to attend. Like Hellmut von Gerlach (who had died in August 1935), the German pacifist Otto Lehmann-Rußbüldt, for instance, had had no passport since Hitler’s accession to government. The “Cahiers des droits de l’homme” only list the names of Nicolai Avxentieff, Victor Basch, Luigi Campolonghi, René Georges-Etienne, Marius Moutet and Jacob L. Rubinstein as participants; a resolution was passed92; the text of the “Complément des Déclarations des droits de l’homme” was published when its adoption was submitted to the French LDH’s Dijon congress in July 1936. The text that was finally approved by the French LDH, after a report by René Georges-Etienne, only includes slight changes.93 This was the first time an international text said that human rights, with the first of them being the right to live, should be applied “without any distinction of sex, race, nation, religion, or opinion”. It also said that property “is only a right when it does not lead to any prejudice against the common good”. At the international level, it recommended the creation of an international court, the decisions of which were to be binding for individual states. The congress also protested against the repression of liberties and the increasing number of political prisoners across Europe. In March 1936, the Austrian authorities refused the Ligue internationale des droits de l’homme permission to send two delegates to Vienna – Jeanne-Emile Vandervelde from Belgium and Richard Freund, a lawyer from Brno (Czechoslovakia) – to attend the trial of 27 socialist leaders.94 In the following year, after its congress in Tours, the French LDH experienced a crisis when seven of the 79 members95 of its central committee resigned. They belonged to the “integral pacifist” minority, opposed to any war, even against Nazism. They protested against the active support of the Spanish republicans by the French LDH, and also against the lack of any real denunciation of the Moscow trials. Most of them later collaborated with the German authorities during the occupation of France.96

91 92 93 94 95

CDH, 20 September 1936, 636–638. CDH, 20 March 1936, 189. CDH, 20 May 1936, 321–347. Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798 (2/60). Gaston Bergery, Félicien Challaye, Léon Emery, Georges Michon, Magdeleine Paz, Elie Reynier, Georges Pioch. 96 One of the main cases is Georges Pioch. Other members of the minority of the French LDH during World War I like Michel Alexandre and Georges Demartial took the same path. Manceron, Pacifisme et Défense nationale, 101f.

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Calling the position of the French LDH toward the U.S.S.R. during the 1920s and the 1930s a pro-Soviet position, as some authors do97, is completely mistaken. It is quite untrue that Victor Basch was “close to the pacifist movement created by the French Communist Party” and “followed the antifascist line imposed on European communists parties by the Comintern”, that the LDH “was entrenched in its unconditional support of the Russian Revolution” and “adopted the Stalinist conception of antifascism which accused any criticism of communism of playing into the hands of the Nazis”.98 The commission of inquiry the French LDH had constituted on 28 November 1918 to examine the dissolution of the constituent assembly by the Bolsheviks was concluded with a condemnation of the regime in March 1919.99 In 1920, Alphonse Aulard wrote in the “Cahiers des droits de l’homme” that the Bolsheviks were not elected like the French Convention in 1792, and therefore did not represent the Russian people100, and Henri Guernut stated that any democrat opposed to tyranny had to oppose Bolshevism.101 These authors mistake the refusal to condone a foreign intervention to overthrow a regime for support of this regime. Indeed, in 1937, the report of the lawyer Raymond Rosenmark, a legal adviser to the French LDH, in which he examined the Moscow trials of communist leaders accused of the assassination of Sergey Mironovich Kirov – in August 1936, 19 communists, including Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Borisovich Kamenev, Grigory Evdokimov, Ivan Smirnov and Ivan Bakayev; and in January 1937, 17 individuals accused of Trotskyism including Georgy Piatakov, Karl Radek, Grigory Sokolnikov, Nikolai Muralov and Mikhail Boguslavsky – was completely blind to the dreadful torture which explained the full confessions of their guilt.102 The explanation of this blindness lies in the fact that the main preoccupation of Raymond Rosenmark – and also Boris MirkinGetzevich and Victor Basch, who both cooperated in the inquiry although the report was only signed by Rosenmark103 – was the search for a strategic alliance with the U.S.S.R. in the coming war against Nazi Germany which they thought inevitable. Raymond (Hermann) Rosenmark had German Jewish origins and was deeply affected by Adolf Hitler’s racism and its September 1935 anti-Semitic Nuremberg laws. Did he have contact with the U.S.S.R.? This remains to be examined. But Victor Basch, who was obsessed with the civil war in Spain 104 and 97 Christian Jelen, L’Aveuglement. Les socialistes et la naissance du mythe soviétique, Paris 1984. François Furet, Le passé d’une illusion. Essai sur l’idée communiste au XX e siècle, Paris 1995. 98 Max Lagarrigue, D’un totalitarisme à l’autre … Les liaisons dangereuses de la Ligue des droits de l’homme, in: Le Meilleur des mondes 1/2006, 134–138. 99 Bulletin officiel, 15 June 1919, 575f. 100 Alphonse Aulard, Le bolchevisme et la France, in: CDH, 5 January 1920, 10f. 101 Henri Guernut, Le problème russe et la Ligue des droits de l’homme, in: CDH, 5 February 1920, 11f. 102 Trotskyists and other opponents to Stalin were accused of being responsible of the assassination of the Bolshevik leader Sergey Mironovich Kirov in Leningrad on 1 December 1934. 103 CDH, 15 November 1936, 743–750. 104 Basch, Victor Basch, 287.

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considered Nazism as the main danger for Europe, was not at all a supporter of the Soviet regime, and Boris Mirkin-Getzevich was clearly opposed to Stalin. The articles published in the “Cahiers des droits de l’homme” and the choice of the Russian representatives in the FIDH during the 1920s and the 1930s – all of them exiles and opponents of the Soviet regime – clearly demonstrate the French LDH’s disapproval of Bolshevik Russia. But Rosenmark and Basch were first of all convinced of the necessity to combat Nazism as the primary danger for Europe. Basch received Victor Serge and agreed to receive Trotsky’s son Leon Sedov105, but Trotsky, who condemned the cautious attitude of the LDH to the Moscow trials, vetoed this. The last FIDH congress before World War II (7th congress) was held in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées on 31 July and 1 August 1937. Most of the participants were French LDH leaders106 and European exiles in Paris. It assembled representatives of ten foreign leagues: Germany (Mr Glaser and Professor S. Marck), Spain (Mr Guerra, president, Mr Sabras, vice-president and Mr Lumbreras, secretary general), Georgia (Mr Gvarjaladze, Mr Gvazava and Mr Zurabishvili), Hungary (Ernest Bóta, president, Mr Kek and Mr Loffler), Italy (Luigi Campolonghi, president, Giuseppe Emanuele Modigliani, and Mr Cianca), Luxembourg (Mr Kieffer), Poland (Mrs Dr E. Strozecka), “emigré Russia” (Boris Mirkin-Getzevich), Switzerland (Andrée Mossé, French LDH member, Mr Hungerbuhler and Mr H. Sviatsky), and Czechoslovakia (Mr Nehyda and Dr Rudolf Rabl). Again, the Belgian League was excused, including its secretary William Van Remoortel who had a Paris address.107 They heard contributions by Boris Mirkin-Getzevich on “political regimes and international peace”, by the French professor at the Sorbonne Edmond Vermeil on “Hitler’s conception of international law”, by Giuseppe Emanuele Modigliani on “the foreign policy of Italian fascism”, by the French jurist Georges Scelle on “the offensive of dictatorial states against the League of Nations”, by the secretary general of the Spanish League, Mr Lumbreras, on “the offensive of fascism and racism against Spain”, and by the French teacher Jacques Ancel on “the aims of the racists and fascists in central Europe”.108 The former German delegate at the SDN, Mr Breitscheid, made a speech.109 A resolution presented by Henri Guernut on “international defence of democracy against foreign interference” was adopted.110 A subscription for the Spanish people was organised.111 The meeting minutes show 105 CDH, 15 April 1937, 249f. 106 The delegates of the French LDH were Victor Basch, Georges Bourdon, Jean-Marie Caillaud, Suzanne Collette, and Georges Pioch. Jules Prudhommeaux, secretary general of the FIDH, Émile Kahn, and Mr Caillandet were also present. French minister Maurice Violette, exmember of the League committee, and jurist René Georges-Etienne made speeches. 107 Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798 (2/58). 108 CDH, 1 August 1937, 482–513. 109 Jules Prudhommeaux, La Fédération internationale des ligues. Son passé et son œuvre, in: CDH, 15 November 1937, 730–732. CDH, 1–15 April 1938, 222. 110 CDH, 1 August 1937, 514f. 111 CDH, 15 August 1937, 535.

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that the Czechoslovak League proposed to hold the following FIDH congress in its country, but the events of 1938, the Anschluss and the Munich agreement, would make this quite impossible, just as the evolution of the civil war in Spain would preclude the realisation of Victor Basch’s idea to hold the 1938 FIDH congress in Madrid. In 1938, the French LDH published a manifesto for political refugees: While firmly espousing the right of asylum, the French LDH understands that France cannot assume this charge alone. It acknowledges that the state has the right to maintain control over immigration and has the duty to protect French workers against the competition of cheap labour.

But it held that a distinction has to be made between the majority of immigrants, settled in France for convenience or interest, and political refugees, banished from countries that succumbed to dictatorship, who are looking for security and dignity in France. 112

A great many of the cases presented to the Service juridique of the French LDH concerned refugees’ files prepared by the foreign leagues in exile in France. In the French LDH archives, many letters from German exiles are addressed to Milly Zirker, the indefatigable officer in charge of the legal and social service of the German League at the head office of the French LDH at rue Jean Dolent.113 This service had to cease operations in September 1938.114 Its files also concern Austrian, Spanish, Italian – the most numerous –, Hungarian, Polish, and Russian refugees in France.115 In September 1937, the French LDH condemned the massacres committed by the Japanese in China and demanded a boycott of Japan.116 After the Munich agreement, the French LDH published a manifesto declaring: “Far from appeasing the impudence of dictators, the Munich agreement can only encourage it.”117 It regretted that the League of Nations failed to initiate urgency proceedings in the examination of the situation of the Jews in Romania. In March 1939, when Nazi troops invaded Prague, it declared that the “annihilation of the Republic of Czechoslovakia that has been accomplished today concludes the operation begun in Munich with the consent of the British and French governments”. 118 But the French LDH did not protest against the Anschluss, as it had recognised Austria’s right to choose a union with Germany since 1928. The invasion of France in June 1940 put a complete stop to the activities of the French LDH, whose leaders were forced to leave Paris and go into hiding to avoid being arrested by the Nazis.

112 113 114 115 116 117 118

CDH, 1 June 1938, 331. Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 0842 (2/55–57). CDH, 1–15 October 1938, 594. Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 0842 (2/55–57). CDH, 15 August 1937, 670. CDH, 15 August 1938, 563. CDH, 1 April 1939, 195.

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1943–1951: THE FRENCH LDH’S RENEWED EFFORTS ON INTERNATIONAL ISSUES Several of the leaders of the LDH were members of resistance movements; some were executed or deported to Germany.119 In January 1944, Victor Basch, president of the French LDH and by inference president of the FIDH, was murdered by French fascists and German Gestapo near Lyon. In 1943, a provisional central committee was reconstituted in Algiers, including notably René Cassin and Henri Laugier (1888–1973), who would both take active part in establishing the United Nations Organisation. Three LDH leaders, Fernand Corcos, Jacques Hadamard, and Roger Picard, joined the International League of the Rights of Man and for the New Democracy that was founded in New York in 1941 as an exile organisation, of which the French LDH disapproved when it was reconstituted in 1944. There was some rivalry between the French LDH’s interests in international issues and this second umbrella organisation, and Fernand Corcos and Roger Picard were excluded in 1947. Only Hadamard was permitted to re-join the central committee of the French League. After the liberation of France, the French LDH slowly began to resume its activities in a new political context in which the French Communist Party was a major political player. It was rather difficult for it to find political support for rebuilding the organisation, as the French LDH condemned the violation of liberties in the communist Eastern European countries that the PCF supported, but also the repression of communist resistance in Greece and the French colonial war in Indochina, which were supported by the other French parties, especially the anticommunist parties RPF, CNI, and MRP. Even with the non-communist left-wing parties, SFIO and Parti radical, relations were not as cordial as pre-World War II. Nevertheless, the French LDH continued to address international issues, but without reconstituting the FIDH, in spite of some efforts in 1948 according to the archives of the Austrian League.120 This period between 1943 and 1951 can be compared to the early years from 1898 to 1922. In 1947, in the context of the French Committee for the Defence of the Liberties of the Greek Nation, the French LDH condemned the fascist terror heaped on Greece.121 At the same time, it protested against the violation of liberties in the Soviet world: it for instance 119 Among the 82 members of the LDH central committee in 1940, many took part in resistance movements, e.g. Julien Barthélemy, Albert Bayet, Émile Borel, Georges Boris, Joseph Brenier, Georges Buisson, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Émile Kahn, Paul Langevin, André Philip, and Paul Rivet. Some were forced into hiding to survive, like Léon Brunshvig. Victor Basch was killed by the Nazis and their French agents and Odette Bloch died in deportation. But eleven members were blacklisted by the French LDH in 1944 because of their actions during occupation, among them Théodore Ruyssen who had participated in FIDH activities. 120 Documents in the archives of the Austrian League seem to prove there must have been efforts by the French LDH to reconstitute the FIDH, especially in 1948. Wolfgang Schmale / Christopher Treiblmayr, Human Rights Leagues and Civil Society (1898–ca. 1970s), in: Historische Mitteilungen 27/2015, 186–208, 198, figure 5. 121 CDH, January–February 1947, 121.

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called upon the Bulgarian government to stay the execution of Nicolas Petkov, one of the leaders of the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union, who had been condemned to death in 1947122, and in 1949 it protested against the trial of László Rajk in Hungary, a Hungarian communist who had served as Minister of the Interior and of Foreign Affairs, who was accused of being an agent of western imperialism and sentenced to death.123 Since 1948, the French LDH approached several European human rights associations about reconstituting the FIDH, but it was only officially reestablished in 1951. This gap can be explained in connection with the difficult position of the French LDH during those years when it came to taking a clear stand on international issues. It was a delicate operation for it to condemn human rights violations by Eastern communist regimes because of the strong influence of the French Communist Party’s propaganda in French society during these years, but also because there were some defenders of the U.S.S.R. present inside the association itself. It was in this context that the French LDH condemned “German rearmament”.124 Until the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948, the French LDH supported René Cassin’s efforts in his important role in preparing this text; he also was vicepresident of the United Nations Human Rights Commission. The former French président du conseil in 1932 and future president of the FIDH, Joseph PaulBoncour (1873–1972), in his role as a member of the French Conseil de la République from 1946 to 1948, participated in the San Francisco conference and signed the charter of the United Nations in the name of France in 1946.125 René Cassin had been a member of the French LDH since 1921, he was an associate member of its central committee from May 1945 and officially elected in 1947126 – and was to be re-elected at the congress in Lyon in July 1949.127 On 7 March 1948, he presented the project of the International Declaration of Human Rights to the central committee, which was discussed at the next congress following a report by Salomon Grumbach.128 The French LDH congress in Paris in June 1948 addressed the “respect of human rights in the world, its organisation and its international guarantees”, i.e. the preparation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The resolution it adopted demanded that an International Convention oblige the States to adhere to it and include a reference to it in their national legislation, as well as the creation of an international human rights court.129 The involvement of René Cassin in the French LDH during the 1920s and 1930s, especially his col122 CDH, August–September 1947, 229; May 1948, 348–358. 123 CDH, October–November 1949, 55f., 62. 124 CDH, February 1951, 21f.; Contre le réarmement de l’Allemagne, in: CDH, October– November 1953, 9f. 125 Béatrice de la Rochefoucauld, Paul-Boncour, socialiste, PhD diss., Université Paris I 1981. 126 CDH, 15 April 1947, 141, candidature as a “resident member” at the time of the reconstitution of the central committee; August–September 1947, 224, election. 127 CDH, October–November 1949, 54, reconstitution of the central committee. 128 CDH, May 1948, 335–338. 129 Projet de résolution, in: CDH, May 1948, 339–341.

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laboration in the “Complément à la Déclaration des droits de l’homme” adopted in 1937, and in its central committee from 1945 to the beginning of 1951 may be considered to be one of the origins of his contribution to the draft of the Declaration.130 Two other members of the French LDH’s central committee – jurists Salomon Grumbach and Samuel Spanien – were also members of the French delegation to the United Nations. On 24 February 1949, the French LDH celebrated the adoption of the Universal Declaration in the Grand amphithéâtre de la Sorbonne in the presence of the President of the French Republic in a ceremony at which, among others, René Cassin and Joseph Paul-Boncour made speeches131; however, it affirmed that the official proclamation of human rights was a great thing, but “the respect of human rights should be much more”. After the adoption of the Universal Declaration, René Cassin demanded the creation of a permanent international human rights court, but neither the report by Jean Dupuy about “L’organisation mondiale et régionale de la Paix [The global and regional organisation of peace]” presented at the congress of the French LDH in Lyon from 16 to 18 July 1949, nor the adopted resolution made a mention of this point.132 It was the beginning of the Cold War, and major disagreements about the human rights situation in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern European communist countries began to show within the central committee of the French LDH. On 19 December 1949, following David Rousset’s revelations about the Soviet concentration camp system, a resolution about internment camps and forced labour was hotly debated and finally adopted by the central committee.133 At the same time, a firm declaration was adopted denouncing the trial of Traicho Kostov, former president of the Council of Ministers and general secretary of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party, who had been sentenced to death and executed in Sofia on 16 December 1949.134 The French LDH also protested against the proceedings against Greek jurist and socialist leader Ilias Tsirimokos because of his articles about the concentration camp in Makronissos in January 1950.135 In October, it expressed its indignation at the admission of Spain to the U.N.136 On 15 January 1951, René Cassin argued in favour of an international pact on human rights based on the Universal Declaration in the central committee, and a resolution was adopted in March.137 But he deplored that the French LDH’s congress in Amiens in July 1951 did not adopt a text about the need for this international guarantee regarding the implementation of the Declaration.138 On 19 July, just before the French LDH congress, the FIDH held a general assembly which 130 Gilles Manceron, Un texte essentiel dont l’application laisse à désirer, in: Hommes & Libertés 136/2006, supplement, 4–10. 131 CDH, supplement January 1949, 3. 132 CDH, May 1949, 3–10; October–November 1949, 49–51. 133 CDH, December 1949, 67–79. 134 CDH, December 1949, 80. 135 CDH, January 1950, 1. 136 CDH, December 1950–January 1951, 2–4. 137 CDH, March 1951, 33–36. 138 CDH, November–December 1951, 12–14.

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Figure 3. Article in “Les Cahiers des droits de l’homme” about the first assembly of the FIDH since World War II on 19 July 1951. Courtesy of Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine, Archives of the LDH.

appears to be the first public reappearance of the international federation after World War II (see Figure 3).139 Chaired by the French LDH president, Justin Sicard de Plauzoles (1872–1968), the meeting assembled the representatives of three leagues: from Spain (José Ballester y Gonzalvo, former Minister of Education of the Spanish Republic), Germany (Jochen Klaus Schäfer, its president), and Switzerland (Andrée Mossé, chief of the judiciary office of the French LDH). The delegates of Italy, Hungary, Luxembourg, and Austria were excused. The assembly decided to maintain cordial relations with the International League of the Rights of Man and for the New Democracy founded in New York, but to maintain full independence for the FIDH and its member leagues. The resolution it adopted shows that the French League resumed its pre-World War II position, condemning the violation of human rights in the communist regimes because of the lack of elections and of freedom of opinion, and expressing its sympathy to the exile leagues, the Hungarian as well as the Spanish, until the deliverance of their country. The same November–December 1951 issue of the “Cahiers des droits de l’homme” that published this resolution reproduces a long contribution by René Cassin regarding the pact on human rights that he had presented at the meeting of the central committee of the French LDH on 29 October 1951.140 The sixth session of the General Assembly of the U.N. held in Paris from November 1951 to February 1952 finally decided to draft two international covenants on human rights, one about civil and political rights and one about economic, social and cultural rights, so the next General Assembly could approve them simultaneously – but these pacts would only be adopted 15 years later in December 1966, and enter into force 25 years later in March 1976. The same issue of the “Cahiers” contains an article about the 25th anniversary festivities of the Austrian League in Vienna 139 CDH, November–December 1951, 31f. 140 CDH, November–December 1951, 12–14.

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on 13, 14 and 15 September 1951. Eleven members of the French LDH were present, and so was José Ballester y Gonzalvo. At the meeting held at the University, President of the Republic Dr Theodor Körner held a speech. The article thanks the organisers of this meeting, Dr Zechner, president of the Austrian League and socialist deputy to the federal assembly, and Hermann C. Mühlberger, its secretary general.141 1952–1986: THE RECONSTITUTION OF THE FIDH In 1952, continuing its own international action, the French LDH was indignant at the execution of Catalan trade unionists in Spain and protested against the admission of this country to the UNESCO.142 Regarding the violations of human rights in the U.S.S.R. and the countries under its control, its condemnation became firmer. It protested against the trial in Prague filed against 14 co-accused, including Rudolf Slánský, the former secretary general of the Czech Communist Party and Prime Minister of the coalition government in 1946, who was condemned to death with eleven others.143 The French LDH also protested against the arrests and persecutions of many Jewish doctors falsely accused of assassination attempts against Stalin and espionage in Moscow, and deplored the murderous revival of anti-Semitism in the U.S.S.R.144 The League also petitioned for mercy for the two U.S. citizens Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who had been condemned to death for espionage, but the French LDH underlined the difference between their condemnation and “the non-public trials, without any defence, with partial testimonies and pleadings, no appeal and immediate execution of the verdict” in the communist countries and it did not join the communist campaign which declared them innocent.145 In January 1952, the FIDH was briefly mentioned in the “Cahiers des droits de l’homme”, when LDH central committee members received some delegates of the United Nations General Assembly in the presence of three FIDH representatives: two vice-presidents of the FIDH, the president of the Spanish League, José Ballester y Gonzalvo, the honorary president of the LIDU, “Mrs Luigi Campolonghi” – Ernesta Campolonghi, the widow of its late president who had died in 1944 –, and an anonymous representative of the Hungarian League, all of them in French exile. In 1952, the “Cahiers des droits de l’homme” published an article about the general assembly of the FIDH held in Paris on 17 July, just before the French LDH congress (18, 19 and 20 July). Resolutions concerning the implementation 141 See Christopher Treiblmayr’s contribution on the history of the Austrian League in this volume. 142 La Ligue Informations, 20 November 1952. 143 La Ligue Informations, 2 December 1952. CDH, November–December 1952, 24. 144 La Ligue Informations, 22 January 1953. 145 La Ligue Informations, 19 February 1953. CDH, June–July–August 1953, 115–117; November–December 1952, 68f.

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of the Declaration of Human Rights, the question of disarmament, the war in Korea, the disagreement between Italy and Yugoslavia about Trieste, and racial discrimination in South Africa were adopted.146 Joseph Paul-Boncour (1873– 1972), jurist and member of the central committee of the French LDH since 1921, former président du conseil and Minister of Foreign Affairs and of War in 1932, permanent delegate of France to the League of Nations from 1932 to 1936, was elected president of the FIDH. In December 1952, the French LDH and the German League for Human Rights, Berlin exchanged messages on the occasion of the opening of the “Hellmut von Gerlach Rest Centre” for refugees from Eastern Germany in this town.147 In 1952, the FIDH was accredited as an NGO to the United Nations Organisation. During the 1950s and the 1960s, the LDH’s annual congresses were also the opportunity to host a FIDH congress, assembling some representatives of the foreign leagues and also open to French delegates. On the occasion of its Nice congress in September 1953, the French LDH announced an FIDH congress on 4 September which the French LDH members were invited to “as listeners, as many as possible”148; but the “Cahiers des droits de l’homme” did not publish any meeting minutes, any names of foreign participants or elected representatives, or any resolutions adopted on this occasion. We know more about the results of the next congress in Paris on 30 December 1953: a resolution from the French League about the effective implementation of human rights demanding that a “Pacte international des droits de l’homme” be quickly adopted by the U.N., one regarding the agreement signed between Spain and the U.S.A., and one demanding a universal abolition of the death penalty.149 The “Cahiers” published two resolutions in 1954 that had been adopted in April by the office of the FIDH under the presidency of Joseph Paul-Boncour.150 On 16 November, Jeanne-Emile Vandervelde from Belgium, José Ballester y Gonzalvo from Spain, and Jochen Klaus Schäfer from Germany were present at the next meeting of the office, which adopted three resolutions, including one denouncing mass executions in Iran.151 But there is no information in the “Cahiers” about the participants to the “general assembly” of the FIDH in Nice on 8 April 1955 preceding the French LDH congress (9, 10 and 11 April), except for the absence of President Joseph Paul-Boncour. At the same time, the French LDH continued to concern itself with international issues. In 1954, it protested to the ambassador of Romania in Paris against the resurgence of anti-Semitism in his country, and held a meeting chaired by

146 147 148 149 150 151

CDH, November–December 1952, 9f. Archives of the LDH, BDIC (documents as yet not catalogued). CDH, June–July–August 1953, 101. CDH, January 1954, 31–33. CDH, May–June–July 1954, 84. CDH, October–November–December 1954, 129.

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Joseph Paul-Boncour as president of the FIDH.152 In the following year, it celebrated the 5th anniversary of the U.N., whose charter was to a large part the work of President Joseph Paul-Boncour, member of the central committee, President of the International Federation of Leagues, and was inspired by principles that the League has endorsed for a long time.153

In 1955, the French LDH sharply protested against the execution of Egyptian Jews in Cairo and against racist persecution in South Africa154, as well as the persecutions of Armenians in the Turkish cities Istanbul and Smyrna in September.155 In July 1956, the FIDH held a congress in Rouen.156 In November 1956, the FIDH wrote to the British Prime Minister, petitioning him to stay the execution of Michalis Karaolis, a young Cypriote patriot who had been condemned to death by a British court in Cyprus.157 It kept silent about the invasion of Hungary by Soviet troops in October 1956, but protested against the subsequent executions a month later.158 It condemned the “Stalinist trial” in Eastern Germany (GDR) in March 1957, in which professor Wolfgang Harich was sentenced to 10 years of penal labour for his opinions.159 On 12 July 1957, an FIDH congress was held in Mâcon, immediately before the French LDH congress (13, 14 and 15 July).160 In the period from 1958 to 1975, Daniel Mayer (1909–1996) was chairman of the French LDH. A member of the French LDH and of the socialist party SFIO from the age of 18, he was firmly opposed to the politics of Guy Mollet’s government in Algeria, broke with SFIO, resigned his deputy seat in parliament, and gave a new direction to the French LDH, welcoming resolute anti-colonialist individuals like the lawyers Pierre Stibbe and Gisèle Halimi and the historians Pierre Vidal-Naquet and Madeleine Rebérioux. In this period, the main preoccupation of the French LDH were problems related to the war in Algeria, General de Gaulle returning to power in France, and the establishment of the Fifth Republic. Hence, Daniel Mayer and the French LDH did not have much time to spare for the FIDH. Joseph Paul-Boncour remained president of the FIDH until 1971, André Boissarie, a magistrate and member of the central committee of the French LDH, was its leading vice-president – Jeanne-Emile Vandervelde also being a vicepresident until her death in 1963 –, and Suzanne Collette-Kahn (1884–1975) – the widow of Émile Kahn, French LDH president from 1953 to his death in 1958 – was its secretary general. It was her who announced, for instance, the reconstitution of the German League in 1961, at the time of the Berlin crisis. 161 In May 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161

CDH, May–June–July 1954, 86. CDH, June–July 1955, 76. La Ligue information, 21 June 1955. CDH, February–March 1955, 36f. CDH, September–October–November 1955, 105f. CDH, May–July 1956, 58. CDH, January–April 1956, 14. La Ligue information, 10 November 1956. CDH, March–April–May 1957, 83. CDH, October–November 1957, 125–127. La Ligue des droits de l’homme. Bulletin national, June 1961, 2f.

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1963, the French LDH participated in a demonstration in Paris against the execution of Julian Grimau, a trade-unionist opponent to General Franco.162 During the 1960s, there were several international meetings of the different member leagues without any real outcome; there was no real international leadership of the FIDH. On 20 to 23 September 1963, a congress was held in Florence at the initiative of Aldo Testa, professor of law, with the support of the mayor of Florence Mr Giorgio La Pira.163 On 30 November, a meeting of the FIDH’s office was held in Paris on the occasion of the French LDH congress (28–29 November).164 At the next congress, on 17 and 18 April 1965 in Athens, one of the two reports, about the violations of human rights in Spain, was presented by Michel Blum, a young lawyer and member of the central committee of the French LDH.165 Suzanne Collette-Kahn, André Boissarie, Daniel Mayer, David Lambert and Robert Verdier were also part of the French LDH delegation, while the FIDH’s president Joseph Paul-Boncour was absent. The French LDH offers no information about foreign participants. Seven resolutions were adopted.166 In April 1965, Daniel Mayer wrote to the President of Algeria Ahmed Ben Bella demanding to stay the execution of his opponent Hocine Aït Ahmed who had been condemned to death.167 The French LDH also protested against the assassination of the Portuguese opposition member General Delgado.168 In August 1965, the French LDH and the FIDH condemned the attitude of Ilias Tsirimokos, a Greek jurist and vice-president of the FIDH, who agreed to serve as Prime Minister of Greece after King Constantine II and the far right in the Army had engineered a breach in Georgios Papandreou’s government. In October 1965, the secretary general of the Greek League, Mr Someritis, went to explain this difficult situation to the central committee of the French LDH.169 On 18 March 1966, a congress of the FIDH in Paris heard a report by the president of the Belgian League, Mr Aronstein, about the improvement of the work of the U.N. and the effective protection of human rights.170 The FIDH sent several legal observers to attend a variety of trials against political opponents. In February 1966, it made public its enquiry into the Delgado affair and planned to send the Belgian lawyer Mr Wolters to the U.S.S.R. to observe the trial against the writers Andreï Siniavski and Youli Daniel; but the Soviet authorities refused.171 On 23 October 1966, one year after the kidnapping of the Moroccan opposition member Mehdi Ben Barka in Paris, the French LDH published a report compiled by Pierre Stibbe,

162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171

Bulletin national, May 1963, 1f. Bulletin national, July 1963, 1; October 1963, 1–3. Bulletin national, January 1965, 4. Bulletin national, July 1964, 2. Bulletin national, June 1965, 3. Bulletin national, April 1965, 1. Bulletin national, June 1965, 2. Bulletin national, October 1965, 3. Bulletin national, February 1966, 13. Bulletin national, February 1966, 13.

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which blamed the French and Moroccan authorities for his death.172 In May 1967, the French LDH and the FIDH condemned the military coup d’état in Greece.173 Concerning Palestine, after the Six-Day War in 1967, President Daniel Mayer and the central committee demanded a just and durable peace; but it was only in a postscript to his article in the “Bulletin national” of the LDH that Daniel Mayer wrote: “It is obvious that today, we have to raise the problem of the creation of a Palestinian state that should live side by side with the state of Israel.” 174 But some members, who had joined the French League in opposition to the colonial war in Algeria and were more concerned than he was about the colonial situation in Palestine, for instance Pierre Vidal-Naquet (1930–2006), Madeleine Rebérioux (1920–2005, future president of the French LDH 1991–1995) and the young lawyer Henri Leclerc (future president from 1995–2000), insisted that Israel had to withdraw from the Palestinian territories that had been occupied after the Six-Day War and on the necessity of its clear recognition of a Palestinian state. In particular Pierre Vidal-Naquet, at odds with Daniel Mayer on this question, silently left the French LDH at that time.175 So did Henri Leclerc. But Madeleine Rebérioux remained. In August 1968, the French LDH and the FIDH condemned the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia.176 Since 1968, Michel Blum, vice-president of the French LDH, was very active in sending FIDH missions to attend various political trials. Denis Langlois, lawyer and legal adviser at the French LDH’s head office, attended several trials: the trial in February 1968 of young Ba’athist activists in Tunis; the trial of the Greek activist Alexandros Panagoulis in Athens in November 1968 – the Greek politician and poet stood accused of attempting to assassinate dictator Georgios Papadopoulos on 13 August 1968, and had been tortured in detention; the trial of fifty individuals accused to be followers of the political opposition leader Krim Belkacem in Oran (Algeria) in March 1969, and, in February 1970, the trial of seven intellectuals opposed to the military regime in Bamako.177 The congress of the FIDH, held in Paris on 9 and 10 November 1968, was an opportunity to condemn the ongoing trial against Alexandros Panagoulis.178 From 1971 to 1975, André Boissarie was president of the FIDH. The French LDH protested against the detention of Andrei Sakharov and Andrei Amalrik in the U.S.S.R. in 1973 and, in the following year, against the banishment of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In 1976, the French LDH condemned the massacre of young black Africans in Soweto in South Africa.179 172 173 174 175

176 177 178 179

Bulletin national, January 1967, 2. Bulletin national, June 1967, 3. Bulletin national, June 1967, 1–4. Testimony of the journalist and philosopher Paul Thibaud to Gilles Manceron about his friend at that time Pierre Vidal-Naquet, on the occasion of the homage to this historian after his death in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, on 10 November 2006. Bulletin national, November 1968, 1f. Archives of the LDH, BDIC (documents as yet not catalogued). Archives of the LDH, BDIC (documents as yet not catalogued). Archives of the LDH, BDIC (documents as yet not catalogued).

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During his presidency of the French LDH until 1983, Daniel Mayer’s main efforts in international issues were devoted to condemning the persecution of Jews in the U.S.S.R. On 15 September 1960, he organised an international conference on the situation of the Jews in the Soviet Union in Paris Dauphine.180 On 27 February 1969, he held a conference at the Mutualité in Paris about “Jews in the U.S.S.R. and human rights”.181 After the unjust trial in Leningrad on 14 December 1970, which condemned two of the five accused Jewish Soviet citizens to death, he held a meeting in Paris with Beate Klarsfeld, the writers Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Madaule and Vercors, and the scientist Laurent Schwartz – the two were not executed.182 These meetings called attention to the discriminations against Jews, for example the fact that 60 per cent of those condemned for economic crimes, including death penalties, were Jewish, while they only constituted 1.1 per cent of the population and 10 per cent of the tertiary sector. In 1977, two years after he had resigned from the presidency of the French LDH – from 1975 to 1984, the lawyer, journalist and writer Henri Noguères (1916–1990) was chairman of the French LDH –, Daniel Mayer became president of the FIDH. According to Michel Blum, André Boissarie had retired without organising his succession; other leagues assumed the leadership of the FIDH, and did nothing for several months. Then, Daniel Mayer was elected president of the Federation.183

Maybe some archives outside France could help us to learn which “other leagues” had assumed leadership of the FIDH between 1975 and 1977. SINCE THE 1980s: AN EMPOWERMENT OF THE FIDH WITH REGARD TO THE FRENCH LDH After the end of Daniel Mayer’s presidency in 1983, his successors were two lawyers from Paris: Michel Blum, from 1983 to 1986, and Daniel Jacoby, from 1986 to 1996. During the presidency of Michel Blum, an empowerment of the FIDH with regard to the French LDH began. Although the federation’s office remained on the second floor of the premises of the French LDH’s head office at 27, rue Jean Dolent in Paris, the FIDH began to live its own life, for instance publishing its own journal, “Le Cri des hommes”, from 1979 to 1984. Nevertheless, the French LDH continued its own initiatives on international issues, creating its own “commission of international issues”, presided by Robert Verdier (1910–2009), which had its own international contacts concerning foreign residents in France, official French international policy and the activities of French business abroad. This commission submitted separate reports to the French LDH congress, without 180 181 182 183

Claude Juin, Daniel Mayer. L’homme qui aurait pu tout changer, Paris 1998, 343. Juin, Daniel Mayer, 336. Juin, Daniel Mayer, 337f. Emmanuel Naquet, Entretien avec Michel Blum: Daniel Mayer et la FIDH, in: Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps 51–52/1998, 63–65.

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regard to the contributions of the FIDH representatives. For instance, in 1983, contacted by French sinologists, it petitioned for the liberation of a Chinese artist engaged to a French resident in China, and, in 1984, in favour of Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng who had been sentenced to five years in prison.184 In 1986, it joined a campaign drafted by a number of French NGOs against the presence of the French oil company Total in South Africa.185 In June 1989, the congress of the French LDH expressed its solidarity with the Chinese students and other inhabitants of Beijing who were victims of the Tiananmen Square repression.186 However, a new stage of the FIDH’s history was initiated during the presidency of Daniel Jacoby – at this time, the presidency of the French LDH was held by his colleague, lawyer Yves Jouffa (1920–1999), from 1984 to 1991, followed by Madeleine Rebérioux until 1995. Thanks to a legacy by French ethnologist and writer Michel Leiris, who died in 1990, the FIDH was able afford independence from the association which had created and kept it in leading-strings from its foundation in 1922 to the 1990s. Its head office, although remaining in Paris, became its own property, independent of the French LDH, and the FIDH was able to maintain and pay a team of experts of the different regions of the world. Hence, since the 1990s, the FIDH has experienced something of a renaissance. During the presidency of Daniel Jacoby, this legacy, and also the opportunity for the FIDH to garner support from the French authorities at the time of the 1989 bicentenary of the French Revolution, gave the FIDH the means to recruit new members and to encourage a real global development. Its rapid growth continued during the presidency of his successor, the Parisian lawyer Patrick Baudouin, from 1996 to 2001. At the beginning of the 21st century, the FIDH had a president who was not French for the first time: the Senegalese lawyer Sidika Kaba was elected in January 2001. His successors were the Tunisian journalist Souhayr Belhassen, from 2007 to 2013, and, from May 2013 to August 2016, the Iranian jurist and lawyer in Paris exile Karim Lahidji. Since then, its president is the vice-president of the Hellenic League for Human Rights, professor of political science and history Dimitris Christopoulos. FROM THE 19th TO THE 21st CENTURY: FRENCH AND EUROPEAN DIFFICULTIES WITH TRUE INTERNATIONALISM However, the headquarters of the FIDH remained in France, despite its newfound independence from the LDH. Not only did its head office remain in Paris, but the key person in the life of the FIDH would prove to be its French general director, who became the chief of the Parisian staff and played a decisive role in the life of the Federation. The leadership exercised before by an association, when it was 184 Archives of the LDH, BDIC (documents as yet not catalogued). 185 Archives of the LDH, BDIC (documents as yet not catalogued). 186 Archives of the LDH, BDIC (documents as yet not catalogued).

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subject to its statutes and its different electoral and regulatory processes, was replaced by the leadership of a professional staff, competent and efficient, but not depending on democratic procedures and rules. Devising truly democratic procedures is a difficult challenge for organisations composed of nations and states, but it also presents a challenge for an international human rights organisation. The history of the French LDH’s persistent interest in international affairs and of its efforts to create and support the FIDH also allows insights into the complex relations of French human rights activists to the question of universality. As the French revolutionaries of 1789 and 1793, who proclaimed rights for the whole of mankind and accepted many foreigners as French citizens, the French LDH and FIDH leaders have done a lot to disseminate these ideas across the world and to help, coordinate and welcome human rights activists from different countries. But as the French revolutionaries of 1793, who aimed to expand the French Republic across the greater part of Europe, the French LDH and FIDH leaders struggled to accept that these activists from different countries could have their own ways of thinking and organising. Until the 1980s, the way the French LDH leaders always used the term “league” when talking about any association or group, even if it only consisted of a few individuals and had a specific purpose and personality, shows they could not help but impose the French pattern on other countries. Their insistence on controlling the FIDH managing staff shows how difficult it was for them to accept that anyone but the French should be able to shoulder this international project. They thought more often in terms of “internationalising the French LDH” than in terms of promoting a really universal and multinational struggle for human rights. The problem of a real internationalisation of an organisation that considers itself as international is always a challenge. From its foundation to World War II, the character of the FIDH is that of a European rather than a worldwide federation. References to extra-European leagues were vague and rare, and no one represented them in the meetings. They concerned North or South American countries, but never French or European colonies. The only definite reference to a non-European league in the “Cahiers des droits de l’homme” seems to be the news of the creation of the Egyptian League in 1930, the purpose of which was to defend public liberties and “full and direct sovereignty of the Egyptian people against any oligarchic system or dictatorship”.187 But this league never participated in FIDH meetings, and neither did any other from the African and Asian colonial world. This fact is probably due to an inability of most members of the French LDH to accept a real application of human rights to the peoples of the French colonial empire, including the so-called “départements français d’Algérie”.188

187 Its secretary general was Mr K. Boubli, its council members Dr Toumi and Mr Mahmoud Azmi, and its treasurer Mr El Sayed Abou-Bakr Ratib. CDH, 30 November 1930, 720. 188 See Gilles Manceron, Marianne et les colonies. Une introduction à l’histoire coloniale de la France, Paris 2003.

THE LDH AND THE BUND NEUES VATERLAND The Convergence of Two Human Rights Associations, 1914 to 19391 Emmanuel Naquet The French League (LDH), which proclaimed itself “exclusively” French for a time, nevertheless didn’t limit itself to France, but built relationships with other organisations such as the Ligue belge des droits de l’homme, founded in the summer of 1899. From 1915, the multiplication of “sister leagues” led to the project of an “International of Human Rights”, which was realised in 1922 under the names of Ligue internationale des droits de l’homme (LIDH), Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l’homme, and finally Fédération internationale des droits de l’homme (FIDH).2 But while the French League played an essential role in its creation, we must not forget the Bund Neues Vaterland (BNV), which came into being after the launch of the French association in the reign of Wilhelm II, but without reference to the model in the context of the Dreyfus affair. The BNV maintained dialogue with the French League during the Great War, however, and became the Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte (DLM) in 1922.3 The appeal of a transnational comparison is obvious: two nonpartisan and not merely civic-minded forces participated in the debates on either side of the Rhine. Following similar logics – the unification of the democratic camp –, cultivating an appreciation of the Other – the harmony between nations –, and relying on intellectual mediators and networks – the University … that went beyond traditional partisan structures, these men and women, often intellectuals, committed themselves to rallying, mobilising, educating people based on common if not identical issues, but in different timeframes and on different scales. 1

2

3

This paper was presented during a previous conference. See Emmanuel Naquet, Parce que c’était elle, parce que c’était elle. La Ligue des Droits de l’Homme (LDH) et la Ligue allemande des Droits de l’Homme. Quelques remarques sur deux organisations pacifistes et républicaines d’une guerre à l’autre, in: Olivier Dard / Nathalie Sevilla (eds.), Le phénomène ligueur en Europe et aux Amériques, Metz 2011, 43–58. The author wishes to warmly thank Claire Delamarre who was in charge of translating this text from its original French into English. On the FIDH, see Emmanuel Naquet, L’action de la Fédération internationale des Ligues des droits de l’Homme (FIDH) entre les deux guerres, in: Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps 95/2009, 53–64. On the Bund, see Hans Manfred Bock, Heimatlose Republikaner in der Weimarer Republik. Die Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte (vormals Bund Neues Vaterland) in den deutschfranzösischen Beziehungen, in: Lendemains 89/1998, 68–102.

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THE CONTEXT OF THE EMERGENCE OF THE BUND, AN ASSOCIATION OF PACIFIST DEMOCRATS IN A REICH AT WAR The BNV was created on 16 October 1914, according to E. Koessler4 “after a long conversation [between Otto Lehmann-Rußbüldt5 and Kurt von Tepper-Laski6] in the deserted park of Sanssouci palace in Potsdam”.7 This account, just like the one of sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, acknowledges the roles of pacifist Albert Einstein (1879–1959)8, socialist Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932)9, journalist Otto Lehmann-Rußbüldt (1873–1964), publisher Lilly Jannasch, and urban planner Ernst Reuter (1889–1953).10 From 1915, they were joined by the future Nobel Peace Prize winner Ludwig Quidde (1858–1941), the ambassador to Great Britain before the conflict, Karl Max Fürst von Lichnowsky (1860–1928), journalist and Deputy Secretary of State Hellmut von Gerlach in 1919 (1866–1935)11, physicist Georg Graf von Arco (1869–1940), jurists Hans Wehberg (1885–1962) and 4

Could this be a pseudonym of count Harry Kessler? On this diplomat, see Laird McLeod Easton, The Red Count. The Life and Times of Harry Kessler, Berkeley / Los Angeles / London 2002. Charles Kessler (ed.), Berlin in Lights. The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler (1918– 1937), New York 2002. Harry Kessler, Das Tagebuch. Sechster Band. 1916–1918, Stuttgart 2006. 5 http://www.bundesarchiv.de/aktenreichskanzlei/1919-1933/0000/adr/adrhl/kap1_5/para2_69. html, consulted 12 June 2016. 6 Reinhold Lütgemeier-Davin, Vom Helden zum Händler. Der Kavallerieoffizier Kurt von Tepper-Laski (1850–1931), in: Wolfgang Wette (ed.), Pazifistische Offiziere in Deutschland 1871–1933, Bremen 1999, 63–81. 7 See the review of Otto Lehmann-Rußbüldt’s book Der Kampf der Deutschen Liga für Menschenrechte, vormals Bund Neues Vaterland, für den Weltfrieden. 1914–1927, Berlin 1927, which includes a list of the members, in the Cahiers des droits de l’homme (CDH), 29 February 1928, 131ff. Also see Erwin Gülzow, Bund Neues Vaterland, in: Dieter Fricke (ed.), Die bürgerlichen Parteien in Deutschland. Handbuch der Geschichte der bürgerlichen Parteien und anderer bürgerlichen Interessenorganisationen vom Vormärz bis zum Jahre 1945, vol. 1, Leipzig 1968, 179–183. Some sources seem to indicate the Bund was founded on 16 November. 8 Hubert Goenner, Einstein in Berlin. 1914–1933, Munich 2005, 101. 9 Eduard Bernstein and Prince Lichnowsky had also approached the group, with the latter entertaining relations without being a member, as did Karl Liebknecht and Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster; see CDH, 29 February 1928, 132. 10 On this teacher, a member of the KPD, the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), and later the SPD, and mayor of West Berlin, see David E. Barclay, Schaut auf diese Stadt. Der unbekannte Ernst Reuter, Berlin 2000. 11 Hellmut von Gerlach was born into an aristocratic and cosmopolitan family and elected as a Christian Social candidate against a conservative in 1903; in 1912, he stood as a democratic candidate. Editor of the “Welt am Montag”, he published an autobiography dedicated to Aline Ménard-Dorian: Erinnerungen eines Junkers, Berlin 1924, extracts of which are quoted by Robinet de Clery in La Vie des Peuples, May 1925, 29ff. See Rita Thalmann, Hellmut von Gerlach. Itinéraire singulier d’un hobereau prussien. Du nationalisme antisémite au pacifisme de gauche, in: Sexe et Race 9/1994, 51–64. Franz Gerrit Schulte, Der Publizist Hellmut von Gerlach (1866–1935). Welt und Werk eines Demokraten und Pazifisten, Ottawa 1988. Christoph Koch (ed.), Vom Junker zum Bürger. Hellmut von Gerlach – Demokrat und Pazifist in Kaiserreich und Republik, Munich 2009.

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Walter Schücking (1875–1935)12, and pedagogue Elisabeth Rotten (1882–1964), the co-founder of the Ligue internationale des femmes pour la paix et la liberté.13 Koessler also mentions journalist Kurt Eisner (1867–1919)14, physician Rudolf Breitscheid (1874–1944)15, feminist Minna Cauer (1841–1922)16, lawyer and journalist Richard Grelling (1853–1929)17, writers Arthur Holitscher (1869– 1941) and René Schikelé18, pedagogue Paul Oestreich (1878–1958)19, and economist Lujo Brentano (1851–1919)20 among the 136 members in late 191521, who included Spartacists Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919), industrialist and future Minister of Reconstruction Walter Rathenau (1867–1922), and temporary SPD chairman Hugo Haase (1863–1919).22 According to Victor Basch, vice-president of the LDH, jurists and economists Franz von Liszt (1851–1919) and Heinrich Lammasch (1853–1920)23, historians Karl Lamprecht (1856–1915)24 and Hans Delbrück (1848–1929)25, the counts of Monts and Leyden, philosophers Paul Deussen (1845–1919) and Max Dessoir (1867–1947), sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies (1855–1936), writers Herbert Eulenberg (1876–1949) and Wilhelm Herzog (1884–1960)26 were also members.27

12 Claudia Denfeld, Hans Wehberg (1885–1962). Die Organisation der Staatengemeinschaft, Baden-Baden 2008. 13 Friedrich Karl Scheer, Die Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft (1892–1933). Organisation – Ideologie – Politische Ziele, Frankfurt a. M. 1983. 14 Bernhard Grau, Kurt Eisner. 1867–1919. Eine Biographie, Munich 2001. 15 Peter Pistorius, Rudolf Breitscheid. 1874–1944. Ein biographischer Beitrag zur deutschen Parteiengeschichte, Nuremberg 1970 (Diss., University of Cologne 1968). Rudolf Bretscheid was arrested and extradited to the Gestapo by the Vichy regime; he died in Buchenwald. 16 Gabriele Braun-Schwarzenstein, Minna Cauer. Dilemma einer bürgerlichen Radikalen, in: Feministische Studien 3/1984, no. 1, 99–116. 17 Hugo Ball, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe, Göttingen 2003, 272. 18 Manfred Chobot, Arthur Holitscher (1869–1941), in: Literatur und Kritik 39/2004, 99–111. Adrien Finck, René Schickelé, Strasbourg 1999. 19 Friedrich Wißmann, Paul Oestreich (1878–1959) und seine “elastische Einheitsschule, Lebensschule und Produktionsschule”, in: Astrid Kaiser / Detlef Pech (eds.), Basiswissen Sachunterricht, vol. 1: Geschichte und historische Konzeptionen des Sachunterrichts, Baltmannsweiler 2004, 131–134. 20 http://www.britannica.com/biography/Lujo-Brentano, consulted 12 June 2016. 21 And perhaps Friedrich Simon Archenhold, Ernst Reuter, Leopold von Wiese, Ernst Meyer, Stefan Zweig, Alfred Hermann Fried, Rudolf Goldscheid, Clara Zetkin. See https://search. socialhistory.org/Record/ARCH01730, consulted 20 June 2016. 22 Dieter Engelmann / Horst Naumann, Hugo Haase. Lebensweg und politisches Vermächtnis eines streitbaren Sozialisten, Leipzig 1999. 23 http://www.britannica.com/biography/Heinrich-Lammasch, consulted 12 June 2016. 24 Georg G. Iggers, The Historian Banished. Karl Lamprecht in Imperial Germany, in: Central European History 27/1994, 87–92. 25 Sven Lange, Hans Delbrück und der ‘Strategiestreit’. Kriegführung und Kriegsgeschichte in der Kontroverse 1879–1914, Freiburg i. Br. 1995. 26 Max Dessoir, in: Trivium 6/2010, http://trivium.revues.org/index3670.html, consulted 12 June 2016. Peter-Ulrich Merz-Benz, Tönnies Ferdinand, 1855–1936, in: Massimo Borlandi et al. (eds.), Dictionnaire de la pensée sociologique, Paris 2005, 701f. Carla Müller-Feyen, Enga-

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Maurice Halbwachs for his part dates the origins of the BNV in November 1914, “to stop the war and (…) create an organisation which friends of peace in all of Europe can relate to”.28 Is this chronological confusion? However, the order of the day was to repudiate the warmongering “Manifesto of the Ninety-Three” – signed by some members of the Bund who would later come to regret their signatures – which is the main goal of the brochure “A Confession of German Guilt” by Walter Oehme.29 A trio faced down the “tempest”: Hellmut von Gerlach, Kurt von Tepper-Laski, and Otto Lehmann-Rußbüldt. Three imperatives which were outlined during the second meeting of the BNV on 6 December 1914 illustrate its pacifist and democratic orientation: “the need to develop a European customs union”, “to demand the acknowledgement of the equality of the franchise of all German citizens”, “to strongly oppose any policy of conquest and annexation”.30 Despite being banned by the military authorities, the BNV continued its propaganda, which meant that its pacifist activists were subjected to “frequent visits from state security agents and soldiers”, because their Flugschriften (pamphlets) against “a Pan-German policy of annexation and conquest” defended the “civilising drive” of a “European culture”.31 What is more, these intellectuals argued for an end to secret diplomacy by submitting it to public control and emphasised the need for an “international organisation of Europe that will lead all nations to the sovereign employment of their abilities”.32 Not without difficulty, as demonstrat-

27

28 29 30 31

32

gierter Journalismus. Wilhelm Herzog und “Das Forum” (1914–1929). Zeitgeschehen und Zeitgenossen im Spiegel einer nonkonformistischen Zeitschrift, Frankfurt a. M. et al. 1996. La Guerre sociale, 1 November 1914. Ferdinand Buisson, who shares the “Union sacrée” way of thinking, wonders: “Vos hirondelles annoncent-elles vraiment le printemps? Est-ce une grossière habilité germanique de plus? (…) Dans tous les cas, on ne laisserait pas publier ces brochures, si elles n’étaient pas pour quelque chose dans le plan des grands meneurs.” Victor Basch, L’Aube, proses de guerre, Paris 1918, 115. About Victor Basch and the war, see Françoise Basch, Face à la guerre, que faire?, in: Françoise Basch / Liliane Crips / Pascale Gruson (eds.), Victor Basch (1863–1944). Un intellectuel cosmopolite, Paris 1999, 94–102. Aleksandr N. Dimitriev, La mobilisation intellectuelle. La communauté académique internationale et la Première Guerre mondiale, in: Cahiers du monde russe 43/2002, 617–644. CDH, 29 February 1928, 132. Walter Oehme, Ein Bekenntnis deutscher Schuld. Beiträge zur deutschen Kriegsführung, Berlin 1920. CDH, 10 January 1922, 3–7, and 29 February 1928, 132. Danielle Wonsh, Einstein et la Commission internationale de coopération intellectuelle, in: Revue d’histoire des Sciences 57/2004, 509–520, mentions a leaflet about “La création des États-Unis d’Europe”. Also see Eduard Bernstein’s scathing criticism of the thesis of Germany being encircled put forward by the General Staff. See Maurice Halbwachs, in: CDH, 10 January 1922, 4. CDH, 25 January 1922, 3ff. Emmanuel Naquet, Entre justice et patrie: la Ligue des Droits de l’Homme et la Grande Guerre, in: Le Mouvement social 183/1998, 93–110. Idem, Guerre et droit. L’inconciliable? L’exemple de la Ligue des Droits de l’Homme de l’avant à l’après 14– 18, in: Mil neuf cent. Revue d’histoire intellectuelle 23/2005, 93–110. Sophie Lorrain, ‘L’amant’ de la paix et le rapprochement franco-allemand, in: Basch / Crips / Gruson (eds.), Victor Basch, 103–110. Françoise Basch, Victor Basch et l’Allemagne. Dialogue et dissonance, in: Lendemains 89/1998, 28–41. Ilde Gorguet, Les mouvements pacifistes et la réconciliation franco-allemande dans les années vingt (1919–1931), Bern et al. 1999.

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ed by Victor Basch’s efforts, who, according to Sophie Lorain, tried to “refute the double allegation that the BNV was the Chancellor’s ‘third crew’ and consisted only of ‘unreliable individuals without a mandate’”. If the second hypothesis about the protagonists’ qualities proves false, the importance of the environment is obvious.33 FROM THE BUND TO THE DEUTSCHE LIGA FÜR MENSCHENRECHTE (GERMAN LEAGUE OF HUMAN RIGHTS) Statutes, involved parties, statements and actions in the period of the “Esprit de Genève” (“Spirit of Geneva”) The statutes of the BNV echo the manifesto and Article 1 of those of the LDH34, which state that it is “intended to defend the principles of freedom, equality and justice laid down in the Declarations of Human Rights of 1789 and 1793” and call upon “all Republicans” to fight against any “illegal, arbitrary, or intolerant” action and for “a sincere union” (1907). Its foundation was not triggered by a judicial and political crime, the way the Dreyfus affair led to the LDH, but by the war, and the BNV set out with a European vision from its inception. The association presented itself in the image of the LDH, as a socially and politically heterogeneous movement, as a “working group including Germans and united Germans regardless of their political or religious beliefs”, aiming to “collaborate to find a solution to the issues the German people has to face because of the war”. In fact, centrists as well as social democrats were involved in the BNV, and its goal was to convince European politicians and diplomats of the need for a peaceful competition between the nations and an international union to reach a political and economic agreement between civilised nations (…) by breaking with the current system that enables a small number of people to decide the fate of hundreds of millions of their fellow men. 35

In the first months of the war, the Bund was able to make contact with German diplomats, amongst whom Count Groeben, the great-grand-son of the Prussian reformer, Baron vom Stein (1757–1831), who was “perfectly up-to-date with the activities of the German embassy in Paris, where he had spent many years”36, or 33 Sophie Lorrain, ‘L’amant’ de la paix, and also Françoise Basch, Victor Basch et l’Allemagne, as well as Ilde Gorguet, Les mouvements pacifistes. 34 Emmanuel Naquet, Pour l’Humanité. La Ligue des droits de l’homme de l’affaire Dreyfus à la défaite de 1940, Paris 2014, 70. 35 Bock, Heimatlose Republikaner. Landry Charrier, À la recherche d’une paix de compromis: Kessler, Haguenin et la diplomatie officieuse de l’hiver 1916–1917, in: Histoire@Politique. Politique, culture, société 11/2010, http://www.cairn.info/revue-histoire-politique-2010-2page-10.htm, consulted 13 June 2016, shows the struggle of these uprooted republicans looking for a Republic which would be able to guarantee human rights and build a peaceful bridge between the two nations. 36 CDH, 25 January 1922, 3f.

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Dr. Hans Schlieben, Consul in Belgrade, who had briefed the decision-makers on the context of Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia. A memorandum written by Groeben was even sent to “distinguished political figures” – it had “considerable impact”. The importance of individual and organisational networks is obvious – Walter Schücking, Ludwig Quidde, Kurt von Tepper-Laski and the secretary of the Bund for example visited the Congress of the Anti-Orloog-Raad. The association was considered moderate, which also allowed its members to be granted permission by Foreign Affairs to travel to The Hague, with their brochures hidden in their luggage.37 But the conservative, authoritarian and nationalist environment limited the audience for an elitist, isolated minority organisation. Unquestionably, the messages of this “other Germany”, which explained the outbreak of war in terms of commercial competition, did not sit well with the economic pressure groups that favoured a “vast colonial empire”, a “sufficient” war indemnity, and the annexation of Belgium and the northern coast of France as well as new territories to the East, who pushed for its ban. On 14 July 1915, the manifesto “Sollen wir annektieren? [Should we annex?]” by Ludwig Quidde38 called for free trade, for freedom on the seas, for international law, and triggered a search of the BNV premises the next day. However, even before the association could adopt a more radical approach, General Headquarters imposed its silence in February 1916, at the start of the battle of Verdun. One of its leaders, Lilli Jannasch, director of the publishing house Neues Vaterland, was imprisoned, and the Second Reich seized the highly critical memoirs of Karl Max Fürst von Lichnowsky (1860–1928). In October 1918, with the ban on the Bund’s activities lifted, it increased its activities when faced with “the inertia of the left-wing parties”.39 On 8 November, a meeting of thirty-two leading members decided “to call a meeting of the people of Berlin” and to “overthrow militarism, capitalism, and the monarchy, that is the three institutions responsible for the misery of the people and the tragedy of the country”.40 The BNV went on to propose a democratic program: the elimination of arbitrariness, a general amnesty for all political offences, the investigation of responsibility for the war, freedom of assembly, the combat against militarism, equal, direct and secret votes for all, “even for women and soldiers”. 41 On 13 November, four days after the abdication of Wilhelm II and two days after the armistice, thousands of citizens of the young Weimar Republic attended a meeting with Baron Hermann von Eckardstein (1864–1933), a former adviser to the embassy who had spent two years in prison, and who insisted on freedom, brotherhood and truth.42 37 Bock, Heimatlose Republikaner; Landry Charrier, À la recherche d’une paix de compromis. CDH, 20 January 1928, 132. 38 CDH, 20 February 1928, 131–134. 39 CDH, 20 February 1928, 131–134. 40 CDH, 20 February 1928, 133. The appeal, drafted by René Schickelé, was signed by Kurt von Tepper-Laski, Helene Stöcker and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935). 41 CDH, 20 February 1928, 131–134. 42 CDH, 20 February 1928, 131–134.

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What happened to the BNV? Its leaders, many of them independent socialists, rejected any “compromise with more or less disguised partisans of the former regime”, but they also wanted to avoid “risking the fate of the revolution in violent riots and illegal coup attempts”. Coming from a diversity of philosophical and partisan backgrounds, and not seeing the association as a traditional political structure, they refused to part with supporters such as banker Hugo Simon and professor Georg Friedrich Nicolai, the emperor’s former physician. However, while their ideology initially was influenced by middle-class pacifism, like in the French leagues, it increasingly leaned towards social democracy.43 While we do not know much about its modus operandi and framework, it is clear that the BNV, like the French League, not only was extremely vague because of its openness, but was also marked by a generational effect: its members were born around the years 1850–1860, reached political maturity with the proclamation of the Reich and watched its evolution from Bismarck to Wilhelm II. Like the LDH, the BNV gave a voice to progressive expectations. But the expression of such ideas took place in an unstable Germany, and like the Spartacist movement, the Bund suffered physical and moral violence, which was expressed in an anti-Semitism of which Albert Einstein was a victim, but also in the assassination in 1919 of many of its proponents.44 After the Bund had been reorganised in 1921 around Gerlach and von Kessler, feminist Helene Stöcker45, Alfons Hortent, social democrat Heinrich Ströbel (1869–1944) and demographer Robert Kuczynski (1876–1947), it was able to publish in the columns of the “Cahiers des droits de l’homme”.46 Its delegates were even received several times, though not without apprehension: Émile Kahn for instance considered it quite ill-advised to organise a public meeting likely to cause hostile demonstrations.47 Nevertheless, the development of a new connec43 Karl Holl, Pazifismus in Deutschland, Berlin 1988, 135. 44 CDH, 10 January 1922, 6, and 20 February 1928, 133. Eisner, Landauer, Futran, Paasche, Liebknecht, Luxemburg, Haase, Rathenau. On the socialist Gustav Landauer (1870–1919), see Walter Fähnders, Gustav Landauer. Anarchisme, littérature, révolution, in: Alain Pessin / Patrice Terrone (eds.), Littérature et anarchisme, Toulouse 1998, 365–386, and Eugen Lunn, Prophet of Community. The Romantic Socialism of Gustav Landauer, Berkeley 1973. On the writer Hans Paasche (1881–1920), see Werner Lange, Hans Paasches Forschungsreise ins innerste Deutschland. Eine Biographie, Bremen 1984. The engineer Alexander Futran (1879– 1920) was a member of the Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands. 45 Christl Wickert, Helene Stöcker. 1869–1943. Frauenrechtlerin, Sexualreformerin und Pazifistin, Bonn 1991. 46 Erich Julius Gumbel, L’Allemagne et la démocratie, in: CDH, 25 October 1921, 459–465, and Paul de Stoecklin, La terreur blanche en Allemagne, in: CDH, 25 September 1921, 448– 449. According to Lorrain, ‘L’amant’ de la paix, 107, this forum was made available by Victor Basch. Also see François Beilecke, Der Deutschlanddiskurs in den Cahiers des Droits de l’Homme 1920 bis 1930. Begründungsstrategien der Ligue des Droits de l’Homme für eine deutsch-französische Annäherung, in: Lendemains 89/1998, 42–67. 47 CDH, 10 January 1922, 38. Therefore, the LDH limited itself to welcoming Gerlach, Nicolai Lehmann-Rußbüldt and then, upon the request of Ferdinand Buisson, Kessler and Foerster. See CDH, 1 March 1922, 111–114, and 10 March 1922, 137f.

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tion can be observed, which took concrete form on 20 January 1922, when the Bund added Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte (DLM) to its name, and later in a joint declaration full of peaceful and democratic intentions, which expressed hopes for a new Germany and the advent of human rights even further to the east.48 There are other synergies between the organisations: in “L’Ère nouvelle”, Théodore Ruyssen praised the merits of the Cartel de la Paix (Cartel of Peace) the DLM was a member of; Aline Ménard-Dorian and the Comité central (central committee) received the guests of Marc Sangnier for the International Democratic Congress held in Paris49; Celestin Bouglé and Aline Ménard-Dorian visited Germany with Victor Basch, reporting strong “impressions”.50 Jurist Roger Picard, a student of Charles Gide, states that Robert Kuczynski, representing the DLM, was a member of the “small finance committee”, which was a kind of commission working on the question of reparations. Like the Diktat, this divided the LDH, with the majority of its members claiming that Germany was responsible for the outbreak of the conflict but pleading for a revision of the Treaty of Versailles.51 Beyond bilateral relationships, the German League was the very cornerstone of the creation of the LIDH at the first congress in Paris, in which it participated in 1922, represented by Milly Zirker and Robert Kuczynski. As Maurice Halbwachs remarked, the DLM was not “a meeting of idealists which merely gathers up clouds”, but proved to be a “remarkable setup for the sake of construction, organisation and positive adjustment”.52 This is illustrated by the proposal for a “real League of Nations”, which provided for an economic section of the League and international commissions for the distribution of raw materials as well as the regulation of transport and finance. But the crisis in Germany in the early twenties moved the LDH leadership, including Victor Basch, to demand more freedom in the occupied areas, but also to denounce “reaction in Germany” – especially irregular political trials. Several French leaders visited Mainz, Berlin, or Potsdam.53 The national and international context had admittedly changed: the 1924 elections had brought the Lefts Cartel to power in France, and France’s new foreign policy, led by Aristide Briand, helped introduce a collective feeling of safety which permitted Victor Basch and 48 CDH, 25 January 1922, 27, 1 March 1922, 109, 5 March 1922, 156–158. 49 CDH, 10 June 1922, 63–66. 50 L’Ère nouvelle, 19 July 1922. CDH, 25 August 1922, 395–400. La Paix par le Droit, July 1922. 51 Roger Picard, La Ligue et les réparations, in: CDH, 25 November 1922, 549–551. This commission included Charles Gide, Gaston Jèze, Roger Picard, William Oualid, Pierre Renaudel, Ferdinand Buisson, Henri Guernut, and Léon Blum. See CDH, 10 November 1922, 528, and Emmanuel Naquet, La Société d’études documentaires et critiques sur la guerre. Ou la naissance d’une minorité pacifiste au sein de la Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, in: Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps 30/1993, 6–10. 52 CDH, 10 January 1922, 3–7. 53 About the Ruhr see CDH, 20 September 1923, 411–418, 5 October 1923, 435–440, 444–449, 466f., 10 August 1923, 341–344, 354f., 10 November 1923, 487f. Le congrès national de 1923, Paris 1923, 273ff. See also Lorrain, ‘L’amant’ de la paix, 108f.

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Hellmut von Gerlach to theorise about a Franco-German agreement, the former in a speech to the Reichsrat in Berlin. Nevertheless, problems still persisted, for instance the reality of German disarmament which worried the leaguists, and which also justified the joint appeal of the associations “To the Two Democracies” (see Figure 1, next page), followed by lectures by Victor Basch in Aix-la-Chapelle, Trier, Heidelberg, Wiesbaden, Berlin, Hamburg, and Leipzig, which had been requested by the German Cartel for Peace.54 These trips were accompanied by joint efforts, for example when the French League forwarded an open letter by the DLM and the DFG, drafted by Ludwig Quidde, P. Lobe, Hans H. Niederrellmann and Hans Schwann, to Raymond Poincaré. Friendships formed, too; Celestin Bouglé evokes the “anxiety that was clearly to be seen on the faces of these men of good will”. Hellmut von Gerlach for example had a close friendship with Alphonse Aulard and Victor Basch, who painted a glowing portrait of him.55 While the association celebrated the evacuation of the Rhineland with its sister organisation, the global economic crisis, rising international tensions, the German rearmament and the rise of Nazism and therefore of anti-Semitism prompted the DLM to start working with Carl von Ossietzky’s (1889–1938) periodical “Weltbühne”, seeking to demonstrate the dangers and deception of Hitler’s social claims and to denounce the multiplying political trials. The two organisations launched a joint manifesto in late summer 1931 and, in an article published in “La Volonté” about “Franco-German antagonism”, Victor Basch attacked the “bands of assassins”.56 The fact remains, however, that several leaders of the two associations lacked Victor Basch’s clarity regarding the likelihood of Adolf Hitler coming to power. On 20 September 1932, Henri Guernut estimated that Hitler’s fortune was “more than compromised”, while Hellmut von Gerlach thought he had missed his chance to enter “government, at least for a long time to come, and maybe forever”.57 Two weeks after Hitler’s appointment as chancellor, Gerlach and LehmannRußbüldt’s passports were confiscated. The central committee reacted by launching a passionate and lucid “Appeal to the Democracies”, which sounded the death knell of the Franco-German rapprochement.58 54 Naquet, Pour l’Humanité, 323. 55 CDH, 30 November 1924, 571–574, 30 January 1925, 51–55, 10 February 1925, 83f., 25 April 1925, 196–200, 25 September 1925, 450, 25 June 1925, 301–305, 10 January 1927, 7– 10, 25–30 November 1927, 555–559, 20 January 1931, 36–42, 25 May 1925, 243. Le Populaire de Nantes, 11 May 1925, 18 July 1923. L’Ère nouvelle, 1 January 1924. 56 CDH, 30 June 1930, 387, 30 May 1930, 350, 20 January 1931, 27–35, 10–20 August 1931, 501, 10 April 1931, 233, 20 August 1931, 25, 30 August–10 September 1931, 507. 57 Naquet, Pour l’Humanité, 324. 58 CDH, 30 April 1931, 267–270, 20 May 1932, 267–271, 10–20 August 1932, 473, 20 September 1932, 541, 30 October 1932, 627f., 20 February 1933, 114, 28 February 1933, 123–130, and, for his student circle, Emmanuel Naquet, Éléments pour l’étude d’une génération pacifiste dans l’Entre-deux-guerres.: La LAURS et le rapprochement franco-allemand (1924– 1933), in: Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps 18/1990, 50–58.

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Figure 1. Title page of “Les Cahiers des droits de l’homme”, 25 January 1922, with the appeal “Aux deux démocraties”. Source: author’s collection.

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THE IMPACT OF NATIONAL AND EUROPEAN EVENTS ON THE HISTORY OF THE ORGANISATIONS FROM 1933 In the night of the Reichstag fire on 27 and 28 February 1933, the leaders of the German League were arrested, including its president Carl von Ossietzky. In March, the association was banned, its members or supporters were persecuted and were unable to pursue their professions. Some managed to emigrate to the United States, like Albert Einstein and physiologist Emil Julius Gumbel, and others to Turkey, like Ernst Reuter. In the following years, the French League engaged in welcoming the refugees from Nazism, although it did not get a seat on the board of the HautCommissariat pour les réfugiés allemands en France (High Commission for German Refugees in France). However, the archives of the Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine (BDIC)59 available for consultation illustrate its various relationships with a number of other associations: the Fédération des émigrés d’Allemagne en France (Federation of German Emigrants in France), the Comité d’aide aux victimes du fascisme hitlérien (Committee for Assistance to Victims of Nazi Fascism), the Comité de boycottage des produits hitlériens (Committee for the Boycott of Nazi Products), the Commission consultative pour les réfugiés d’Allemagne (Advisory Commission for Refugees from Germany), the Comité d’échanges interscolaires franco-allemands (Committee of FrancoGerman Interschool Exchange), the Comité d’accueil et d’aide aux victimes de l’antisémitisme allemand (Reception Committee for the Assistance to Victims of German Anti-Semitism) in which both Paul Painlevé and Justin Godart were involved, but from which Victor Basch remained excluded. But with the Anschluss, as the flow of immigrants increased, the German refugees suffered from increasingly severe administrative measures. While Maurice Milhaud demanded they should be welcomed, the LDH was forced to discontinue the legal and social department that the DLM had created at rue Jean-Dolent due to a lack of resources.60 But beyond that, there were some crucial symbolic interventions: the German and French leagues managed to secure the Nobel Peace Prize for Carl von Ossietzky, probably thanks to the decisive role of Henri Guernut. This victory was only partial because Hermann Göring refused to allow von Ossietzky to travel to receive the prize, and he died in May 1938 from the privations he had endured in the camps of Sonnenburg and Esterwegen. On the organisational level, the 59 For further information on these archives, see Naquet, Pour l’Humanité, 27–32, and Emmanuel Naquet, Retour de l’URSS. Brève histoire de la mémoire de la LDH, in: Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps 100/2010, 55–57. 60 Barbara Vormeier, État et perspectives des recherches relatives aux réfugiés en provenance d’Allemagne (1933–1945), in: Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps 44/1996, 24–26. Rita Thalmann, L’immigration et l’opinion publique en France de 1933 à 1936, in: La France et l’Allemagne, 1932–1936, Paris 1980, 149–172. Idem, Les réfugiés du III e Reich. Un cas particulier de l’immigration dans la France des années trente, in: Combat pour la diaspora 18– 19/1986, 37–46. Ralph Schor, L’antisémitisme en France pendant les années trente, Bruxelles 1992, 296f. BDIC, Fonds LDH, F delta res 798/65. CDH, 20 July 1932, 473.

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Figure 2. Title page of “Les Cahiers des droits de l’homme”, 20 April 1933. Source: author’s collection.

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German League endured the effects of Nazism; however, it managed to continue some of its activities from before 1933, when it had created a Republikanische Beschwerdestelle (Republican Complaints Office) which dealt with 30,000 cases, had 4,000 members61, and organised 150 meetings a year.62 While Siegfried Kawereau (1886–1936) was imprisoned in Stettin, then released after the intervention of the FIDH, Gerlach was forced to seek refuge in France at the invitation of Victor Basch, where he founded the Association des journalistes émigrés allemands (Association of German Immigrant Journalists) – with its headquarters at rue Jean-Dolent, the LDH premises. A few weeks later, a section of the DLM was recreated in Strasbourg, another one in Prague, and even in Barcelona, with Augustin Souchy as its official delegate, in order to support antifascist refugees, possibly Jews, who had arrived in Catalonia and some of whom had been detained.63 Victor Basch’s awareness of the threat of Nazism was disseminated in Emil J. Gumbel’s and Rudolf Breitscheid’s lectures in France. This support was amplified following the integration of the Saarland, the Anschluss, and the Munich agreement, for example through French lessons, authentication of law students’ diplomas, jobs, accommodation, clothes. A German liaison committee “reduces the burden carried by the (French) League services”, “receives refugees, checks their identity and quality”, “provides them with information”, since the LDH even issued certificates of refugee status. This solidarity is evident in letters from League members offering employment to refugees (see Figure 3, next page). But the situation of the DLM was fragile, since von Gerlach was alone in running a service that received up to 50 applicants a day.64 Moreover, with the influx of refugees, the German League reported some dubious individuals; an undated circular for instance warns to be wary of M. F. [anonymised], a “journalist and editor”, “born 13 April 1894 in Katovice”, “arrived in France on 7 July 1933 via Rotterdam”, “and left on 14 June 1934 for the Saarland”, with the addenda: “He is suspicious, for he uses different names and is probably a German spy”, “Be careful!”. From 1934, letters sent to the secretary general of the LDH serve to establish a “Black List # 6”, listing “all dubious, sus-

61 Gilbert Krebs, Sept décennies de relations franco-allemandes, 1918–1988. Hommage à Joseph Rovan, Paris 1989, 162, talks of 1,000 members. Bock, Heimatlose Republikaner, 72, of 2,000. But http://www.observatoire-humanitaire.org/fr/index.php?page=fiche-ong.php& part=historique&chapitre=105&id=32, consulted 20 June 2016, of 16,000 members in 1924. 62 Naquet, Pour l’Humanité, 514. 63 CDH, 20 May 1933, 334, 10 June 1933, 379, 10 July 1933, 453. Le congrès national de 1933, Paris 1933, 9. See also Rita Thalmann, Face aux défis des années trente, in: Basch / Crips / Gruson (eds.), Victor Basch, 111–121. Emmanuel Naquet, Victor Basch et la Ligue des Droits de l’Homme. Itinéraire d’un dreyfusard politique (1898–1940), in: ibid., 123–138. Albrecht Betz, Exil et engagement. Les intellectuels allemands et la France, 1930–1940, Paris 1991. 64 CDH, 20 April 1933, 25. BDIC, Fonds LDH, F delta res 798/55–56. CDH, 10 May 1933, 312, 30 December 1933, 771, 10 December 1934, 78. The committee, led by Gerlach, ensured the connection between the different groups, with the LDH dealing with the Legal Service. See CDH, 10 June 1933, 378.

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Figure 3. Letter offering employment with a tailor in Fontainebleau. Source: BDIC, Fonds LDH, F delta res 798/55.

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picious and non-refugee individuals”, their names often followed with the remark “please deny any help” or “is a professional immigrant”.65 It is clear that the urgency of the situation had transformed the essentially rhetorical dimension of the DLM into a protective structure of the kind that had contributed to the survival of the LDH from its foundation; this change affected the expatriate German League in a different situation, however, and it therefore depended on its French sister organisation. The complexity of the task did not prevent the LDH from still denouncing violations, highlighted in the manifesto for the German democrats signed by Albert Bayet, Pierre Cot, Marcel Deat, Justin Godart, Jacques Hadamard, Paul Langevin, Léon Jouhaux, and Julien Racamond.66 However, from 1939, the situation became even more critical: Milly Zirker, the secretary of the LDH and the FIDH, was overwhelmed with letters, for example from the Gurs camp in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques or the Meslay camp in Mayenne.67 Germany’s attack on the Netherlands, Belgium and France, and the invasion of the latter forced Milly Zirker to flee a few weeks later.68 CONCLUSION Undoubtedly, the two associations correspond to trends of public opinion. They operated on the basis of networks serving as bridges, they stood at the crossroads between civil society and the political world, and they were intertwined. However, they have different origins, and their models cannot be exchanged or exported. We also have to keep in mind the difference in numbers and structures: the LDH was institutionalised, it had become a mass movement of around 180,000 members in nearly 24,500 sections and 100 federations as well as fifty overseas

65 BDIC, Fonds LDH, F delta res 798/55. There even is a letter of denunciation dated 16 February 1938 from the secretary of the Montigny-les-Metz section, regarding a refugee registered in the Legal Service of the LDH and “member of the SS”. 66 CDH, 10 March 1936, 168. 67 BDIC, Fonds LDH, F delta res 798/63. 68 Without returning to Norman Ingram’s brief and evasive answers to our detailed and specific criticisms, we need to mention the methodological problems raised by his theses on the LDH’s anti-Semitism. We challenge our colleague’s conclusions without denying the membership of anti-Semites like Félicien Challaye in the association. See Norman Ingram, Qui a tué la Ligue des Droits de l’Homme? La Ligue, les nazis et la chute de la France en 1940, in: Gilles Manceron / Emmanuel Naquet (eds.), Être dreyfusard, hier et aujourd’hui, Rennes 2009, 397–402. Emmanuel Naquet, Le péril et la riposte, in: ibid., 301–328. In a later article, after the symposium in 2006, where we shared our viewpoint with colleagues like Robert Frank and Michel Dreyfus, Norman Ingram again referred to the use the Nazis made of the documents seized at the headquarters of the LDH in 1940. See Norman Ingram, La Ligue des Droits de l’Homme et le problème allemand, in: Revue d’histoire diplomatique 124/2010, 119–131. But he never examined the reason why they failed to use, as it seems, those elements that would have been of the greatest interest to them (identities, addresses, photos …) in the archives, which are today filed at the BDIC.

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committees in 193269, while the DLM rather resembled a “club”, lacking the numerous ramifications that we can observe in the French sections. In fact, their greatest dissimilarity lies in the national histories that frame them. They are each governed by their own temporality and by their distinct contexts and frameworks; even the profiles of their membership are quite different. While the LDH was part of a Republican pattern in which Freemasonry is a key aspect, the German League contributed in its own way, and ultimately for a very short time, to implementing democracy in youthful Germany and to institutionalising the Weimar Republic, at least until 1933. However, while the legitimacy of the LDH is undeniable, if only because of its continued existence, the DLM is struggling to clear a path for itself, whereas the French League has already acquired an international dimension and attracts attention. Neither is purely a pressure group or electoral committee, and much less a political cartel, but both are politically engaged associations. Indeed, they present a different approach to politics than parties and votes, because, if they do not directly contribute to the emergence and development of parties, they contribute to collective forms of action, since the DLM’s members include economic and legal experts as well as activists for peace and democracy. On the other hand, if the French League helped to establish a gathering place, a front and a tool for the Left, this is not true for the DLM, the unifying character of which quickly evaporated in a profoundly partisan universe. Therefore we cannot assert imitation, re-use, or coexistence: it is not easy to link these projects and initiatives, although there are undoubtedly resonances that need to be emphasised – peace, human rights, democracy, … – as well as the circulation of ideas illustrating similarities and solidarities, and emphasising the universal dimension of the defence of human beings and nations.

69 Emmanuel Naquet, La Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, de l’affaire Dreyfus à 1940. Engagement et culture politique républicaine, in: Rémi Baudouï et al. (eds.), Un professeur en République. Mélanges en l’honneur de Serge Berstein, Paris 2006, 58–66.

THE REINCARNATIONS OF THE GERMAN LEAGUE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN OCCUPIED AND WEST GERMANY Lora Wildenthal The present volume brings together the histories of organizations in various countries that called themselves “League for Human Rights” to mark affiliation with the pioneering French Ligue des droits de l’homme (LDH), itself founded in 1898 and documented by William D. Irvine, Gilles Manceron, and Emmanuel Naquet in this volume. This chapter narrates the post-1945 West German story, in which successive and rival German leagues constituted themselves as successors to the prestigious German League for Human Rights (Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte), founded in 1922. The Weimar-era League held great moral credibility for the minority of Germans who criticized the First World War, supported the Weimar Republic, and risked their lives to speak out against the Nazis. After 1945, the League played a less dramatic, but still important role in German society. The post-1945 West German story shows that it can be misleading to view the German League for Human Rights as one continuous organization, even as the reputation of the Weimar-era League remained an inspiration. Moreover, it reveals the basic tension that all human rights organizations face: they depend, on the one hand, on information and money, and, on the other hand, on a reputation for independence – yet how they obtain the former can endanger the latter. Given the extreme manifestations of this tension in the wake of Nazism and during the Cold War, it is impressive that some people were able to preserve the identity of the Weimarera League as their lasting point of orientation. This essay shows how and why early incarnations of the German League for Human Rights foundered and how a new International League for Human Rights founded in 1959 was able to prevail as the genuine successor to the original Weimar-era German League for Human Rights.1 THE GERMAN LEAGUE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS BEFORE 1945 The German League for Human Rights originated with the New Fatherland League (Bund Neues Vaterland), founded in November 1914 to promote a peace without annexations, to reveal the truth about the German political leadership’s 1

This essay is adapted from Chapters 1 and 3 of my monograph The Language of Human Rights in West Germany (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). That press’s permission is gratefully acknowledged. Fuller references may be found there.

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role in provoking the First World War, and to demand domestic political reform.2 Wartime censorship had made pacifism itself into a civil liberties issue. After the war ended in 1918, the New Fatherland League cooperated with the French LDH, and in 1922 it adapted the LDH’s name to become the German League for Human Rights. During the Weimar Republic, the German League for Human Rights took the unpopular position that the Treaty of Versailles ought to be fulfilled and that reconciliation with France and Poland was paramount. It published exposés of rearmament, the judiciary’s politicized verdicts that favored the Right, political murders by the far-right “Feme” and later the Nazi Party, and governing coalitions’ excessive reliance on emergency powers. The League took a strong stand against anti-Semitism, defended persecuted radicals in the United States and revolutionaries in Central Europe, and provided legal aid to German defendants facing unfair trials or Nazi violence. The League’s political affiliations were formally nonpartisan, but it was closely allied with the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD), and sometimes cooperated with the German Communist Party (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, KPD). As the Nazi threat grew, some members of the League advocated a popular front against Nazism. The League was always small (in 1932 it had only about two thousand members3), but that suited it well, as members did not wish it to be a mass organization. On the contrary, they wanted all members to be personally convinced of the group’s goals and able to articulate them independently. The League elicited the hatred of the nationalist right and the Nazi Party, for its politics and for the prominence of Jews in its ranks. Within weeks of the Nazi seizure of power in January 1933, many members fled abroad or were arrested. Robert M. W. Kempner, the head of the League’s legal aid office and later a U.S. prosecutor at some war crimes trials at Nuremberg, destroyed the League’s files before fleeing in order to prevent the Nazis from obtaining them. Nazis soon raided and closed the League’s office. Carl von Ossietzky, a member of the League’s board, continued to publish criticism of the Nazi regime and was arrested in 1933. He received the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize but was never freed, and he died in 1938. After 1933, the League was shattered by political and racial persecution, and ceased to exist except in name. One Weimar-era secretary general, Kurt R. Grossmann (1897–1972), fled to Czechoslovakia, France, and finally the United States. The other, Otto Lehmann-Rußbüldt (1873–1964), went to London. There, Lehmann-Rußbüldt used the name “League in Exile” to refer to a tiny, loose group of émigrés. These met in October 1944 to discuss a league to be refounded by Germans inside Germany. But how were Germans inside Germany to rebuild 2

3

Erwin Gülzow, Bund Neues Vaterland, in: Dieter Fricke et al. (eds.), Die bürgerlichen Parteien in Deutschland. Handbuch der Geschichte der bürgerlichen Parteien und anderer bürgerlicher Interessenorganisationen vom Vormärz bis zum Jahre 1945, vol. 1, Leipzig 1968, 179–183. Werner Fritsch, Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte (DLfM) 1922–1933, in: Dieter Fricke et al. (eds.), Lexikon zur Parteiengeschichte. Die bürgerlichen und kleinbürgerlichen Parteien und Verbände in Deutschland (1789–1945), vol. 1, Cologne 1983, 749–759, 749.

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the League? As Katharina Kupsch, one of Grossmann’s colleagues from Weimar days, put it in 1947: To intervene in issues that are acute abroad, like we used to do in a case like Sacco and Vanzetti, is, to my mind, not yet appropriate, as long as everyone out there can say we should first get through our war criminal trials and de-Nazification, and put our own house in order. So, what to do?4

THE COMPETITION TO CLAIM THE LEAGUE’S GOOD NAME IN OCCUPIED GERMANY The League’s name possessed great moral authority – few German organizations could look back on such an early, clear, and principled anti-Nazi position. Several local groups calling themselves the “German League for Human Rights” or some similar name sprang up in the British and U.S. zones of occupation between 1945 and 1947. Between May 1945 and late 1949, several cities saw local leagues emerge, including Frankfurt, Wuppertal, Bielefeld, Hanover, and Hamburg. There was no central oversight for these leagues; indeed, any political self-organization required Allied permission at first. The Weimar-era members considered themselves the arbiters of which groups were genuine, but they were scattered, often elderly and in poor health, and had difficulty monitoring developments. And even Weimar-era members did not agree among themselves about what a post-1945 League for Human Rights should be. Moral authority did not translate easily into organizational strength. This was in part because too many of the wrong kind of people wanted to attach themselves to that good name. Some wished to use a non-profit organization to raise funds for fraudulent uses; others wanted to use a League affiliation to mask a Nazi biography. Weimar-era League members spent a heartbreaking amount of time countering impostors and fraud. Quite apart from the problem of fraud, those seeking to refound the League faced the problem of how to match purpose and context in occupied Germany. The Weimar-era League had acted as a watchdog regarding state abuse of power. After 1945, the Allies were the new powers in occupied Germany – in effect, the state. The League could have turned to exposing abuses of power by the Allied occupation forces. Yet that would ally the League with its own erstwhile oppressors: the ex-Nazis and their sympathizers who were now busily pointing out the Allies’ shortcomings. Weimar-era League members did not want criticism of the Allies to be centerpiece of its activism. The Weimar-era League had aided political dissenters and victims of cases of judicial abuse – typically, persons holding persecuted political convictions. After 1945, large numbers of Germans were suffering, but the culpability for their suffering and the defensibility of their convictions looked different. Millions were suffering under Allied power, especially those fleeing the Red Army and those expelled from points east 4

Institut für Stadtgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main, Nachlass Veit Valentin (hereafter IfS NLV), S 1/1 309, Katharina Kupsch to Kurt R. Grossmann, 7 January 1947.

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into occupied Germany. Generally, either such Germans had been sympathetic to Nazism and so their political beliefs were unworthy of defense, or they were politically inarticulate and so not the kind of persecutee the Weimar-era League traditionally defended. They were soon joined by another large group of German sufferers: those fleeing the Soviet zone of occupation and later the German Democratic Republic. Again, these persons were sometimes politically articulate, but usually they were not. How was the League to maintain its continuity of purpose, yet also find a responsive audience, when it was surrounded by huge numbers of the “wrong” kind of victims? The story of two local League groups, in Frankfurt and Wuppertal, shows how differently members, new and old, responded. The Frankfurt League was constituted in June 1947 by the Weimar-era member Josef Kudrnofsky (1886– 1950). Kudrnofsky had a traditional League member’s profile: he had been a longtime member of the SPD, the German Peace Society (Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft), and the League. In 1932 he had left the SPD, criticizing it for having moved to the right. He remained in Germany during the Nazi years. Briefly imprisoned in 1933 and interrogated by the Gestapo periodically thereafter, he managed to continue aiding pacifists. After 1945, he again joined the SPD and also helped refound the German Peace Society. Kudrnofsky shared leadership of the Frankfurt League with a prominent pacifist and Weimar-era member, Count Emil von Wedel. The Frankfurt League’s 1947 program hewed closely to the League’s traditional pacifist and non-communist left commitments.5 “International reconciliation” and the “abolition of armed conflict” were prominent. References to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “four freedoms” and the United Nations Charter signaled the League’s support for the United Nations. The Frankfurt League sought the “eradication” of “nationalistic and militaristic writings”. It held that capitalism promoted militarism, and therefore advocated the “abolition of all rule by violence or class” and “a fair and humane economic order”. Kudrnofsky and his colleagues were no orthodox Marxists; the Fabian Society was their model. Not class struggle, but rather persuasion – “campaigning for human rights and social justice by seeking to influence the press, parties and governments” – was their means of social change.6 The Frankfurt League declared the goals of producing pamphlets, scholarly investigations, and expert opinions; holding discussion evenings, public lectures, and rallies; providing legal aid; and maintaining ties with similar organizations around the world. Only in 1947 did the U.S. Military Government permit the Frankfurt League to hold public events at all; by mid-1948, it had already hosted forty-eight public assemblies.7 Its membership rules banned former Nazis and former members of Nazi organizations unless three League members vouched

5 6 7

Otto Lehmann-Rußbüldt, Der Kampf der deutschen Liga für Menschenrechte, vormals Bund Neues Vaterland, für den Weltfrieden 1914–1927, Berlin 1927, 92f., 129–131. IfS NLV, S 1/1 307, Programm, 14 June 1947. Leo Baeck Institute, New York, Kurt Grossmann Collection (hereafter LBI KGC), AR 25032, Kudrnofsky to Grossmann, 18 July 1948.

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for them and they underwent a one-year probation.8 The Frankfurt League shared the above commitments with other local League groups led by Weimar-era members, such as the Bielefeld League led by Friedrich Welter and the Hamburg League led by Rudolf Herrmann, both of which had been founded by 1947.9 The Wuppertal League, by contrast, was constituted by an outsider – at least, sort of. Already in 1945, a man named Heinrich Dietz gained Allied permission to form an organization, and he held the Wuppertal League’s constitutive meeting in February 1946 – the earliest of any post-1945 league. Dietz had had contact with the League during the Weimar Republic as a recipient of its legal aid services, but apparently was not a member.10 It is unclear what he did during the Nazi years; neither Weimar-era members who stayed in Germany nor those who emigrated had had any contact with him.11 Dietz’s league did include Weimar-era members, and Dietz invited Grossmann, now living in New York, to serve as its first chairman. Grossmann responded in a public letter, explaining that as a Jew and as a new and loyal U.S. citizen, he refused to return to live in Germany. 12 However, Grossmann and other Weimar-era members appreciated Dietz’s initiative and took him seriously as the new postwar leader of the League, at least at first.13 Dietz’s Wuppertal League soon clashed with the Frankfurt League over how to define victims, perpetrators, and the League’s audience. The clashes began with Dietz’s disregard for Weimar-era League traditions such as democratic selfgovernance: Dietz ignored his advisory board and kept finances secret.14 While the Weimar-era League had ensured political reliability by requiring any new member to be endorsed by two old ones, Dietz sought a mass membership and allowed former Nazis to join without any endorsement.15 The Wuppertal League courted German refugees and expellees with services such as finding addresses of German prisoners of war, or a pen-pal program intended to persuade youth abroad to send food and clothing to Germans.16 These projects had nothing to do with

8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15

16

IfS NLV, S 1/1 307, Satzung, 14 June 1947. On Welter, see IfS NLV, S 1/1 307, Grossmann to Dietz, 16 July 1947, and Welter to Grossmann, 17 March 1947. On the Bielefeld statutes, see Swarthmore Peace Collection, Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte (hereafter SPC DLM), Bielefeld League, Rundschreiben Nr. 7, March 1947, 1f. On Herrmann, see IfS NLV, S 1/1 307, Herrmann to Dietz, 8 March 1948. Kurt R. Grossmann, Die Brücke über den Abgrund, in: Hermann Kesten (ed.), Ich lebe nicht in der Bundesrepublik, Munich 1964, 63–68, 63. IfS NLV, S 1/1 307, Dietz to Saenger, 10 March 1948, and Grossmann to Dietz, 6 March 1948. Grossmann, Die Brücke. IfS NLV, S 1/1 304, Grossmann to ILRM, 1 October 1946, and S 1/1 307, Herrmann to Dietz, March 1948. IfS NLV, S 1/1 307, Herrmann to Oelze, 16 December 1947. IfS NLV, S 1/1 307, Dietz to Grossmann, 16 July 1947; Grossmann, newsletter, May 1948; and Grossmann to Dietz, 6 March 1948; S 1/1 309, Kudrnofsky to Grossmann, 3 December 1947. IfS NLV, S 1/1 307, Herrmann to Dietz, 20 January 1948; Kudrnofsky to Dietz, 30 January 1948; and Wuppertal League, Öffentlicher Rechenschaftsbericht, November 1947; S 1/1 309,

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protecting political dissent. What direction would the League take if many such members – apolitical or worse – joined? Just as the Frankfurt League was in touch with like-minded League groups in other cities, so too the Wuppertal League was not alone; the Hanover League took a similar path of seeking mass membership and appealing to German refugees and expellees. It hosted events on the expulsions of ethnic Germans and on German prisoners of war in Soviet custody that resonated with audiences but fit poorly with the traditional League priority of international reconciliation.17 Weimar-era members insisted that such issues be discussed together with the fates of non-German POWs and refugees, to express the League’s internationalism, and in the context of a general condemnation of war. Grossmann now feared that the League was becoming an organization for “German human rights” only.18 While the Wuppertal League saw Germans as victims, the Frankfurt League saw Germans primarily as oppressors. Members in the Frankfurt League and similar local groups believed that German aggression in the Second World War had to be part of any discussion of postwar affairs. As the chairman of the Bielefeld League stated: Each one of us must know that we are to work, within the scope of our organization, toward restitution, namely the restitution of damages done especially to the racially and politically persecuted. Collective responsibility need not be declared or accepted, but it must be uncontroversial among League supporters that all Germans have taken on a debt [Schuld] so great, that the sufferings of the years after 1945, undeniable as they are, really cannot be called a ‘reckoning’, in order to be, as it were, even. 19

They wanted the League to serve as a means of confronting fellow Germans with the facts of the Nazi past and of educating them to be democrats in a human rights tradition. Their events foregrounded “the idea of human rights since Voltaire”, restitution to victims of Nazism, and Eugen Kogon’s “Der SS-Staat”, the earliest major publication on the Nazi camp system.20 These members felt vindicated by the Nuremberg trials’ documentation of atrocity and assignment of blame to specific individuals. Only Germans who had resisted Nazism or who had educated themselves about the nature of Nazism ought to be spokespeople for human rights, they held. As the Bielefeld League’s newsletter put it:

17 18 19 20

Dietz to Baldwin, 14 August 1947; and S 1/1 310, Welter to Lehmann-Rußbüldt, 30 August 1947, and Herrmann to Oelze, 16 December 1947. SPC DLM, Forderung auf Freigabe unserer Kriegsgefangenen, n.d. [8 February 1948], and Betr: Völkerrechtsfragen, 1 May 1948. IfS NLV, S 1/1 307, Grossmann to Welter, 4 May 1947, and Kudrnofsky to Oehlschläger, 10 January 1948. SPC DLM, Bielefeld League, Rundschreiben Nr. 11a, November 1947, 1. SPC DLM, Bielefeld League, Rundschreiben Nr. 6, February 1947, 1; Rundschreiben Nr. 7, March 1947, 2; Rundschreiben Nr. 8, March 1947, 1.

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The struggle for justice and human rights is completely justified in the case of Germany as well, but – and this is always decisive – it depends on who feels called upon to be a protector of human rights.21

The Frankfurt and Wuppertal leagues were each appealing to different audiences. Kudrnofsky and others wished the refounded League to serve as a “bridge to abroad” that would prove to the world that Germans had changed.22 Émigré Weimar-era members were aware of how German complaints were received abroad and urged that the League not focus on controversial causes that would alienate its human rights counterparts abroad.23 The German League “must fit itself harmoniously into the great circle of the other Leagues of the whole world”, choosing the same goals.24 Grossmann declared: Organizations like (…) the League for Human Rights (…) should try to find sufficient numbers of Germans, and especially influential ones, who are prepared to show the occupation powers through deeds, not words, that German circles are willing and committed to making good-faith sacrifices to prove their goodwill regarding peace in Europe. 25

By contrast, the Wuppertal League appealed to Germans who felt misunderstood by an unfriendly world. Both approaches had their limitations, as Kupsch pointed out to Grossmann in 1947. Kupsch rejected the Wuppertal League’s appeals to Germans’ self-pity, noting sarcastically that if the League wanted to take that approach, “we could, for the sake of convenience, ask for the Nazi Party’s membership list, publish a little appeal, and we’d have it made”. But she also rejected the idea of refounding the League for the purpose of “moral and material restitution for the human rights violated by Germany”. That was “too retrospective”. “I believe that it is not pedagogically sound – not only in the case of children – to first count up all the instances of wickedness in order to show that one must behave better.”26 For Kupsch, it was not a good idea to embark on human rights activism on Germans’ behalf only, yet one could not do so against them either. She pointed out to Grossmann that many Germans, including politically sympathetic ones, were truly suffering in these postwar years and could not accept the idea that Germans were always and only perpetrators, and never victims. The clash between the Frankfurt and Wuppertal leagues culminated with Dietz’s threats of lawsuits and a final break with Grossmann in New York, Lehmann-Rußbüldt in London, and Kudrnofsky in Frankfurt.27 Yet Kudrnofsky 21 SPC DLM, Bielefeld League, Rundschreiben Nr. 11a, November 1947, 2. 22 IfS NLV, S 1/1 307, Anlage 1. This document was signed by several Weimar-era members, including Lehmann-Rußbüldt, von Wedel, and Kudrnofsky. 23 E.g., IfS NLV, S 1/1 307, Herrmann to Oelze, 16 December 1947; SPC DLM, Bielefeld League, Rundschreiben Nr. 7, March 1947, 1. 24 IfS NLV, S 1/1 307, Anlage 1. 25 IfS NLV, S 1/1 308, Über die Selbstkenntnis. 26 LBI KGC, Kupsch to Grossmann, 25 April 1947. 27 See IfS NLV, S 1/1 309, Dietz to Grossmann, 29 November 1946; S 1/1 307, Frankfurt League, Resolution, n.d. [1947]; Programm and Satzung of the Deutsche Liga für Menschen-

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could not sue Dietz for misusing the League’s name, because Dietz had British permission in that occupation zone, while Kudrnofsky was still awaiting U.S. permission in its own zone.28 Kudrnofsky and other Weimar-era members were able only to spread the word informally that “[Dietz’s group] is not our League”.29 The story of the Frankfurt and Wuppertal leagues shows conflict between Weimar-era members and newcomers; that of Berlin shows conflict that pitted Weimar-era members against each other: how the League should respond to neutralism and communism in the Cold War. THE COLD WAR INSIDE THE BERLIN LEAGUE In late 1945, around the same time that Dietz constituted the Wuppertal League, a man named Theodor Kiendl did the same in Berlin. He named his group of Weimar-era members and newcomers the International League for Human Rights, and applied for permission from all four of Berlin’s occupying powers.30 A few months later, the Weimar-era member Walter Persicaner discovered Kiendl’s group and, believing it to be closer to obtaining an Allied license, merged his own League group of mostly Nazi-era racial and political persecutees with it.31 As things turned out, it took Kiendl’s league almost four years to gain a license, and by that time it was almost unrecognizable due to an internal struggle over whether communism was compatible with League goals. The outcome of the struggle was a markedly anti-communist Berlin League that made itself the instrument of the equally anti-communist SPD of West Berlin. That decision of the late 1940s set the Berlin League’s problematic course through the 1950s. Like Dietz, Kiendl claimed to have been a League member before 1933, and like Dietz, he seems not to have been completely truthful.32 Unlike Dietz, Kiendl did generally follow traditional League goals, and Kiendl did not foment con-

28 29

30

31 32

rechte, 14 June 1947; Dietz to Herrmann, 3 March 1948; Herrmann to Dietz, 8 March 1948; Kudrnofsky to Grossmann, 24 March 1948; and Herrmann to Kudrnofsky, n.d. [March 1948]. IfS NLV, S 1/1 310, Welter to Lehmann-Rußbüldt, 31 December 1947, and S 1/1 307, Ernst to Kudrnofsky, 10 February 1948. Deutsches Exilarchiv, Nachlass Karl Retzlaw (hereafter DEA NLR), Lehmann-Rußbüldt to Retzlaw, 3 May 1950. As late as 1954, Dietz was still listed as the head of the Wuppertal chapter: Die Menschenrechte 29/1954 (N.F. 2/1954), no. 7, October, 10. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland, Record Group 260, Berlin Sector, Civil Administration and Political Affairs Branch, Allied Kommandatura’s Records, 1945–1949, Box 77 (hereafter NARA RG 260 Berlin AK Box 77), notarized record of a League meeting on 23 November 1945, and Kiendl to Allied Kommandatura, Berlin, 23 November 1945. NARA RG 260 Berlin AK Box 77, Persicaner to U.S. Commandant, Berlin, 8 February 1946, and Persicaner to U.S. Civil Administration Branch, Berlin, 8 May 1946. LBI KGC, Grossmann to Oehlschläger, 7 July 1947, and NARA RG 260 Berlin AK Box 77, Internationale Liga für Menschenrechte to Allied Kommandatura Berlin, 10 August 1947.

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flict.33 Rather, he seemed to think he could smooth it over, to the point of naïveté. One of the U.S. Military Government officials who had to wade through Kiendl’s communications called him a “romantic or worse”.34 The Berlin League’s board included pro-Soviet, pro-neutrality, and anti-communist Germans – hardly a recipe for stability in late 1940s Berlin. For example, Walter Persicaner and Paul Oestreich (1878–1959) had been Weimar-era members and were now in the Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED), the communist party that the Soviets had created in their zone by forcibly merging the KPD and SPD. Ernst Oehlschläger (1897–1970) did not belong to the SED but he did advocate working with the Soviets. Wilhelm Külz, a Weimar-era politician from the moderate liberal German Democratic Party (Deutsche Demokratische Partei, DDP), had not been a League member, and now led the Soviet-approved Liberal Democratic Party of Germany (Liberaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, LDPD) and participated in the SED-led People’s Congress movement. That was exactly the kind of cooperation with the Soviets that Erik Reger (1893–1954), a Weimar-era member and now editor of the Berlin newspaper “Der Tagesspiegel”, abhorred.35 Kiendl and the neutralists insisted that anything less than four-power approval would render the League a mere tool in the Cold War.36 Lehmann-Rußbüldt, along with Grossmann and Kudrnofsky, argued with their old colleague Ernst Oehlschläger that the Soviets would never permit the League in its genuine form because of the Soviets’ entirely different notion of human rights. They even suspected the Berlin League of being a tool of the SED, because to insist on four-power approval was in effect preventing a genuine league from coming to fruition.37 When the League’s application for a license finally reached the highest level of four-power rule in Berlin in February 1948, the Western Allies’ representatives approved it, but the Soviet representative did not, citing a technicality, and the next month the Soviet representative left the Allied Control Council, not to return until 1990.38 The Berlin League now had to seek a license from the Western Allies only – but that was now harder to obtain. The presence of communists and neutralists on the board was a liability in the tense atmosphere that soon led to the Berlin Blockade.39 The League now came under pressure to purge its board and declare itself unambiguously anti-communist. The U.S. Military Government made the anti33 NARA RG 260 Berlin AK Box 77, Kiendl to Biel, 10 August 1947, and Kiendl to U.N. Division of Human Rights, 5 August 1947. 34 NARA RG 260 Berlin AK Box 77, Mathews to Butterwick, 16 March 1949. 35 Indeed, Reger withdrew by 1947 because Kiendl’s league seemed too amenable to the Soviets. NARA RG 260 Berlin AK Box 77, Kiendl to Biel, 30 July 1947. 36 NARA RG 260 Berlin AK Box 77, Kiendl to Biel, 7 August 1947. Kiendl applied for fourpower permission in November 1945, June and September 1946, and March 1947. 37 IfS NLV, S 1/1 309, Kudrnofsky to Lehmann-Rußbüldt, 25 December 1947. 38 NARA RG 260 Records of Executive Office, Subject Files re: Berlin Sector 1945–49, Box 562, memo of Allied Kommandatura meeting, 13 February 1948. 39 NARA RG 260 Berlin AK Box 77, Kiendl to Biel and Kellen, 13 July 1947; Kiendl to Clay, 22 March 1948; Mathews to Butterwick, 16 March 1949.

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communist Berlin SPD into the arbiter of the League’s political acceptability.40 Although Berlin SPD chairman Franz Neumann accused the League of being a “camouflaged communist organization”, he apparently also indicated that, as a U.S. official summarized: “The SPD is not disinclined to support the League if a larger part of its sponsors were SPD members.”41 The Berlin SPD proceeded to pack the League with people from Neumann’s own circle, and apparently offered the League funding and assistance with its license application.42 Certainly there were anti-communists among the authentic Weimar-era members. Besides Erik Reger, Otto Lehmann-Rußbüldt was irritated by Berlin League members who were “half- or full-blooded communists”.43 Lehmann-Rußbüldt wanted to leave London for Berlin to guide the “reconstruction of the League as a defence organisation on Western democratic lines against totalitarian movements” that had “special tasks for its vanguard in Berlin”.44 But just as Kudrnofsky of the Frankfurt League was unable to sue Dietz over the League’s name, so also was LehmannRußbüldt unable to sue Kiendl. Until May 1948, when a Berlin court finally reversed the Nazi-era deletion of the League’s legal registration, Lehmann-Rußbüldt had no legal priority over Kiendl or anyone else who founded a League group.45 After May 1948, Lehmann-Rußbüldt, still in London, and some like-minded colleagues of his in Berlin made their move. They took over Kiendl’s league from within, using anti-communism as their litmus test. They demanded that the SED members Paul Oestreich and Walter Persicaner leave the League and blamed Kiendl openly for the League’s failure to obtain a license since 1945. Oestreich and another SED member, the writer and literary critic Alfred Kantorowicz, tried to pull the League back to a neutral position, but failed.46 In May 1949, the purged Berlin League was licensed by the Western Allies, but struggles over its political direction persisted.47 At its post-license constitutive meeting in November 1949 (by which time the two German states had come into existence), there was “stormy discussion of a resolution against the concentration camps, forced labor, and kidnapping of the Eastern zone system”. 48 When the res40 IfS NLV, S 1/1 309, Kudrnofsky to Lehmann-Rußbüldt, 23 August 1947; NARA RG 260 Berlin AK Box 77, confidential memo of SPD meeting, 15 July 1947, and Kiendl to Allied Military Government, 20 March 1947. 41 NARA RG 260 Berlin AK Box 77, Henschel to Butterwick, 17 March 1949. 42 NARA RG 260 Berlin AK Box 77, confidential memo of SPD meeting, 16 July 1947. 43 LBI KGC, Ernst to Grossmann, 21 October 1948 (quotation by Lehmann-Rußbüldt’s assistant Alois Ernst). 44 LBI KGC, Lehmann-Rußbüldt and Ernst, Concerning: German League for the Rights of Man, n.d. [ca. October 1948]. 45 Lothar Mertens, Unermüdlicher Kämpfer für Frieden und Menschenrechte. Leben und Wirken von Kurt R. Grossmann, Berlin 1997, 89f. 46 NARA RG 260 Berlin AK Box 77, Kiendl et al. to Schützinger, 24 August 1948, and Kiendl to Biel, 1 October 1948; LBI KGC, Berger to Grossmann, 7 April 1949 and 14 June 1949. 47 NARA RG 260 Berlin AK Box 77, Kiendl et al. to Schützinger, 24 August 1948 and Taylor to Reuter, 4 May 1949. 48 Jochen Klaus Schaefer, Zum 15. November, in: Die Menschenrechte 29/1954 (N.F. 2/1954), no. 8, November, 8.

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olution passed with a strong majority, the communist members left. A new vote produced a board that was even more anti-communist than the May 1949 licensee list that the Berlin SPD had vetted; Oehlschläger was the sole remaining board member from Kiendl’s old organization. Six of the ten board members were SPD members, including the Berlin politicians Jeanette Wolff (1888–1976), a Jewish survivor of Stutthof, and Willy Kressmann (1901–1986), a rémigré and now mayor of the Kreuzberg section of Berlin.49 The League’s new president, SPD member Jochen Klaus Schaefer and an apparent newcomer to the League, noted that “any attempt to exert communist influence on the League’s work was (…) completely eliminated”.50 The organization’s name changed to LehmannRußbüldt’s preferred German League for Human Rights. The Berlin League now enjoyed the support of influential West Berlin figures, including Ernst Reuter, the hugely popular SPD politician who served as West Berlin mayor between 1948 and 1953, and had belonged to the New Fatherland League.51 It is possible that Lehmann-Rußbüldt benefited materially from the Berlin League’s turn toward the Berlin SPD, which seems to have assured its finances. Both he and his daughter Ingeborg Lehmann were very poor and hoped for sinecures through the League.52 After the League was remade as an anti-communist organization, it employed Ingeborg Lehmann as its secretary. Ernst Reuter arranged a pension that allowed Lehmann-Rußbüldt to move to West Berlin in 1951 as the League’s honorary president.53 Kudrnofsky spent the last months of his life in a lawsuit against a shady group of League impostors in Frankfurt.54 THE LEAGUE IN WEST BERLIN IN THE 1950s: A COLD WAR SPY STORY The Berlin-based league now superseded the Frankfurt League as the headquarters for all League groups in West Germany. Otto Lehmann-Rußbüldt moved to Berlin to become its honorary president, having apparently decided that it was the most promising of the local League groups. It prospered financially after 1949, as its glossy new periodical and extensive activities attested. However, it did so at the cost of straying from the Weimar-era League’s principled rejection of funding or endorsements from any political party. The Berlin League received funds from the 49 50 51 52

NARA RG 260 Berlin AK Box 77, Deutsche Liga to HICOG in Berlin, 28 January 1950. Schaefer, Zum 15. November. DEA NLR, Lehmann-Rußbüldt to Retzlaw, 3 May 1950. LBI KGC, Oehlschläger to Grossmann, 23 July 1948; Kupsch to Grossmann, 25 April 1947; and Lehmann-Rußbüldt and Ernst, Concerning: German League for the Rights of Man, n.d. [ca. October 1948]. 53 Charmian Brinson / N. A. Furness, ‘Im politischen Niemandsland der Heimatlosen, Staatenlosen, Konfessionslosen, Portemonnaielosen …’. Otto Lehmann-Rußbüldt in British Exile, in: Ian Wallace (ed.), German-Speaking Exiles in Great Britain, Amsterdam / Atlanta 1999, 117–144, 136f. 54 IfS NLV, S 1/1 309, Kudrnofsky to Baldwin, 1 July 1950.

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anti-communist German Trade Union Confederation (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, DGB), and probably received more from the Berlin SPD, the city of Berlin, and U.S. High Commission for Occupied Germany (HICOG).55 Meanwhile, the Berlin League’s effort to respond to East German refugees streaming into West Berlin – the most pressing human rights issue for West Berliners in the 1950s – enmeshed it in espionage and corruption. The League seemed to be prospering. It boasted over a dozen chapters under West Berlin’s leadership across West Germany in the 1950s.56 Claiming independence from political parties, governments, and religious affiliations, the League issued statements against dictatorship, colonial exploitation, and violations of individuals’ rights in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. It also emphasized the importance of educating the West German public about Nazi crimes. In 1953 it launched a successor to the Weimar-era League periodical, “Die Menschenrechte”. Its articles critically discussed the Nazi past, for example praising the Nuremberg trials and criticizing West Germany’s decision to grant pensions to Condor League veterans of the Spanish Civil War, carrying forward the Weimarera League’s internationalist and democratic goals.57 Other articles criticized the Soviet Union. For example, one article conceded that the Western powers posed a threat to peace but stated firmly that the lack of democracy in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc meant that a genuine peace movement could only exist in the West.58 This was an accurate reflection of the position of older League members such as Kudrnofsky and Lehmann-Rußbüldt.59 However, the Berlin League also exhibited some changes in political direction. In May 1952, it voted to support West German rearmament under the European Defense Community’s plan for a European army (an alternative to NATO, which West Germany joined in 1955).60 While the vote was consistent with anticommunism, it violated the League’s traditional pacifism. A 1953 pamphlet commemorating the League’s fortieth anniversary publicized the vote. The same pamphlet announced new, looser membership requirements that allowed former Nazis to join as long as they had the board’s approval and “accepted the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 10 December 1948 without res55 Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte (ed.), 40 Jahre Kampf um Menschenrechte 1913–1953, Berlin 1953, and NARA RG 466 HICOG, Security-Segregated General Records, 1949–1952, 572, Box 134, Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte to McCloy, 15 May 1950 and Baldwin to Gration, 9 June 1950. 56 By 1954 it had fifteen chapters. Die Menschenrechte 29/1954 (N.F. 2/1954), no. 7, October, 9–12. 57 See Michael Heinze-Mansfeld, Kriegsverbrecher und Kollektivschuld, in: Die Menschenrechte 29/1954 (N.F. 2/1954), no. 9, December, 2f., and also these items: Die Menschenrechte 29/1954 (N.F. 2/1954), no. 1, January, 3; no. 4, May–June 1954, 1f., 3, 7; and 30/1955 (N.F. 3/1955), no. 4, October–December, 27f. 58 K. K. [Karl Kasper], Friedenskampf und ‘Friedenskampf’, in: Die Menschenrechte 29/1954 (N.F. 2/1954), no. 1, January, 4f. 59 DEA NLR, Lehmann-Rußbüldt to Retzlaw, 2 November 1953, and Senzig to von Wedel and Retzlaw, 3 February 1953. 60 Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte (ed.), 40 Jahre, 11.

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ervation”.61 “Die Menschenrechte” began to present the predicaments of German prisoners of war and German expellees as human rights issues, and inaugurated a column entitled “You Are Not Forgotten” that juxtaposed the stories of victims of Nazism and victims of East German Stalinism, which suggested that communist crimes were on a par with Nazi ones.62 The most fateful change was the Berlin League’s decision to establish hostels for East Germans arriving in droves in West Berlin. In 1952 the border between the two Germanies was sealed, making the island of West Berlin the main outlet to the West for East Germans. By early 1953, tens of thousands of East Germans were arriving in West Berlin each month. Then a statewide uprising broke out in East Germany on 17 June 1953, leading to more refugees to West Berlin.63 Over fifty camps were set up in West Berlin, and the League became one of many organizations seeking to help the refugees.64 The League opened its first hostel in 1952, and ran four hostels by 1953.65 The hostels provoked debates inside the League: Was charity its proper task? And were East Germans really political victims? Karl Retzlaw, a Weimar-era member now speaking for the Frankfurt League, argued that the League was “not a welfare organization”.66 He pointed out that the political views of these fleeing East Germans were unknown. Having only their material need in common, he argued, they were unlikely to become principled defenders of causes beyond their own situations. As it happened, even the West German state, which was otherwise eager to represent the mass flight as the result of East Germany’s unfreedom, recognized only 14 percent of East Germans as official political refugees. 67 Retzlaw believed that the Cold War preoccupation with the East Germans was turning attention away from still-inadequate restitution to victims of Nazism: “Eastern zone refugees are ‘fashionable’, while we fighters against Hitler and the war are 61 Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte (ed.), 40 Jahre, 12. 62 Die Menschenrechte 29/1954 (N.F. 2/1954), no. 5, July–August, 8; 30/1955 (N.F. 3/1955), no. 1, January–February, 8f.; and issues thereafter. 63 Helge Heidemeyer, Flucht und Zuwanderung aus der SBZ/DDR 1945/1949–1961. Die Flüchtlingspolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland bis zum Bau der Berliner Mauer, Düsseldorf 1994, 338f. 64 Senator für Arbeit und Sozialwesen (ed.), Deutsche flüchten zu Deutschen. Der Flüchtlingsstrom aus dem sowjetisch besetzten Gebiet nach Berlin, Berlin 1956, table 12 (unpaged). 65 These were Hellmut-von-Gerlach-Heim, Cuvrystr. 34, in Kreuzberg (founded 1952, capacity of 1,000); Carl-von-Ossietzky-Heim, Quantzstr., Zehlendorf (founded 1953, capacity of 600); the Walther-Rathenau-Heim in Wannsee for victims of anti-Jewish persecutions in East Germany (founded 1953, capacity of 200); and the Hildegard-Wegscheider-Heim for children (founded in 1953 or 1954, capacity of 120). DEA NLR, Götze to Retzlaw, 24 September 1953. 66 DEA NLR, Retzlaw to Götze, 6 October 1953. Karl Retzlaw (1896–1979) broke with the SPD in the 1920s as a Trotskyist, emigrated in 1933, and returned to Germany in 1945. He was a journalist for the “Frankfurter Rundschau”. He is best known today for his memoir, Spartakus. Aufstieg und Niedergang. Erinnerungen eines Parteiarbeiters, Frankfurt 1971. 67 Volker Ackermann, Der “echte” Flüchtling. Deutsche Vertriebene und Flüchtlinge aus der DDR 1945–1961, Osnabrück 1995, 109.

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not only ‘unfashionable’ but also in the highest degree unwanted.”68 However, the Berlin League asserted that the East German regime deserved condemnation just as Nazism did.69 Most East German Jews had fled their country by March 1953, and the League had established a hostel especially for them. It was perilous for the League to run these hostels in such a politically charged environment. The East Germans whom the League sought to help were magnets for spies from both sides. Soviet and East German intelligence agencies recruited fleeing East Germans to inform on each other in reception camps in West Berlin, while Western intelligence agencies demanded access to East Germans who were undergoing review for West German recognition as political refugees.70 West German militant anti-communists sought to use East Germans to distribute clandestine anti-communist literature to relatives and friends left behind in East Germany.71 As money from the CIA as well as West German political parties and other organizations flowed into these anti-communist organizations and the League moved into their milieu, it became a tool of Cold War politics and a source of money for unscrupulous people. Conflicts within the League came to focus on the person of Alfred Götze. He had been elected to the board at the constitutive meeting in November 1949 and soon became vice-president, then general secretary, head of the supplies department, and head of a department he created for refugees fleeing East Germany.72 Götze spearheaded the hostels. With the help of his friend Otto Bach, a Berlin Senator, Götze arranged for the West Berlin Senate to allocate public monies to the League to use for the refugees, as it did to other organizations. Götze was the one who drew the Berlin League into the milieu of the militant anti-communist organizations.73 Götze was also the author of the fortieth-anniversary pamphlet that caused internal controversy. It foregrounded his activities, such as his trips to France each 68 DEA NLR, Retzlaw to Götze, 6 October 1953; see also Retzlaw to Lehmann-Rußbüldt, 26 April 1950. 69 Die Menschenrechte 29/1954 (N.F. 2/1954), no. 7, October, 10; Rainer Hildebrandt, Der Umsturz im politischen Denken, in: Die Menschenrechte 29/1954 (N.F. 2/1954), no. 8, November, 2f. Rainer Hildebrandt (1914–2004) is best known for his work in the Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit and his later Museum at Checkpoint Charlie. He became a member of the League in 1949 or soon afterward. 70 Klaus Bade, Homo migrans. Wanderungen aus und nach Deutschland. Erfahrungen und Fragen, Essen 1994, 48; Heidemeyer, Flucht und Zuwanderung, 120; and David E. Murphy / Sergei A. Kondrashev / George Bailey, Battleground Berlin. CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War, New Haven, Conn. 1997, 329. 71 See Heidemeyer, Flucht und Zuwanderung, 317, n. 11, and Bernd Eisenfeld / Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk / Ehrhart Neubert, Die verdrängte Revolution. Der Platz des 17. Juni 1953 in der deutschen Geschichte, Bremen 2004, 501, 511. 72 Jochen Klaus Schaefer, Dank an Alfred Götze, in: Die Menschenrechte 30/1955 (N.F. 3/1955), no. 3, July–September, 14. 73 For example, the June 17th Committee (Komitee 17. Juni), was founded at a meeting in one of the League’s hostels. Eisenfeld / Kowalczuk / Neubert, Die verdrängte Revolution, 505, 511, 512.

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year since 1946 to meet with the French LDH and his affiliation in 1947 of the League with the Paris-based International Federation for the Rights of Man (Fédération internationale des droits de l’homme, FIDH).74 It is hard to believe that these touted activities meant much, for as we have seen, the Berlin League barely existed as a coherent organization in those years, and LDH, though officially refounded in 1947, seems to have been in no better shape.75 In any case, Lehmann-Rußbüldt and other Weimar-era members preferred affiliation with the New-York-City-based International League for the Rights of Man (ILRM), seeing it as their link to the United Nations, and not the Paris-based FIDH.76 The FIDH was founded in 1922 as an outgrowth of the LDH and then had to fold in 1940 when Nazi Germany invaded France; the ILRM formed in 1942 as an exile organization of FIDH. After the Second World War, the FIDH did not recognize the legitimacy of the New York group, and the two were apparently rivals for years. Götze was close to Émile Kahn and Suzanne Collette-Kahn of the FIDH, and they defended Götze and his faction of the League into the early 1960s. Götze’s pamphlet included yet other statements that may not have been entirely true and did not fit traditional League goals, such as his claim to have negotiated, in tandem with the LDH, better conditions and some releases for Germans imprisoned in France and awaiting trial for war crimes – hardly a traditional cause for the League.77 The Frankfurt League was outraged by Götze’s pamphlet, citing the rearmament vote, the hostels, and the failure to exclude ex-Nazis from membership as reasons for distancing themselves completely from the Berlin League. Retzlaw forbade Götze to use the League name anywhere near Frankfurt. The Frankfurt League, refusing to cave in to the Berlin-based league yet unable to stop it, became dormant.78 Even Berlin members were irritated by the pamphlet. Some accused Götze of having concealed his Nazi-era membership in Heinrich Himmler’s Schutzstaffel (SS) and of embezzlement and espionage at the hostels.79 A committee assembled by Jochen Klaus Schaefer, the Berlin League president and Götze’s ally, exonerated Götze in 1954.80 Götze’s critics on the board did not accept the committee’s findings and resigned. New elections resulted in a board favorable to Schaefer and Götze, and Götze toured West Germany in late 1954 to strengthen the various 74 Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte (ed.), 40 Jahre, 9. 75 The LDH was officially refounded in 1947. Éric Agrikoliansky, La Ligue Française des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen depuis 1945. Sociologie d’un engagement civique, Paris 2002, 12, 33. 76 DEA NLR, Lehmann-Rußbüldt to Retzlaw, 22 February 1949, and SPC DLM, Bielefeld League, Rundschreiben Nr. 7, March 1947, 1. 77 Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte (ed.), 40 Jahre, 9f. 78 DEA NLR, Götze to Retzlaw, 24 September 1953; Retzlaw to Götze, 6 October 1953; Senzig to von Wedel, 7 November 1953; and I.A. 082, Akten-Vermerk, 2 November 1953. 79 NARA RG 242 A3340-PK-D104 (Nazi party correspondence), letter from Götze dated 28 October 1953, and Bundesbeauftragter für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (hereafter BStU MfS), HA IX Nr. 3897, report dated 30 July 1954, Bl. 146. 80 Die Menschenrechte 29/1954 (N.F. 2/1954), no. 5, July–August, 7.

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League groups’ affiliation with Berlin on the basis of the hostels and other Cold War priorities. It was finally too much for Otto Lehmann-Rußbüldt, who asked the new board to reopen the investigation into Götze’s past. When it refused, he resigned as honorary president and publicly distanced himself from the League. This was a major embarrassment, for Lehmann-Rußbüldt was the most famous link to the League’s Weimar past. Oddly, Götze’s past only gradually came to light. A former Freikorps and SS member, Götze first appeared in the Berlin League in the summer of 1947. He was part of the Berlin SPD’s strategy of packing the League in order to turn it away from neutralism81, and he ingratiated himself with authentic League members who were anti-communist.82 Already in early 1949 the U.S. Military Government had retrieved his SS record and noted him as a “doubtful element”.83 Götze was able to join the League’s board only after it was licensed, due to his refusal to fill out the de-Nazification questionnaire required of every board member at the time of the initial license. Götze was also apparently a spy for the Second Bureau (Deuxième Bureau), the French military intelligence agency. It seems that French intelligence agents had approached him after 1945 with the suggestion of reviving the League.84 This puts Götze’s energetic work for the League, especially his trips to France and his interest in the hostels, in a different light. His value to French intelligence apparently depended on the access to East Germans that the hostels provided. Under Götze and his supporters, the League gathered information from East Germany, passed it on to U.S. and presumably French authorities (see Figure 1), and distributed illegal literature inside East Germany. Groups of three were to work inside the GDR, with one serving as courier, bringing materials to a League employee’s West Berlin apartment. Götze, his wife Anneliese, and their helpers recruited East German refugees in the hostels to do this dangerous work. The hostel residents were dependent on and therefore vulnerable to those who administered the hostels. Official West German recognition of a person’s status as a political refugee could be dangled before recruits as an enticement; the possibility of its denial could be used as a threat. Others were manipulated or even coerced

81 NARA RG 242 BDC A3343 SSO-021A (SS officer’s dossier), and NARA RG 260 Berlin AK Box 77, Kiendl to Biel and Kellen, 13 July 1947. 82 NARA RG 260 Berlin AK Box 77, Kiendl to Biel, 13 August 1947, and Mathews to Butterwick, 16 March 1949. 83 NARA RG 260 Berlin AK Box 77, Mathews to Butterwick, 16 March 1949; Local Government Committee Meeting, 22 March 1949; Local Government Committee Meeting, 19 April 1949. 84 I have no direct documentary evidence that Götze was a French spy. Instead, I have two sources that suggest it. One is an interview with his wife and a family friend: Helga Hirsch, Salz war die Währung in Galizien – Das Leben der Elfriede G. [Anneliese Götze], in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 27 April 2002. More background is in an interview by the historian Thomas Sandkühler, on which Hirsch’s article is partially based: Judenrettung zwischen Lemberg und Kiew – die Rolle von Berthold Beitz, 18 July 1992, supplied to me by Gerd Goetze. See also BStU MfS, HA IX Nr. 3897, report dated 30 July 1954, Bl. 145.

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Figure 1. This internal communication from the files of the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany, declassified at my request in 2010, thanks Berlin League president Jochen Klaus Schaefer for delivering to High Commissioner John J. McCloy an East German government document. Schaefer had obtained the document from, as he puts elsewhere in the communication, “our agent with the Eastern Zone government”. The communication suggests the general nature of the relationship between the Cold War-era German League for Human Rights and U.S. intelligence. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland, Record Group 466, HICOG, Box 134, Tab 1.

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into passing on information or recruiting their relatives who remained in East Germany. Even rapes (alleged of one hostel manager) arose out of these power imbalances. The hostels and espionage also fed corruption. The Götzes lived well, presumably on funds for the hostels as well as his income from the French.85 The hostel funds seem to have been easily augmented by overreporting the number of residents (the Berlin Senate paid a fee for each resident each day), or by inflating the number of hostel employees, and compelling residents to perform unofficial maintenance work for low or no wages. The Götzes entertained the Berlin official responsible for allocating residents lavishly.86 Götze’s activities attracted the attention of the Stasi, which claimed that the League was developing a network inside East Germany. By early 1953, the League was, in the Stasi’s eyes, a “neofascist” organization conspiring to overthrow the communist regime.87 When an uprising did break out in June 1953, the Stasi refused to accept that the uprising was spontaneous and wove the League and other militant anti-communist organizations into its own explanation of the uprising.88 The East German state therefore targeted persons from the militant anti-communist organizations, including one Wolfgang Silgradt. Silgradt had come to West Berlin from East Germany in 1951 and was a caseworker in the League’s department for East German refugees in 1953 and 1954, helping East Germans whose applications for official refugee status had been rejected. In 1954 he was kidnapped from West Berlin, taken to East Germany, and convicted in a show trial in June 1954. Silgradt served ten and a half years of a fifteen-year sentence before he was released to West Germany in exchange for hard currency payment.89 The League was caught in an awful symbiosis. Its Cold-War political work was probably attractive to Götze because it offered opportunities for personal enrichment and power, and for those League members who were ardent Cold Warriors, Götze seemed effective at anti-communist activism and administering the refugee hostels, so they were apparently willing to overlook his troubling sidelines. It is not possible to reconstruct exactly what various League members knew about the Götzes and those who cooperated with them. Schaefer stressed the importance of documenting human rights violations in the “Eastern zone” and insisted that the hostels had nothing to do with espionage.90 Götze continued to work at the League for a year after his exoneration, then resigned most of his 85 See Hirsch, Salz; and LBI KGC, Lehmann-Rußbüldt to Grossmann, 30 September 1955. 86 See BStU MfS, HA IX Nr. 3897, report dated 30 July 1954, Bl. 145f., 148, 151f., and two additional internal Stasi documents that may be less reliable: BStU MfS, AIM 6463/57 Teil I, Bl. 28–32 (a report by a former hostel resident who was an unofficial agent of the Stasi), and AS 168/56 Bd. 3, Bl. 317–322 (a collection of internal Stasi notes). 87 BStU MfS, AS 168/56 Bd. 3, Bl. 174, 313, 322, 556–558. 88 Karl Wilhelm Fricke and Roger Engelmann, Der “Tag X” und die Staatssicherheit. 17. Juni 1953. Reaktionen und Konsequenzen im DDR-Machtapparat, Bremen 2003, 76, 227. 89 Fricke and Engelmann, Der “Tag X”, 146, 224–230, and Die Menschenrechte 29/1954 (N.F. 2/1954), no. 4, May–June, 2. 90 Die Menschenrechte 29/1954 (N.F. 2/1954), no. 5, July–August, 6.

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offices.91 In 1955 the Götzes left abruptly for Beirut, Lebanon, where they lived until 1959. Both stated later that they had left Berlin due to the Stasi’s attempts to kidnap them and their children.92 Götze’s actions and the ensuing internal controversy caused the departure of many old League members. Grossmann traveled through Germany in 1956 and noted that the League existed “only in name”.93 The dormant Frankfurt League wearily resumed its effort to topple the Berlin League as headquarters by establishing the West German League (Westdeutsche Liga), and Lehmann-Rußbüldt declared his support for it.94 But its leader, the Weimar-era member Guido Senzig, was ill and the initiative foundered. For these members, the mid-1950s were a new low point. As the Frankfurter Emil von Wedel told Grossmann: “The whole catastrophe is above all due to the chaotic Berlin situation with its atmosphere of espionage.”95 The Stasi, having built the League into its explanation of the uprising in 1953, now intensified surveillance of it. In 1956 Markus Wolf, head of the Stasi division for foreign intelligence, sent one of his top spies, Wolfram von Hanstein, into West Germany. Hanstein’s career was even more complicated than Götze’s. In Weimar days, he participated in the Kapp Putsch and Freikorps, but he had also joined the League and became a communist. After the Second World War, he spied for the Soviet Union and East Germany as well as for the Social Democratic Party’s Eastern Bureau and perhaps for France and the United States. He held the odd distinction of being convicted of espionage by both the Soviet Union and West Germany.96 In 1956 Hanstein left East Germany for West Berlin and gained official recognition as a political refugee. He joined the Berlin League and rose rapidly in it, holding Götze’s old posts. Using his position in the League, he gathered information on League members, other anti-communist groups, and West German politicians. He enjoyed the trust of unsuspecting East Germans helped by the League, and then sent their information to the Stasi, which used it to kidnap East Germans who had fled.97 The League was a useful “Trojan horse” for Hanstein’s espionage work in West Germany.98 Hanstein was rumored to be a spy well before he was exposed, yet Schaefer defended him just as Schaefer had defended Götze. In December 1958 Hanstein, with Schaefer’s backing, carried out a 91 Schaefer, Dank an Alfred Götze, and Die Menschenrechte 31/1956 (N.F. 4/1956), no. 2, April–June, 30. 92 Landesarchiv Berlin, Nachlass Otto Bach, E Rep. 200-30 Nr. 19, Götze to Vorstand der SPD, 24 July 1960, and Hirsch, Salz. 93 DEA NLR I.A. 272, quoting from Deutsche Rundschau, June 1956. 94 DEA NLR, Lehmann-Rußbüldt to Retzlaw, 8 June 1956; Retzlaw to Lehmann-Rußbüldt et al., 16 August 1956; Lehmann-Rußbüldt to Retzlaw, 28 August 1956; I.A.082, Entwurf: Programmatische Erklärung der ‘Westdeutschen Liga für Menschenrechte e.V.’, n.d. [ca. 1953]. 95 DEA NLR, von Wedel to Grossmann, 31 May 1956. 96 LBI KGC, Grossmann to Hanstein, 26 November 1957. 97 Andreas Hilger, Der Spion, der sich liebte. Wolfram von Harnstein, in: Andreas Hilger / Mike Schmeitzer / Ute Schmid (eds.), Sowjetische Militärtribunale, vol. 2: Die Verurteilung deutscher Zivilisten 1945–1955, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2003, 397–415, 401. 98 Hilger, Der Spion, 399.

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coup: They held a meeting in Hamburg, where most Berlin members could not attend, elected a new board, and recorded the result in the Hamburg court register for voluntary associations, making it legally binding. Hanstein then declared the Berlin memberships invalid. At some point, Hanstein stole the League’s files from that office and delivered them to the Stasi. The League had lost all its records already in 1933; now it lost its records once more. They were probably destroyed in late 1989, when the Stasi rushed to prevent its information on West Germany from falling into Western hands. The outraged Berlin board members decided not to waste money on a lawsuit to reverse Hanstein’s entry in the Hamburg register. Instead, in January 1959 they created a legally new organization: the International League for Human Rights (Internationale Liga für Menschenrechte), based in West Berlin and affiliated with the ILRM in New York, not the FIDH.99 FIDH leader Suzanne Collette-Kahn had supported Schaefer and the Hamburg coup, and seems never to have responded to the Götze debacle.100 The story of the Berlin League therefore raises questions about espionage and corruption in the French LDH and the FIDH (of which Schaefer became vice-president in 1951) in those years. The new International League, based in West Berlin, immediately distanced itself from Hanstein, and just in time. When another Stasi agent defected to West Germany in 1959 and denounced Hanstein, the whole story of Hanstein’s espionage career hit the press. Hanstein was imprisoned, and later escaped to East Germany in 1964. THE INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS FINDS STABILITY Several public intellectuals joined the Berlin board members to found the International League for Human Rights in 1959.101 This organization has prevailed as

99 Internationale Liga für Menschenrechte, Berlin (ed.), Warum Internationale Liga für Menschenrechte?, Berlin n.d. [ca. 1962], 3f. 100 Internationale Liga für Menschenrechte, Berlin (ed.), Warum, 3f. A Munich-based league and the Hamburg branch exist today, using the old name German League for Human Rights and claiming to be the authentic successors of the Weimar-era League. See the Wikipedia entry for “Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte” and links there: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Deutsche_Liga_für_Menschenrechte, consulted 9 July 2016. See also Deutsches Exilarchiv, Nachlass Ossip K. Flechtheim (hereafter DEA NLF), Liga files, Vereinbarung, September 1965; Protokoll der Vorstandssitzung, 1 February 1966; League chronology, n.d. [ca. 1984]. 101 See DEA NLF, Mappe Protokolle, Rundschreiben, Briefe, Jahresberichte u. a. ca. ab 1981, item 1914 bis 1984. 70 Jahre Kampf für die Menschenrechte in Deutschland, Bl. 2. In its first year, it gained 131 members in the Berlin area, many from the old League. Two board members from pre-1959 days stayed on: Joachim G. Leithäuser and Willy Kressmann. Leithäuser, a journalist who wrote for Melvin Lasky’s “Der Monat” and was a prolific author on political and technological topics, had joined the board of the German League in 1956; he served as president until his death in 1965.

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“the” League in Germany ever since.102 Positioned well to the left on the German political spectrum and never well funded, the International League possessed little besides its moral authority and the prestige of some of its members. Today it is best known in Germany for awarding the Carl von Ossietzky Medal to individuals who have advanced human rights. The League’s choice of medalwinners has a sharp political edge; a recent medal went jointly to CIA surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden, filmmaker Laura Poitras, and journalist Glenn Greenwald. In contrast to the Wuppertal and Berlin leagues, which took up popular causes and became unstable, the International League can step into intense controversy, yet sustain itself. The International League publicized a wide range of human rights issues from all over the world in the 1960s, especially concerning decolonization and communism. Thus it sustained the Weimar-era organization’s pacifist internationalist work. It gave the most attention, however, to educating the West German public about the crimes of Nazism and exposing former Nazis in West German public life.103 Over half of the events and campaigns that the League sponsored in its first few years concerned Nazi crimes and their legacies. The International League for Human Rights staked out a critical position in West German society by focusing on the Nazi past. The unpopularity of publicizing the Nazi past at that time allowed the League to engage controversy and absorb newcomers without facing cooptation by exploitative interlopers such as those it had faced in the 1950s. Certainly there was no generous public funding for its work now. It also pointed out Nazism’s legacies for current affairs in West Germany, as part of its critique of the conservative political moment marked by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s Christian Democratic dominance and the SPD’s shift to the center that had left Marxist and non-Marxist leftists without clear parliamentary leadership. While there were some official signs of critical engagement with the Nazi past in that era, such as the Ulm and Auschwitz trials in 1958 and 1963, it remained true that Jews, the Holocaust, and criticism of the Nazi past were unpopular topics. The League and like-minded West Germans had this field of activism to themselves. The International League’s concerns stemmed directly from the convictions and even biographies of its leading members. One was the political science professor Ossip K. Flechtheim.104 In 1927 Flechtheim had joined the KPD, but left it in 1933, disgusted by its enmity with the SPD. He went into exile in 1935, then 102 Three Weimar-era members – Otto Lehmann-Rußbüldt, Kurt R. Grossmann, and Emil Gumbel – all confirmed that it was the authentic successor to the Weimar-era League. Internationale Liga für Menschenrechte, Berlin (ed.), Warum, 5. It is today affiliated with the FIDH. 103 Internationale Liga für Menschenrechte, Berlin (ed.), Warum, 6ff. The League’s statutes were open-ended, stating merely that it “takes as its task to realize, to defend, and to further develop human rights, as they have been pronounced by the United Nations in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December 1948”. DEA NLF, Internationale Liga, Satzung, 23 September 1965. 104 This paragraph draws upon Mario Kessler, Ein dritter Weg als humane Möglichkeit? Zu Leben und Wirken von Ossip Kurt Flechtheim (1909–1998), Berlin 2004; and Siegfried Heimann (ed.), Ossip K. Flechtheim. 100 Jahre, Berlin 2009.

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returned to Germany in 1946 to work for the Nuremberg successor trials. In 1952 he began to teach at what became the Otto Suhr Institute of the Free University of Berlin. A prolific scholar of Marxism, political parties, and peace studies, he helped create the field of futurology.105 An abiding theme in his work was the Stalinization of the KPD, and he described himself as “anti-totalitarian”.106 Another was the quest for a third way between capitalism and communism.107 Flechtheim joined the SPD, but left it in 1962, angered by the SPD’s Bad Godesberg Program, which repudiated Marxism, and its undemocratic expulsion of its own student organization, the Socialist German Students’ League (Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund, SDS).108 In 1981 he joined Berlin’s Alternative List, which then became part of the Green Party. His home near the Free University was a meeting place for streams of academics and activists over the years. Known as the “professor who talks to the rebels”, he was a major influence on the student movement and in the Green Party.109 A second prominent figure in the League’s refounding was the philosopher Margherita von Brentano (1922–1995).110 Like Flechtheim, Brentano was influential in the Berlin student movement, especially in anti-nuclear work. It was she who in 1958 urged a young Wolfgang Fritz Haug to take over a newsletter that the League sponsored, which he and Frigga Haug developed into “Das Argument”, the leading left journal in West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. 111 Brentano also focused on anti-Semitism, organizing in 1960 the first academic conference on

105 Hans Karl Rupp, Ossip Flechtheim. Macht und Utopie, in: Hans Karl Rupp / Thomas Noetzel, Macht, Freiheit, Demokratie. Anfänge der westdeutschen Politikwissenschaft. Biographische Annäherungen, vol. 1, Marburg 1991, 45–56. 106 Cited in Mario Kessler, Ossip K. Flechtheim (1909–1998) im Jahrhundert der Extreme, in: Heimann (ed.), Ossip K. Flechtheim, 33–55, 42. 107 Carola Stern, Doppelleben. Eine Autobiographie, Cologne 2001, 110ff.; and Carola Stern / Thomas Schadt, Uns wirft nichts mehr um. Eine Lebensreise, Hamburg 2004, 4. 108 See Tilman Fichter, SDS und SPD. Parteilichkeit jenseits der Partei, Opladen 1988, 342ff., 352f. 109 Ingeborg Rürup, Die Humanistische Union und Ossip Flechtheim, in: Siegfried Heimann (ed.), Ossip K. Flechtheim, 77–88, 77. See also the essays by his students: Peter Lösche, Meine Erinnerungen an Ossip K. Flechtheim, in: ibid., 129–133; and Hans-Rainer Sandvoss, Flechtheim als akademischer Lehrer – aus der Sicht eines früheren Studenten, in: ibid., 135– 140. 110 See Margherita von Brentano, Akademische Schriften, ed. by Peter McLaughlin, Göttingen 2010; and Iris Nachum / Susan Neiman (eds.), Das Politische und das Persönliche. Eine Collage, Göttingen 2010, and Margherita von Brentano, Berlin. 17. April 1975, in: Joachim Schickel (ed.), Grenzenbeschreibung. Gespräche mit Philosophen, Hamburg 1980, 62–97. 111 DEA NLF, Liga ca. 1965–1975, Werbeblatt, n.d.; Nachum / Neiman (eds.), Das Politische, 225f., 262; Wolfgang Fritz Haug, Aus dem Innenleben eines Herausgebers vor vierzig Jahren, http://www.wolfgangfritzhaug.inkrit.de/documents/InnenlebeneinesHerausgebers_000.pdf, consulted 9 July 2016; and Wolfgang Fritz Haug, Zum Tode von Margherita von Brentano, in: Das Argument 37/1995, no. 209, 174f.

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that topic to be held in West Germany.112 Brentano also took up the disadvantaged place of women in higher education in her political and university work.113 Yet more members included Joseph Wulf (1912–1974), a survivor of Auschwitz. With Léon Poliakov, a French historian of anti-Semitism, Wulf was the author of the earliest documentary histories of Nazism and the Holocaust, and he was the original advocate of creating a museum and study center at the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held.114 Another member was Gerhard Schoenberner (1931–2012), who was a prolific writer on the Nazi past as well as the state of West and unified German democracy.115 In 1960 Schoenberner published “The Yellow Star”, a book of photographs and documents drawn from the exhibit “The Past Admonishes Us [Die Vergangenheit mahnt]”, which was sponsored by the League. This exhibit aimed at educating a popular audience about Nazi crimes, and the League estimated that about two hundred thousand West Germans saw it.116 When the House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Educational Site was finally established in 1992, Schoenberner was its founding director. Yet other League members were Manfred Rexin and Ansgar Skriver, who in 1960 jointly published a book on the history of anti-Semitism in Germany and became prolific

112 See Presseverlautbarung und Beschlüsse der Berliner Tagung “Die Überwindung des Antisemitismus”, in: Brentano, Akademische Schriften, 124–127; Nachum / Neiman (eds.), Das Politische, 227, 309; and Wolfgang Kraushaar, Von der Totalitarismustheorie zur Faschismustheorie – Zu einem Paradigmenwechsel in der bundesdeutschen Studentenbewegung, in: Alfons Söllner / Ralf Walkenhaus / Karin Wieland (eds.), Totalitarismus. Eine Ideengeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1997, 267–283, 269. 113 See Margherita von Brentano, Die Situation der Frauen und das Bild “der Frau” an der Universität (1963), in: Brentano, Akademische Schriften, 132–154; and Margherita von Brentano, Abiturientin, Studentin, Vorurteil. Die Frau an der Hochschule (1964), in: ibid., 219–226. 114 Nicolas Berg, Der Holocaust und die westdeutschen Historiker. Erforschung und Erinnerung, Göttingen 2003, 337–370, 447–465, 594–615, and Gerhard Schoenberner, Joseph Wulf – Die Dokumentation des Verbrechens, in: Claudia Fröhlich / Michael Kohlstruck (eds.), Engagierte Demokraten. Vergangenheitspolitik in kritischer Absicht, Münster 1999, 132–142. See also DEA NLF, Protokoll der Vorstandssitzung, 1 February 1966, 3, on Wulf and a proposed documentation center using materials from the exhibit “Die Vergangenheit mahnt”. 115 E.g., Gerhard Schoenberner, Alte Illusionen – Neues Wunschdenken, in: Ansgar Skriver (ed.), Berlin und keine Illusion. 13 Beiträge zur Deutschlandpolitik, Hamburg 1962, 83–93; and Gerhard Schoenberner, Zerstörung der Demokratie, in: Martin Walser (ed.), Die Alternative oder Brauchen wir eine neue Regierung?, Reinbek 1961, 137–145. 116 Internationale Liga für Menschenrechte, Berlin (ed.), Warum, 8. Gerhard Schoenberner (ed.), Der gelbe Stern. Die Judenverfolgung in Europa 1933 bis 1945, Hamburg 1960, now in English: The Yellow Star. The Persecution of the Jews in Europe, 1933–1945, New York 2004. The original exhibit, “Die Vergangenheit mahnt: Geschichte der Juden und ihre Verfolgung im Dritten Reich”, appeared at West Berlin’s Kongresshalle in 1960 and then toured West Germany and abroad. See Stephan Alexander Glienke, Die Darstellung der Shoah im öffentlichen Raum. Die Ausstellung “Die Vergangenheit mahnt” (1960–1962), in: Stephan Alexander Glienke / Volker Paulmann / Joachim Perels (eds.), Erfolgsgeschichte Bundesrepublik? Die Nachkriegsgesellschaft im langen Schatten des Nationalsozialismus, Göttingen 2008, 147–175.

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authors.117 Reinhard Strecker, another member of the League and a student of Margherita von Brentano’s, publicized continuities in leadership personnel between Nazi Germany and the Federal Republic. Two of his best-known efforts were an exhibit he opened in 1959 entitled “Nazi Justice Not Atoned For [Ungesühnte Nazijustiz]”, which exposed the cruel sentences imposed by Nazi-era judges who remained on the bench, and a book published in 1961 entitled “Dr. Hans Globke”, which documented to similarly explosive effect the Nazi-era career of Adenauer’s right-hand man, the State Secretary in the Chancellor’s Office.118 Reinhard Strecker also exposed the past career of Heinrich Bütefisch, the recipient of the Federal Cross of Merit (Bundesverdienstkreuz) in 1964. Bütefisch had been an SS officer in charge of forced laborers at Auschwitz, and the ensuing scandal forced him to return the award.119 Such exposés were controversial in West Germany not only because careers were at stake, but also because they often relied upon documents supplied by East Germany, Poland, and other state socialist countries.120 With members like these, the League helped sponsor some of the most important early exhibits and publications, by and for West Germans, on Nazi crimes. The League also sponsored many events on non-German issues, such as Reimar Lenz’s exhibit on the Algerian War and a protest against King Hassan II’s repressive regime in Morocco.121 Yet other events focused on current peace politics. For example, Manfred Rexin spearheaded the Kampf dem Atomtod campaign in 1958, and Ansgar Skriver’s volume of essays entitled “Berlin and No Illusions”, published in 1962, carried forward the debate about the Wall’s implications for West German foreign and domestic policy. Skriver’s volume also posed the question of the extent to which West German society had actually absorbed democratic values. In it, various authors including Gerhard Schoenberner and yet 117 A radio and print journalist, Manfred Rexin (b. 1935) is active in the anti-nuclear movement and in the SPD. Ansgar Skriver (1934–1997) was a political editor at the WDR in Cologne. Their book was Der Weg zum Massenmord. Hundert Jahre Antisemitismus in Deutschland, Berlin 1960. 118 Margherita von Brentano helped Strecker (b. 1930) assemble the material. See Nachum / Neiman (eds.), Das Politische, 226. Another partner in arranging the exhibit, Wolfgang Koppel, published Ungesühnte Nazijustiz. Hundert Urteile klagen ihre Richter an, Karlsruhe 1960. Reinhard-M. Strecker (ed.), Dr. Hans Globke. Aktenauszüge – Dokumente, Hamburg 1961. See Michael Kohlstruck, Reinhard Strecker – “Darf man seinen Kindern wieder ein Leben in Deutschland zumuten?”, in: Fröhlich / Kohlstruck (ed.), Engagierte Demokraten, 185–200. 119 DEA NLF, 1914 bis 1984: 70 Jahre Kampf für die Menschenrechte in Deutschland; 1959 bis 1984: 25 Jahre Internationale Liga für Menschenrechte – Sektion Berlin. 120 Kraushaar, Von der Totalitarismustheorie zur Faschismustheorie, 275ff.; and Klaus Bästlein, “Nazi-Blutrichter als Stützen des Adenauer-Regimes”. Die DDR-Kampagnen gegen NSRichter und -Staatsanwälte, die Reaktionen der bundesdeutschen Justiz und ihre gescheiterte “Selbstreinigung” 1957–1968, in: Helge Grabitz / Klaus Bästlein / Johannes Tuchel (eds.), Die Normalität des Verbrechens. Bilanz und Perspektiven der Forschung zu den nationalsozialistischen Gewaltverbrechen, Berlin 1994, 408–443. 121 On Reimar Lenz’s exhibit, see Claus Leggewie, Kofferträger. Das Algerien-Projekt der Linken im Adenauer-Deutschland, Berlin 1984, 11–33.

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another League member, Dietrich Goldschmidt, advocated an easing of tensions between East and West that was soon to be called “détente”.122 The League held events on the “Spiegel” Affair, a key moment concerning press freedoms in West Germany.123 Freedom of thought and speech in Adenauer’s West Germany was a high priority for the League. Over the course of the 1960s and 1970s, one can discern a change in the League’s work that political scientist Wolfgang Kraushaar has described as a shift from elders’ anti-totalitarianism to younger cohorts’ anti-anti-communism (in other words, opposition to anti-communism). While the League frequently criticized East Germany in the 1960s, over the 1970s and 1980s it did so more rarely.124 In the 1980s, the League’s consistent focus was on anti-racism, education about the Nazi past and anti-Semitism, and anti-anti-communism. Even after 1990, that pattern of activism held: two of the last political actions of an elderly and ill Margherita von Brentano, for example, were to support the campaign for a Holocaust memorial in Berlin (which was built after her death) and to defend Heinrich Fink, the theologian and former president (Rektor) of the East German Humboldt University, from the accusation that he was an unofficial Stasi spy. (That accusation has since been substantiated with recovered Stasi records.125) What has permitted the International League for Human Rights to sustain itself? League members have suffered surveillance and other infringements on their freedom by West and unified German intelligence.126 However, that has only strengthened its credibility as a critic of the status quo in Germany. Since the 1960s, there has been no danger of cooptation from expellee advocates or other nationalists; those political lines are too clearly drawn.127 The situation is less clear-cut regarding cooptation by the East German state. Evidence from East German archives shows that leftist circles in and out of the student movement were infiltrated by Stasi spies.128 The League was definitely under Stasi observa-

122 Skriver (ed.), Berlin und keine Illusion. Dietrich Goldschmidt (1914–1998), an education expert and sociologist who was persecuted in the Nazi era for his Jewish ancestry, chaired the League committee charged with awarding the Carl von Ossietzky Medal for many years. 123 DEA NLF, 1914 bis 1984: 70 Jahre Kampf für die Menschenrechte in Deutschland; 1959 bis 1984: 25 Jahre Internationale Liga für Menschenrechte – Sektion Berlin. 124 Older League members comment on this reluctance here: DEA NLF, Liga, Briefe (teilweise Rundschreiben), ca. ab 1985–1990, Manfred Rexin to League board, 16 December 1984, and Reimar Lenz to the “Circle of Former League members”, 23 January 1986. 125 Wolfgang Fritz Haug, Erinnerung an Margherita von Brentano, http://www. wolfgangfritzhaug.inkrit.de/documents/BRENTANXX.pdf, consulted 9 July 2016, 4; and Peter Wensierski, Akte aus dem Sack, in: Der Spiegel, 9 May 2005. 126 See, e.g., Eine unendliche Geschichte: Vizepräsident der Liga, Dr. Rolf Gössner, abermals vor Gericht gegen das Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, a news item dated 7 November 2015 on their website http://ilmr.de, consulted 20 January 2016. 127 DEA NLF, Mappe Informationen: Oktober 1965. League press release, 5 September 1965, and clipping from the Deutsche Wochenzeitung / Deutsche Nachrichten, 17 September 1965. 128 Kraushaar, Von der Totalitarismustheorie zur Faschismustheorie, 275ff.

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tion in the 1980s.129 Radical West Germans also adopted phrases for their own materials from fliers whose provenance was, unbeknownst to them, the Stasi.130 This may have been true of the League; however, given that it was genuinely committed to certain causes that the East German regime also favored, the distinction between agreement and cooptation can be subtle indeed. The League was probably infiltrated by official or unofficial Stasi spies over the 1970s or 1980s; it would be surprising if it were not, and the same is true of any similar organization in West Germany. Nevertheless, the League has not been destroyed by those pressures. It celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2014. Though it is tiny and lacks the public intellectuals who led it in the 1960s and 1970s, it continues its work on immigrants’ and refugees’ rights, on anti-racism and, more recently, state surveillance.131 This chapter on the various post-1945 incarnations of the German League for Human Rights reveals how West Germans of a wide range of political opinions sought to use and even exploit the concept of human rights. This chapter suggests that the League, in all its versions, had to consider sources of funding, membership strategy, the role of public intellectuals, and the question of internal democracy. The convoluted story of the League in West Germany reminds us that any story of international cooperation among affiliated organizations requires a foundation of facts rather than assumptions about the coherence of each affiliate and the international network as a whole, and the facts may be messy. Also notable is that the German Leagues’ ties to leagues abroad were not of uniform strength; only the French LDH figured in the sources available to me. For reasons yet to be determined, League members in West Germany seem to have had little contact, if any, to their counterparts in Austria or Switzerland. Finally, the post-1945 Leagues’ spotty records led to unexpected advantages for the historian. The repeated destruction of the League’s own archive led me to turn to other sources, such as personal correspondence – both that of notable émigrés held in research institutions, and that supplied through personal contacts, such as Ossip Flechtheim’s daughter and Alfred Götze’s son. The latter found me after an early paper from my project was posted on the Internet, and he kindly assisted me with more leads and sources. It also led me to U.S. and East German intelligence archives, 129 See BStU, SIRA Teildatenbank 12 (information retrieved 18 December 2001); and MfS HA XX ZMA Nr. 1626, 29, 36. 130 Jürgen Wüst, Menschenrechtsarbeit im Zwielicht. Zwischen Staatssicherheit und Antifaschismus, Bonn 1999, 199–211, esp. 201. 131 See its website, http://ilmr.de, consulted 30 January 2016. In the 1990s, its president was the German-Jewish rémigrée Alisa Fuss, and its focus was on education about Nazism, aiding refugees, and legal work on the right of asylum and against discrimination toward foreigners. See Barbara Heber-Schärer, Solidarität und Eigensinn. Das tätige Leben der Alisa Fuss – Berlin, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Berlin 2009. More recently, its president is Fanny-Michaela Reisin, an Israeli-born pacifist with dual German-Israeli citizenship. Like Fuss, Reisin’s family background makes the Nazi past an immediate context; her father was a German-Jewish refugee from the Nazis. See Fanny-Michaela Reisin, Professorin und Friedensaktivistin im Gespräch mit Lerke von Saalfeld, for the radio program “Zeitgenossen” on 18 April 2007, at http:// www.swr.de, consulted 30 January 2016.

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and more research could be done in those archives and in France. The relationship between human rights work and espionage is a lasting and complex theme, but seldom well researched. The scattered and varied sources drawn upon here revealed stories that might never have surfaced in a continuous (and continuously curated) organizational archive. After all, human rights organizations are public relations organizations, and must carefully manage their reputations.

THE SPANISH LEAGUE OF HUMAN RIGHTS Paul Aubert The Ligue des droits de l’homme was created in Paris on 4 June 1898 as a result of the protest movement that got underway in France at the time of the Dreyfus affair. It had a double objective: to propagate the ideals of the French Revolution and to give assistance to anyone whose freedom was threatened or whose rights might have been violated. The same goal led to leagues being established in other countries. In Spain, a league was created following the Ferrer case (1909), the Liga Española para la Defensa de los Derechos del Hombre y del Ciudadano (1913–1922), which only began to act on a national level with the protests surrounding the trial against Miguel de Unamuno for having insulted King Alfonso XIII in 1920. The Spanish League only began its public existence as a structured movement in 1922 by becoming the Liga Española de los Derechos del Hombre (1922–1977), chaired by Unamuno, as the signatures of membership published in the magazine “España” show.1 Besides Unamuno, these include all public intellectuals of the time, including Azorín (José Augusto Trinidad Martínez Ruiz), Dalí, Falla, Azaña, Ortega y Gasset, Miró, Julián Besteiro, Antonio Machado, Salvador de Madariaga, Ramiro Maeztu, Gregorio Marañón, Menéndez Pidal, Miguel Morayta, Benito Pérez Galdós, Cipriano Rivas Cherif, Ramón del Valle-Inclán, Ignacio Zuloaga, Pedro Rico, José María Gil Robles, Pablo Ruiz Picasso, Pablo Cassals, Lluis Companys, Francesco Macía, Vicente Blasco Ibañez, Ángel Ossorio, Luis Araquistáin, Antonia Merce “La Argentinita”, José Giral and Manuel Aznar, Luis Simarro, García Lorca, Américo Castro, and Sánchez Albornoz. After it was recognised by the Ministry of the Interior in 1977, it took the name of Liga Española ProDerechos Humanos.2 The League led a fitful existence and was reorganised every ten years, which proves the obstinacy of its leaders, but also the weakness of its organisation.

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Liga española para la defensa de los derechos del hombre, in: El País. Diario republicano, 11 August 1913; La Liga Española de los Derechos del Hombre, in: España 351, 6 January 1923, 16, and 352, 13 January 1923, 1. The current president of the Liga Española Pro-Derechos Humanos is José Alonso Rodríguez.

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THE FOUNDATION (1913) AND ORGANISATION (1922) OF THE LEAGUE OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN SPAIN The Spanish League, Liga Española de los Derechos del Hombre, was established on 23 November 1913 under the presidency of Doctor Luis Simarro3, professor of experimental psychology at the Central University of Madrid and, for the previous year, Grand Commander of the Grande Oriente Español and member of the Madrid Masonic Lodge Ibérica Number 7. The possibility of such a creation had previously been envisaged in the aftermath of the campaign for freedom of conscience that had begun with the protest movement against the condemnation of Francisco Ferrer, an anarchist teacher who was sentenced to death and executed on 13 October 1909, having hastily been accused of being responsible for the riots in Barcelona in July 1909 that are known under the name of Semana Trágica.4 Doctor Simarro, who had contributed to this campaign, believed that the time was ripe for “the formation of this international moral opinion, the future queen and mistress of the world, for which the existing institutions that defend culture, justice and material interests are the prelude”.5 He believed he could create a kind of international moral court. The task was to restructure a movement that had been organised at the end of the campaign for freedom of conscience that had supported the decision of Romanones to exempt children of non-Catholic families from the teaching of the catechism on request.6 According to the circular, the committee included repre-

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5 6

The Human Rights League was established in France on the initiative of senator Ludovic Trarieux on 20 January 1898, during the Zola trial, by witnesses to the trial who were convinced that justice and legality had been flouted in the trial of captain Dreyfus: the academic Jean Psichari, Ernest Renan’s son-in-law; Émile Duclaux, director of the Institut Pasteur, medievalist Arthur Giry, chemist Edouard Grimaux, doctor Jacques Héricourt, philologists Louis Havet and Paul Meyer and jurist Paul Viollet. The statutes of the Human Rights League (initially baptized French League for the Defence of Human Rights and Citizens), drafted by Ludovic Trarieux and Paul Viollet, refer to the Declarations of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 26 August 1789 and of 1793. On 1 April 1898, the League counted 269 members. Initially its membership mainly consisted of academics, jurists, artists or famous writers, who were soon joined by industrialists, shopkeepers, lawyers, journalists, etc. The founding assembly took place, on 4 June, in Paris, at the Hôtel des sociétés savantes. Beyond the Dreyfus affair, the founders of the Human Rights League aimed “to intervene wherever personal freedom is threatened or violated” (Yves Guyot). Luis Simarro, El proceso de Ferrer y la opinión europea, vol. 1: El proceso, Madrid 1910. Although the title suggests two volumes, only this volume can be found at the National Library. Paul Aubert, Violence à Barcelone et naissance des intellectuels (1896–1909). Affaire Corominas, “Loi des Juridictions”, “Semaine Tragique”, Affaire Ferrer, in: Bulletin d’Histoire Contemporaine de l’Espagne 47/2012, 13–41. Simarro, El proceso, VIII. “Para evitar que las energías surgidas y desarrolladas durante esa campaña, que tenía un carácter puramente ocasional, se esterilizasen luego por falta de aplicación, pensó la Comisión de qué forma podrían hacerse cristalizar en instrumentos de acción, que de una manera continua laboraran para hacer respetar no sólo la libertad de conciencia, sino también aquellos

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sentatives of “all dissidents of the official State religion: evangelists, practising Jews, anti-clericals, free thinkers and so on, as well as Freemasons and all political parties fighting for freedom of conscience”. The executive committee consisted of thirty-two members, with a third of them Freemasons.7 Membership outside the capital was based on different Lodges, which often took the initiative in creating local chapters of the League. At the beginning of World War I, the League aligned itself with the cause of the Allies and backed the membership of Spain in the League of Nations. It was a visible presence in the republican management board that met at the Athenaeum in November 1918 and demanded the democratisation of the regime so Spain might meet the necessary conditions.8 The League denounced political persecutions, cases of religious intolerance and attacks against civil law. It demanded freedom of the press and proposed the construction of non-denominational cemeteries. It fought religious intolerance: lawsuits against itinerant Bible sellers or against people who had failed to doff their hats to a passing procession or the Eucharist. It denounced religious persecution, cases of intolerance, and breaches of civil law. It petitioned the authorities with requests for the amnesty of prisoners. It supported the construction of nondenominational cemeteries. It defended the freedom of the media for newspapers such as “El Noroeste”, “Justicia Social” or “La Campana de Gracia”, and the workers’ right to strike. It protested against abuse in prisons and the violation of the correspondence of prisoners, against the custom of chaining the mentally ill in psychiatric hospitals, against the teaching of religion in teacher training colleges. Very often, the initiative for actions came from the Masonic Lodges. In November 1917, Talavera de la Reina Eduardo López Parra’s lawyer asked Doctor Simarro to intervene “with the Jesuits and reactionaries of this region for those who were wrongly persecuted”.9 After the revolutionary general strike in August 1917, the League and the Lodge Aurora supported the members of the strikers’ committee who had been imprisoned in Cartagena.10 In April 1918, the Lodge Jovellanos Number 337 in Gijón asked the League to intervene with the Minister of Justice when the Freemasons’ magazine “El Hombre Rojo” was

derechos de la persona humana que son considerados como inviolables en todo el mundo civilizado.” Primera circular, July 1913, 1. 7 Liga Española para la Defensa de los Derechos del Hombre y del Ciudadano, Estatutos y Reglamentos, Madrid 1913, 7f. Luis Simarro Lacabra, president; Benito Pérez Galdós, vicepresident; Roberto Castrovido Sanz, vice-president; Víctor Gallego, vice-president, Augusto Barcia Trelles, vice-treasurer; Ramón Martínez Sol, secretary; Francisco Escolá Besada, secretary; Enrique Barea Pérez, secretary; Odón de Buen, Eduardo Barriobero Herrán; Nicolás Salmerón, Rafael Salillas, Laureano Miró, members. Simarro, Castrovido, Gallego, Barcia, Martínez Sol, Escolá Besada, Barea Pérez, Odón de Buen, Barriobero, Salmerón, and Pí y Arsuaga were Masons. 8 Manifiesto de la Federación republicana, in: Fernando Soldevilla, El año político 1918, Madrid 1919, 353f.; Unión Democrática Española, in: España 194, 26 November 1918, 4. 9 Archivo del Doctor Simarro, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, legajo n° 4, docs. 107–110. 10 José Antonio Ayala, La Masonería en la región de Murcia, Murcia 1986, 345.

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banned.11 In April 1919, the Lodge Justicia Number 9 in Barcelona asked for the intervention of Doctor Simarro to protest against Ramón Aguiló’s arrest.12 In 1920, Luis Simarro organised a campaign in favour of Miguel de Unamuno, who had been condemned for insults to the King after having published two articles, “El Archiducado de España” and “Irresponsabilidades”, in “El Mercantil Valenciano” on 27 October and 17 November 1918 respectively, and another article published in “El Liberal”, entitled “Ante el diluvio”, on 26 September 1920.13 While he was careful not to confuse the human rights league and Freemasonry, he used his authority as a Grand Master of the Grand Spanish Orient (Gran Maestre del Grande Oriente Español) to ask its members to become members of the League. Simarro served in both functions, at the head of Freemasonry and as president of the human rights league, until his death in June 1921. Miguel de Unamuno was elected to succeed him together with a secretary, the Freemason Eduardo Ortega y Gasset. However, this was sufficient disruption for the League, and it became necessary to convene a national assembly in 1923, which was attended by many well-known liberals, intellectuals and Freemasons. A subscription was opened in the magazine “España” to cover the necessary expenses.14 But Primo de Rivera’s coup put a stop to the activities of the League, and only a few months later, the dictator exiled Unamuno to Fuerteventura on the Canary Islands. The League, which had disposed of a national network in 1922, fell victim to the repression of Primo de Rivera’s regime. REVIVAL AND RELATIONS WITH FREEMASONRY (1932) In late 1925, the Grand Symbolic Council of the Grand Spanish Orient, which was held in Sevilla, renewed its interest in the preservation of the League. 15 In 1926, an alliance of liberal intellectuals and Freemasonry formed the focal point of the intellectual struggle against Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship on the initiative of two Freemasons from Salamanca, Enrique Martí Jara and José Giral. The advent of the Republic allowed the League to resume its activities: its reorganisation was decided during a meeting on 4 March 1932, in the Athenaeum, presided over by Miguel de Unamuno. Five days later, a temporary council was elected, with Miguel de 11 Archivo del Doctor Simarro, legajo n° 6, doc. 80. 12 Ramón Aguiló was a founder of the Masonic Lodge Ibérica Number 7 in Madrid. Archivo del Doctor Simarro, legajo n° 4, sobre 3, doc. 97. 13 Archivo del Doctor Simarro, legajo n° 3. 14 Manifiesto de la Liga Española para los Derechos del Hombre, in: El Liberal, 4 March 1922. 15 “La Asamblea del Gran Consejo Federal Simbólico declara una vez más su apartamiento de todo partido o bandería política (…). Tras ello afirma que ese apartamiento de los partidos políticos no lo traduce en abandono de sus deberes esenciales referidos a la defensa de los principios de la Institución que en lo político se cifran en el mantenimiento de los Derechos del Hombre y de los Pueblos.” Reseña de la Asamblea Nacional Simbólica, Sevilla, 2 a 4 de noviembre de 1925, Sevilla 1925, 17.

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Unamuno as its honorary president and acting president Carlos Malagarriga, supported by four vice-presidents, Eduardo Ortega y Gasset, Diego Martínez Barrio, Clara Campoamor (who had decisively influenced the Constituent Assembly in favour of granting the vote to women), and Rosendo Castells Ballespí.16 Carlos Malagarriga was a Madrid lawyer and a member of the Masonic Lodge Unión Number 88 in the capital, which presided in 1933.17 All the vice-presidents were high-ranking Freemasons, with the exception of the radical deputy Clara Campoamor. While there were only few requests for the establishment of women’s suffrage, some publicists (Odón de Buen, Francos Rodríguez, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez) were supporting the acceptance of free-thinking women in labour and politics. Members more aligned with an integral feminism were to be found among the socialists and anarchists, for instance Fernando Garrido and Anselmo Lorenzo.18 The feminism of women should also not be underestimated, even though it often accepted the stereotype that man is suited for a public life, while women should remain in the private sphere.19 During a later meeting that was held in the Athenaeum of Madrid, at the end of April 1933, Carlos Malagarriga explained that the League “could offer to the Republic a subtle instrument of democracy and personal freedom”.20 It was decided to revise the statutes. Unamuno closed the session by referring the debt he owed to the French Human Rights League for his escape from the island of Fuerteventura, and encouraging the recently constituted junta (council) to implement its programme.21 A note from 15 June from the council claims some continuity with the first league, which had constituted “a strong opposition to reactionaries in governments”. The assembly approved Malagarriga’s draft statutes on 12 April 193322; it also elected a central junta, the mandate of which ended on 31 October 1934. In the future, the League planned to attract a “nobility” and “some wealthy people, not elected through universal suffrage but known for their virtues and their personal history”.23 The League declared itself hostile to any dictatorship supported by a dynasty, a caste, a class or a political party, which would only revoke the rights already formulated within a symbolic triangle, founded on the one hand on the freedom and dignity

16 Boletín de la Liga Española de los Derechos del Hombre, 1 May 1933, 36f. 17 Archivo Histórico Nacional, Salamanca, sección Masonería, leg. 87, exp. 11A. 18 José Álvarez Junco, Ideología política del anarquismo español (1868–1910), Madrid 1976, 289–299. 19 Mari Nash, Mujer, familia y trabajo en España (1875–1936), Barcelona 1983, 16. 20 Boletín de la Liga, 1 May 1933. 21 Boletín de la Liga, 1 May 1933. 22 Estatuto de la Liga Española de los Derechos del Hombre, in: Boletín de la Liga, 1 May 1933. 23 The second Article emphasized the virtues necessary to become a member of the League: “No deben admitirse todos los ciudadanos, sino aquellos que, por sus condiciones de alta moralidad y consecuencia hayan ganado prestigio entre los que más inmediatamente están en contacto con ellos y que por ellas entran en el seno de esta verdadera Orden moderna de caballería, que (…) resultará de hecho una aristocracia (los mejores) dentro de la democracia.” Estatuto de la Liga Española de los Derechos del Hombre, Madrid 1932, 7.

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of the individual and social equality, and on the other on brotherhood and peace between the nations.24 Malagarriga was confirmed as president, along with Diego Martínez Barrio, Eduardo Ortega y Gasset and Augusto Barcia (all Freemasons) as honorary presidents. Three of four vice-presidents were also Freemasons: José Manteca, Mariano Benlliure Tuero and Justo Caballero; the treasurer, Dámaso Vélez, too; as well as at least a third of the twelve representatives from Madrid: Félix Gil y Mariscal, Ramón Pérez Díaz, José Puig de Asprer, and Amós Sabrás.25 The statutes of the League consisted of twenty-eight articles, somewhat different in spirit to those of 1913, even if Malagarriga thought they were “building a new temple on an old temple”.26 The local committees formed the basis, they were part of a provincial junta, which again sent delegates to the central junta. The statutes established that the Spanish League was affiliated with the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues. They also described the means of action which could be applied to achieve its goals, the conditions required for membership, the rate of member’s contributions, the bodies which constituted it, the organisation of assemblies etc. They also stipulated (art. 10) that the regions would enjoy political autonomy and had the right to constitute intermediary sections between the provincial juntas and the central junta. During this constituent period, which de facto continued into April 1933, various networks were organised, most of which of Masonic origin. Malagarriga described the difficulties posed by the “Ley de Defensa de la República [Law for the Defence of the Republic]”. However, when the general assembly was convened in April 1933, the Spanish League had thirteen provincial juntas besides the Madrid one.27 After the general strike of August 1917, Machado continued to believe in the revolutionary hypothesis, although his only civic commitment was that he accepted, in 1922, to sign the manifesto of membership to the Spanish League of Human Rights, which demanded, on 4 March 1922, respect for the freedom of expression and the reinstatement of constitutional guarantees. He chaired the delegation of Segovia, the vice-president of which was Blas Zambrano.28 Such a commitment is not very surprising because the president of the Spanish League was his most respected correspondent, Miguel de Unamuno. And the poet’s letter to Doctor Simarro, a Grand Master of the Grande Oriente Español, which probably dates from September 192029, refers to demonstra24 Estatuto de la Liga, 6. 25 José Antonio Ayala, Revolución, derechos individuales y masonería. Las Ligas españolas de derechos del hombre (1913–1936), in: J. A. Ferrer Benimeli (ed.), Masonería, revolución y reacción, Alicante 1990, vol. 1, 123–143, 137. 26 Estatuto de la Liga, in: Boletín de la Liga, 1 May 1933. 27 Estatuto de la Liga. 28 España 325, 17 June 1922. 29 Archivo de Doctor Simarro, Campaña en favor de Unamuno, doc. 68. This letter is undated. It is in a file with letters dated September 1920. It cannot have been written much later, because its addressee died in 1921.

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tions in favour of Unamuno organised by the Human Rights League of Paris. Unamuno had been condemned to sixteen years in a penal colony for insults to the King after publishing two articles, “Irresponsabilidades” and “El Archiducado de España”, in “El Mercantil Valenciano” in 1918, and, in 1920, in the same newspaper, another titled “Ante el diluvio”.30 His republican beliefs probably explain why Machado should not have been insensitive, in 1926, to the campaign the Grande Oriente launched amongst intellectuals, which gave more coherence to the republican groups in their struggle against dictatorship. Was Antonio Machado a Mason?31 This is a delicate question, because there are no documents concerning it. Deductions, intellectual kinships are evoked, but there is no hard evidence. The addressee of the aforementioned letter, Doctor Luis Simarro, was, in 1920, a Grand Master of the Grande Oriente Español. This letter, while very respectful for the simple reason that Luis Simarro was a famous scientist, is not that of a member of Freemasonry to the Grand Master. We may infer that, in 1920, Machado was not a Mason. It would have been the political programme that Unamuno generically called “civic labour” that attracted Machado. This explains why the poet should have felt deceived when he found out, in April 1922, about Unamuno’s visit to the palace. One thing is certain: during the year 1926, intellectuals in opposition to the dictatorship were approached by the Freemasons of Madrid. Because he was a republican, Machado could not be totally insensitive to such an initiative from the Lodges. Probably he was present at a meeting of republican militants. But attending a meeting of a Lodge was not possible without having being initiated. Other republicans were regarded as Masons. In 1931, after having revised the “Fragment of a Nightmare” that he had written in 1914, Machado wrote in another: “Mason, Mason, Awake”; but in 1914 he was dreaming of wearing the sanbenito on his head, and this led no-one to believe that he was condemned by the Inquisition. Too many republican militants and members of the League of Human Rights are attributed with a Masonic affiliation based on scanty evidence. The admittance in the Lodges of an important group of intellectuals was owed to José Giral and Enrique Martí Jara (according to his correspondence with 30 Paul Aubert, “Gotas de sangre jacobina”. Antonio Machado republicano, in: idem (ed.), Antonio Machado, hoy. 1939–1989, Madrid 1994, 309–362, 342. Machado’s letter reads as follows: “Señor Don Luis Simarro: Querido y admirado maestro:/ Mi más completa/ adhesión a cuantas/ campañas en favor/ de la libertad de expresión del pensamiento/ emprenda esa Liga de los defensores de/ los derechos del hombre./ Disponga de su buen amigo s.s.,/ Antonio Machado.” 31 Oreste Macrí, Machado, poeta institucionista y masón, in: La Torre 12/1964, 99–110, states that Machado was a Mason, mentioning Manuel Tuñón de Lara and Joaquín Casalduero. He refers to Emilio’s Gonzalez Lopez’ article, which describes it as a “beautiful and illuminating testimony”, but he bases this on a reproduction in an anthology edited by Alice McVan, Antonio Machado, New York 1959, 63. However, Manuel Tuñón de Lara never wrote or claimed that Machado was a Mason. Emilio Gonzalez Lopez writes that the poet belonged to the Lodge Mantua of Madrid of the Gran Logia Española, but he does not prove it. See Emilio González López, in: El Sol de la Fraternidad, New York, 26 October 1957.

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Unamuno), both anxious after Unamuno’s exile to form “a viable, undogmatic group of all or the healthiest parts of the Spanish Left”.32 Among those who were approached were Ramón Pérez de Ayala, Luis Araquistáin, Manuel Azaña, Jiménez de Asúa, and Teófilo Hernández. Later in the correspondence, we find the names of Américo Castro, Manuel Pedroso, Doporto, Machado, the brothers Barnés, the children of Salmerón, Castrovido, Álvarez del Vayo, as well as Alomar, Hernando, Blasco, Senador, Buylla, Pallarés (some of them Masons, e.g. Fernando de los Ríos, Alvaro de Albornoz, José Salmerón; others not). This was at the time when Unamuno was asked for his signature, too. Later the Madrid group was joined by Sevillians and by university students from Granada (Demófilo de Buen, one of the leaders of Freemasonry, Polanco, and Fernando de los Ríos). The first issue at hand was the protest against Unamuno’s exile, then helping him, and thirdly organising a republican block with politically active republicans “who had no dealings with any faction or group”33 and who objected to the dictatorship, according to Martí Jara on 10 March 1925. Such an initiative had the support of Freemasonry, since their members had initiated it. Nevertheless no-one argues that Unamuno was a Mason.34 This group, which had connections with Lerroux’s radicals, the federalists of Pi y Margall, the Catalans of Domingo, and what would later become Azaña’s Republican Action was the core that constituted the Republican Alliance. Martí Jara and Giral had thus gained simultaneous control of the Grande Oriente and of the Republican Alliance. Mentioning Antonio Machado’s name among republicans “not known for their activities” by no means implies that he was a Mason. It is probable that Machado was present at some meetings of the group of republicans “not known for their activities”, and that he had open contact with the Masons. There is no trace that Machado wished to be initiated. While there is no evidence of this (and none has turned up in the likely places), Machado’s possible affiliation with Freemasonry can only be regarded in terms of cultural and political coincidence. While there is no doubt about the Masons’ philanthropy, it would be difficult to deduce from this fact that all philanthropists were Masons.35 The 32 María Dolores Gómez Molleda, La masonería en la crisis española del siglo XX, Madrid 1986, 125. 33 Gómez Molleda, La masonería, 153. 34 According to Ms. Dolores Gómez Molleda, his eldest son Fernando belonged to the Lodge Friendship of Valladolid, affiliated to the regional one of the centre. The new testimony of Gonzalez Lopez published more recently by Jose Antonio García-Diego does not supply any more detail. It indicates that the poet was supposed to be initiated at the Lodge Mantua in 1930, presented by Leonardo Martin Echeverría, professor of Geography and History at the Institute of Segovia. But the author also claims, quoting the slightly meticulous book by the presbyterian Juan Tusquets, Orígenes de la revolución española, Barcelona 1932, 214, that the poet had started in the Lodge Universidad in Madrid. See Jose Antonio García-Diego, Antonio Machado y Juan Gris, dos artistas masones, Madrid 1990, 31, 43–50. 35 Casalduero’s unique comment is that the individual in Machado’s poem “Recuerdo de sueño, fiebre y duermevela” realizes the impression of affliction he had during a nightmare in which

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question will continue to be part of an apocryphal history of Machado, who may have been a Mason; and it would not be a great surprise if he were. This question also plagued the security services after the Civil War, who were unable to find any evidence of his being a Mason. If they had found any document to prove it, they would surely have used it for propaganda purposes. 36 Franco’s regime often announced the supposed affiliation of intellectuals with Freemasonry, to discredit them and to give substance to the notion of a supposed international, communist and Masonic conspiracy. The case of Manuel Azaña is different, since he was actually initiated but stopped attending Masonic assemblies, because, as he confessed, he found them unconvincing. Still, it is clear that Machado’s name under the manifest of the Republican Alliance in 192637 is evidence of his opposition to the dictatorship and that it expresses his aforementioned fundamental republicanism. In Spain as in Portugal, the human rights leagues were brought back to life thanks to the initiative of Freemasons: Doctor Magalhães Lima, Gran Maestre de la Masonería, was at the head of the Portuguese section, while Augusto Barcia was the vice-president of the Spanish League, chaired by Unamuno when it was reorganised in 1922. His secretaries were Botella Asensi and the Freemason Eduardo Ortega y Gasset. Its head office was at del Prado 11, 2nd floor, the same address as the Athenaeum and the magazine “España”, which opened a subscription and published a list of its first members from 1 April 192238 until January

he saw the prosecutions in a night of a witches’ Sabbath. “(…) le llaman, azuzándole: ‘¡Sanbenitado, sanbenitado!’. Es el insulto-complejo: hereje-judío. En realidad, esto significa bien poco, nada. Son palabras vacías de malsines y basureros. La forma poética da con el término exacto y con significado: ‘¡Masón, masón!’. En España, como de otras muchas cosas, no se sabe nada de la masonería. Yo tampoco. Pero para odiar no hace falta saber, se odia mejor si no se sabe. Los reaccionarios o retrógrados o tradicionalistas han odiado a la Institución y a la Masonería, sin embargo, con acierto, adivinando en ambas a su peor enemigo: un sentido moral vital y fecundo. La Masonería por encima de las fronteras, la Institución dentro del país tenían eso de común.” Quoted in: Macrí, Machado, poeta institucionista y masón, 103. Ignorance regarding Freemasonry is understandable in the Spain of 1964, not yet free of the paranoia of a supposed foreign communist and Masonic conspiracy. On the other hand, the title of Casalduero’s article has a curious ring, reminiscent of pro-Franco propaganda leaflets, “Freemasonry and Institutionalism”. See Una poderosa fuerza secreta. La Institución Libre de Enseñanza, San Sebastián 1940. It is also strange to write an article in order to reaffirm that nothing is known of the issue at hand. Macrí is no more precise when he writes: “Entró, no sabemos cuando, en la Gran Logia Española.” Oreste Macrí (ed.), Antonio Machado, Obras, vol. 2: Prosas Completas, Madrid 1988, 43. “La Gran Logia Regional Catalano-Balear rompió en 1920 el pacto suscrito con el Grande Oriente y se constituyó en Potencia Simbólica Nacional, extendiendo su jurisdicción a toda España con la denominación de Gran Logia Española.” Gómez Molleda, La masonería, 186. 36 Aubert, “Gotas de sangre jacobina”, 342–351. 37 Manifiesto de Alianza Republicana, Madrid 1926. 38 La Liga de los Derechos del Hombre, in: España 314, 1 April 1922. Contra la arbitrariedad gubernativa, La Liga de los Derechos del Hombre en el Ateneo, in: España 343, 11 November 1922, 4.

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1923.39 On 27 May 1922, the national junta wanted to create delegations in all the important cities of Spain to set up a national network.40 Antonio Machado chaired the delegation of Segovia, the vice-president of which was Blas Zambrano. In its local committees, the League mobilised the cultivated bourgeoisie: writers, property owners, doctors, lawyers, engineers. In Sevilla, its president was the anarchist doctor Pedro Vallina; in Bilbao, the writer Ramón Sánchez Díaz; in Málaga, Enrique Laza Herrera; in Villanueva i la Geltrú, the landowner Juan Ventosa Roig; in Oviedo, the ex-mayor Juan Ríos; in Gijon, the attorney Merediz; in Chiclana de Segura (Jaén), doctor Teudíselo Cobo Martínez; in Yecla, the writer Francisco Martínez Corbalón.41 The League gradually organised a wide network consisting of those generally known as “the democratic elements”. On 28 May 1922, the Spanish representatives Barcia and Fabra Ribas took part in a meeting of all country delegates in Paris, to create an international organisation with the help of Aline Ménard-Dorian (the wife of Victor Hugo’s grandson Georges), who had met the expense of Unamuno’s rescue from Fuerteventura.42 The invitation to its general assembly was postponed until May 1923. Its interventions sometimes were successful, as for instance when it protested against arbitrary government measures like unfounded detentions.43 “As the State diverges from its goals, the Human Rights League has the duty to channel it, and do that to which it aspires”, declared Fernández de Velasco, a teacher from Murcia. 44 These humanist principles were sustained by an explicit, allegoric Francophilia: “France, after spreading her democratic ideals, led the way to the implementation of human rights.”45 The Human Rights League was reorganised during a meeting summoned by its secretary, Eduardo Ortega y Gasset, on 4 March 1932, at the Athenaeum, under the presidency of Miguel de Unamuno. A temporary committee was elected.46 In a further assembly that took place in April at the Cultural Club, a new committee was appointed. Three Masons became honorary presidents: Augusto Barcia, Diego Martínez Barrio, and Eduardo Ortega y Gasset. The union was confirmed by conferring the office of president to Carlos Malagarriga, member of the Lodge Madrid Number 88. Three of four vice-presidents were also Masons: José 39 In its following numbers, we find the names of new members, sometimes followed by the amount of their contribution: Fernando de los Ríos (25 ptas), A. Fabra Rivas (10 ptas), Demófilo de Buen Lozano, Benito A. Buylla, etc. 40 España 322, 17 May 1922, 16. 41 España 333–366, 13 August 1922–13 May 1923. 42 España 325, 27 May 1922. 43 In November 1922 it organised meetings against the regime of the quincenas (fortnights) to which almost all the governors resorted. Bottle, Castrovido, Barcia, and Unamuno held speeches. 44 España 323, 24 May 1922, Fernandez de Velasco’s lecture at the Circle of Fine Arts of Murcia, to present the purposes of the League. 45 España 323, 24 May 1922. 46 Miguel de Unamuno, honorary president; Carlos Malagarriga, president; Eduardo Ortega y Gasset, Diego Martínez Barrio, Clara Campoamor, and Rosendo Castells Ballespí, vicepresidents.

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Manteca, Mariano Benlliure, and Justo Caballero, as well as the treasurer, Dámaso Vélez. Malagarriga reaffirmed the adhesion of the League to the ideals of the republic, and Unamuno recalled how the French Human Rights League had organised his fantastic escape from the island of Fuerteventura in 1924.47 During the Republic, the League is more or less indistinguishable from Freemasonry. A note dated May 1933 underlined its aim to appear as being “strongly opposed to reactionary governments”.48 In January 1936, when constitutional rights were restored, the League condemned the repressive politics of the Lerroux cabinet in a manifesto dated 13 January and recommended to vote against the Right in the parliamentary election ordered by the Prime Minister, Freemason Portela Valladares. It also demanded a vote of amnesty.49 The progressive ecumenism that was professed by the League, the importance of its network throughout the territory, the successive militancy of some intellectuals (many of them Freemasons) in most of the left-wing parties and the Human Rights League – Fernando de los Ríos for instance was active in all of these movements – demonstrate that in such networks of influence, in all attempts for a renewal of national political life, the Spanish intelligentsia looked for democratic solutions and did not hesitate to occupy strategic positions. IMPACT OF THE LEAGUE’S ACTION After its reorganisation in 1932, the League fought against Lerroux’s repressive politics during the “dark biennium” (“bienio negro”). In spite of its professed progressive ecumenism, it was identified more closely with Freemasonry; it also became openly republican. A note dated May 1933 underlined its aim to appear “strongly opposed to reactionary governments”.50 The League campaigned in favour of the victims of the repression after the uprising of October 1934 in Asturias and fought against the death penalty: it declared that its preservation demonstrated the incompetence of the State in criminal matters.51 The activity of the League was irregular because it was affected by changes in the political system. Its reorganisation dragged on until spring 1933. On 25 April 1933, its central committee went to the National Assembly to hand a petition to President Julián Besteiro asking for the suspension of the “Ley de Defensa de la República” (which prohibited its activities), declaring its opposition to any emergency legislation, and voicing its concerns regarding a law and order bill the government was going to submit to the Cortes “because it was incompatible with 47 España 325, 27 May 1922. 48 Boletín de la Liga, 1 May 1933. 49 Acuerdos del Segundo Congreso Nacional de la Liga Española de los Derechos del Hombre, August 1935, Archivo Histórico Nacional, Salamanca, leg.351 A/25; Manifiesto de la Liga de los Derechos del Hombre, 13 January 1936. 50 Boletín de la Liga, 1 May 1933. 51 Boletín de la Liga, 1 May 1933, 36f.

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liberal principles”.52 Besides, the Catalan section asked the Minister of Justice for the recognition of the rights of children born out of wedlock.53 The inauguration of a conservative government after the election of 1933, the participation of the Confederación Española de las Derechas Autónomas (CEDA) in the government following the uprising of Asturias in October 1934 and its repression, and the following press censorship that lasted until December 1935 did not contribute to the activities of the League. In 1934, the League reaffirmed its non-partisan position and its capacity of outrage before injustice; it fought in a campaign in favour of the victims of reprisals after the events of October, but also drew closer to left-wing parties. The members of the League applied pressure to obtain the liberation of prisoners. This succeeded in Burgos (where the president of the provincial junta, Julián Peñalver, was also the director of the prison), but in Catalonia it could not overcome political rivalries. Freemasons also intervened in favour of labour activists who were detained in jail. The central junta sent a petition to the Minister of the Interior, listing about 30,000 prisoners, which effectively helped their liberation. Then the second congress insisted on the necessity of calming political passions and asked for an amnesty and for the restoration of constitutional rights54, calling upon all the provincial juntas to act in this sense. Another issue that occupied the League was the campaign against the death penalty, the continued existence of which demonstrated, in its opinion, the incompetence of the State in criminal and political matters. On 10 April 1931, the Liga Catalana de Defensa de los Derechos del Hombre y del Ciudadano had sent a manifesto to the Prime Minister, demanding the abolition of this punishment.55 In April 1934, it again proclaimed its opposition when its restoration was mooted and it protested against the mentioned law of amnesty because it excluded delinquents arrested after a set date.56 The Masonic Lodge Ruiz Zorilla Number 21 in Barcelona asked its sister Lodges to support this petition. The repression that followed the events of October 1934, in the Asturias as well as in Catalonia, worried the members of the League and international Masonic associations. The campaign covered all provinces; demands for the amnesty of sentenced prisoners and for prison visits were sent to the authorities.57 It would be hard to distinguish this campaign from the campaign Freemasonry had just launched, especially in Catalonia, where relations between the latter and the League were very close because the president of the Catalan junta of the League, Justo Caballero, was a member of the Masonic Lodge Plus Ultra in Barcelona. Pi y Suñer salutes their work: 52 Boletín de la Liga, 1 May 1933, 36f. 53 Boletín de la Liga, 1 May 1933, 36f. 54 Acuerdos del Segundo Congreso Nacional de la Liga Española de los Derechos del Hombre, Madrid, August, 1935, Archivo Histórico Nacional, Salamanca, leg. 351 A/25. 55 El Sol, 11 April 1931. 56 El Sol, 16 April 1934. 57 Circular del secretario de la Liga Española de los Derechos del Hombre, 14 October 1935; Circular-cuestionario, 18 November 1935.

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Thanks to their contacts, [the Freemasons] had achieved something for the condemned after the events of October for which we have to be grateful, and they contributed effectively to the amnesty of some of those sentenced to death.58

However, the “dark biennium” (“bienio negro”) with its repression and human rights violations was fatal to the League. On 22 October 1934, it held its second national congress, which had been planned for 6 July 1934, but had had to be adjourned. The motions submitted on this occasion amount to seven points: 1. The demand to create courts for the protection of constitutional rights, as provided in Article 105 of the Constitution; 2. the restoration of constitutional normality; 3. the concession of a far-reaching amnesty to restore public peace; 4. respect for the law concerning the events of October; 5. the League, which was in touch with other national leagues, considered that peace was threatened and decided to work against “a new disaster” using all possible means; 6. it was decided to study the most adequate remedies to relieve the situation of unemployment which affected a third of the Spanish labour force; 7. it supported the petition for the abolition of the death penalty, which “was included in the code of military justice”.59 The new central junta, elected to manage the League until October 1936, included many Freemasons, though fewer than the previous ones. They always occupied leading positions. Diego Martínez Barrio and Augusto Barcia were honorary presidents. Another Freemason, Roberto Castrovido, replaced Eduardo Ortega y Gasset; the elected president was José Manteca Roger, a lawyer of 37 years and member of the Lodge Unión Number 9 in Madrid. The vice-presidents Amós Sabrás Gurrea and José Franchy Roca were Freemasons, too; as were General Secretary Alberto Lumbreras and Committee Directors Vicente Gaspar Soler, Antonio Cabrera Tova, Francisco Escolá Besada, Ideal Eyerbe, José Getino Carreño, Manuel Muñoz Martínez, Ricardo Mata, Fermín de Zayas, and possibly Victoria Kent, whose membership is not established.60 The restoration of constitutional rights on the eve of the election and the removal of censorship allowed the League to express itself freely for the first time. In its manifesto of 13 January 1936, it denounced reprisals and attacks against defenceless victims and exhorted its members not to forget the situation created by the Right when casting their vote in the next election.61 This identification of the League with the Left explains why it was victimised; a few months later, the purge was launched by the Franco regime. With the outbreak of the Civil War, the League split into two factions: the members in the Republican zone supported the 58 Quoted in: P. Sánchez Ferré, La Masonería en la societat catalana del siglo XX (1900–1947), Barcelona 1993, 167. 59 2do congreso nacional de la Liga Española de los Derechos del Hombre, Archivo Histórico Nacional, Salamanca, Sección Masonería, leg. 211, exp. 11-A. 60 Archivo Histórico Nacional, Salamanca, Sección Masonería, leg. 211, exp. 11-A. 61 El Sol, 14 January 1936.

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activities of antifascist associations; in the fascist zone, the League was identified with Freemasonry – as witnessed by the appeal of Austrian Doctor Alexander Mintz to the International Masonic Association on 4 May 1932, in which the ideals of the League are indistinguishable from those of Freemasonry – and two hundred and twenty-one people were investigated by the pro-Franco authorities and the results transmitted to the special courts for the suppression of Freemasonry and communism.62 Besides, during the summer of 1933 the central junta supported the international committee of Geneva, which assisted intellectuals of all nations living in dictatorships. The idea was to ask for the economic cooperation of the provincial juntas and the constitution of provincial committees “in agreement with the elements of the League and affiliated leagues”.63 A liaison committee with the international organisations was established in Madrid in September 1933 under Martínez Barrio’s presidency.64 Committees of assistance to antifascist intellectuals were also founded in Paris in 1932 in the context of the Association of Revolutionary Writers and Artists. The Third International controlled both these movements.65 Spanish intellectuals, such as Alberti or Jiménez de Asúa – and among them many members of the Spanish League of Human Rights and of the Grande Oriente Español – campaigned in the Antifascist Front for the Defence of Culture, established by Gorki in 1934. The Communist Party established the Frente Antifascista with the participation of the second national Masonic branch, the Gran Logia Española, the building of which the League and the Spanish liaison committee shared. The activity of the League was thus diluted in the sense that most of its members found themselves in various rival antifascist, communist or socialist organisations: this brought relations between the Gran Logia Española and the Grande Oriente Español to an end even before they were silenced by events in the summer of 1936. CONCLUSION Membership in the Human Rights League was one more manner of engaging in political life, albeit more spontaneous and more transverse than activities within political parties. Its ideological foundations were also diverse, which contributed to its loss of identity with the hardening of Spanish political life from 1934 and 62 Archivo Histórico Nacional, Salamanca, Sección Masonería, leg. 351-1, exp. 25. 63 Ayala, Revolución, derechos individuales y masonería, 140. 64 Six of its seven members were Masons: Diego Martínez Barrio, honorary president; Mariano Larrañaga, effective president; Jose Manteca, vice-president; Alberto Lumbreras, secretary, and the members Carlos Malagarriga and José Prats García. Comité de Enlace Español, Madrid, 7 September 1933, Archivo Histórico Nacional, Salamanca, leg. 351 A/25. 65 Nicole Racine, Antifascistes et pacifistes. Le comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes, in: Nicole Racine / Anne Roche / Christian Tarting (eds.), Années trente. Groupes et ruptures. Actes du colloque de l’Université de Provence-I, 5–7 May 1983, Paris 1985, 57–68.

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the appearance of other organisations with more specific programmes than the defence of human rights or the pacifist ideals that characterised Freemasonry during the interwar years: the Secours Rouge, Unión de Estudiantes Hispánicos, antifascist committees, Unión de mujeres anti-fascistas and their like were more belligerent. In 1936, it was clear that circumstances had moved most of the members of the Liga Española de los Derechos del Hombre to give up their initial neutrality in order to work openly for the values of the republican Left. The civil war and the pro-Franco dictatorship drove the League underground, which ultimately resulted in its disappearance. However, its activists were able to continue their work in various clubs such as the friends of UNESCO and to turn this capillary action in associations against the Franco regime. After 1977, having been recognised by the Ministry of the Interior, the League took the name of Liga Española Pro-Derechos Humanos (which took up residence in Alcalde Sainz de Baranda street, 46 bajo A, 2009 Madrid). The main focus of its campaigns were violence against women, immigration, and religious freedom.66 It is affiliated with the Asociaciones de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos as well as other national and international organisations for the defence of human rights. It is at present chaired by Francisco José Alonso Rodríguez. Since March 2001, the Liga Española Pro-Derechos Humanos publishes the magazine “El vuelo de Ícaro”. Three of its numbers were dedicated to the Western Sahara and to the right of the Sahrawi people to a referendum on selfdetermination (no. 1 and 4) and for a minimum wage (no. 2–3). It regularly advocates for the defence of the rights of the Sahrawi people or petitions the authorities to condemn statements by Esperanza Aguirre, the former president of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, on the Cuban regime or education. Its activities include the defence of the activities of non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The League has special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). In 1993, with other organisations, it joined the platform of human rights NGOs, representing the human rights NGOs at the Forum and at the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna. The Human Rights League aims to implement commonly shared humanist values in the realm of politics. Its action attracts activists of other (left-wing) parties as well as secular and humanitarian institutions (Freemasonry, nongovernmental organisations), which as a result amplifies the impact of the League but may also blur its issues and divert it from its original goals. At any rate, the existence of the League expresses a need shared by many activists for multiple forms of action from various strategic positions. The League bears witness to a democratic deficit after the liberal revolution of the nineteenth century, but also to the empowerment of nations that arose from this revolution before the foundation of an international moral court.

66 Ministerio del Interior, Asociaciones: número nacional 95860, fecha alta 22 October 1990. Salida 17176. http://elpais.com/diario/1977/07/15/espana/237765604_850215.html, consulted 28 June 2016. Website: http://www.ligaproderechoshumanos.org.

THE HISTORY AND THE INTERVENTIONS OF THE HELLENIC LEAGUE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS (1918–2016) Michalis Moraitidis READING UP ON THE HISTORY OF THE LEAGUE: GOALS AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE RESEARCH PROJECT The Hellenic League for Human Rights is the oldest organisation that defends and intervenes decisively for human rights in Greece, having made its appearance long before the acronym NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation) entered the Greek vocabulary. The League is an association (somateio) set up under the provisions of the Greek Civil Code, and its history is intertwined with the contemporary history of Greece and the many significant changes that occurred in the public sphere during its existence. In 2012, under the supervision of its current chairman Konstantinos Tsitselikis, professor at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki, the Hellenic League for Human Rights initiated a research project to examine its organisational history.1 The main intent of this ongoing project is to seek out and unearth the elements composing the history of the League from its establishment towards the end of the second decade of the 20th century (1918) to the present.2 This specific goal is achieved by studying relevant primary documents, in particular the private archives of committed former members of the League. These include the private archive of its founding chairman (chairmanship 1936) Alexandros Svolos, professor of constitutional law at Athens University3 and leading member of the Greek Social Democratic Party (Sosialistiko Komma – Enosis Laikis Dimokratias, SKELD)4; the archive of Charalampos Protopappas, lawyer, leading proponent of the

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Until now, there are no relevant books or articles dealing with the history of the Hellenic League for Human Rights. This essay is therefore the first systematic scientific study to thoroughly examine the presence of the League. The research project is being carried out by historian Michalis Moraitidis and sociologist Alexandros Sakellariou. In 1929, Alexandros Svolos succeeded Nikolaos Saripolos as the chair of constitutional law at Athens University. From 1945 to 1953, Svolos was the chairman of SK-ELD. For the political discourse of SKELD, see Akritas Kaidatzis, O Alexandros Svolos os Politikos Archigos (1945–1956). Apanthisma Politikon Paremvaseon (apo to SK-ELD sto DKEL) [Alexandros Svolos as a Leader of Political Parties (1945–1956). Compilation of Political Interventions (from SKELD to DKEL)], in: Giorgos Kasimatis / Giorgos Anastasiadis (eds.), Alexandros Svolos. O

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principles of so-called “Democratic Socialism” (Dimokratikos Sosialismos)5 and former Minister of Industry in the National Unity Government of 1974, which contains important information about the presence of the League and the diverse political paths of its members during the turbulent 1960s that saw the coup d’état by the military junta on 21 April 1967; the archive of League member, lawyer, well-known politician and former minister of the Centre Union party (Enosis Kentrou, EK) Giorgos Mylonas6; and the private archive of the League’s board7 member and famous literary writer Stratis Doukas.8 Also under scrutiny are the extensive archives of the United Democratic Left (Eniaia Dimokratiki Aristera, EDA)9, a legal left-wing party that offered support and direct political coverage between 1951 and 1967 for the efforts of the League for more democracy and free political thought, and in general for the protection of individual and societal rights in “semi-democratic” post-civil-war Greece.10 All of the mentioned documents are located in the Archives of Contemporary Social History (Archeia Synchronis Koinonikis Istorias, ASKI) or in the Hellenic Literary and Historical Archive Syntagmatologos, o Politikos, o Oramatistes [Alexandros Svolos. The Constitutionalist, the Politician, the Visionary], Athens 2009, 241–281. 5 Charalampos Protopappas, born in 1920, studied at the Department of Law of Athens University. He was a founding member of the Socialist Club (Sosialistikos Syndesmos, 1954–1961), of the Socialist Union (Sosialistiki Enosis, 1961–1964) and of the Socialist Democratic Union (Sosialistiki Dimokratiki Enosis, 1964–1967). During the triple occupation of Greece (World War II), he participated in the National Resistance – particularly in the organisations Holy Brigade (Iera Taxiarchia), Panhellenic Union of Fighting Youth (Panellinios Enosis Agonizomenon Neon, PEAN) and Combatant Holy Brigade (Machomeni Iera Taxiarchia). In 1944, he was arrested by the Germans for his activity and incarcerated in the Averof Prison. He was a member of the National Connective Youth (Ethniki Enotiki Neolaia) of Panagiotis Kanellopoulos, which he left in 1947 with other members to found the Panhellenic Organisation of Democratic Youth (Panellinia Organosis Dimokratikis Neolaias, PODN), which was steadily orientated towards the ideas of reformative democratic socialism. 6 In 1965, Mylonas was Undersecretary of Education in Papandreouʼs government. His archive contains information about the Fédération internationale des droits de l’homme (FIDH), notably its announcements and appeals against the military junta. Giorgos Mylonas Archive, Archives of Contemporary Social History (Archeia Sychronis Koinonikis Istorias, ASKI). 7 Catalogue of the members of the Administrative Council of the Hellenic League for Human Rights (1962), Charalampos Protopappas Archive, ASKI. 8 The most famous literary book by Doukas is “Captiveʼs History”, which narrates the massacre of the Greek population in Anatolia by Kemalist Turks in 1922. Stratis Doukas, Istoria Enos Aichmalotou [Captiveʼs History], Thessaloniki 1980. 9 The history of the EDA archive is very interesting, as it was confiscated by police forces immediately after the establishment of the military dictatorship on 21 April 1967. Some documents were saved, however, by the chairman of the party and lawyer, Ilias Iliou. After the reconstitution of democracy in 1974, Iliouʼs son Philippos donated these remains to the Archives of Contemporary Social History. The full catalogue of the archive documents was edited by Ioanna Papathanasiou. Ioanna Papathanasiou, Eniaia Dimokratiki Aristera 1951– 1967. To Archeio tis, Athens 2001. 10 Ilias Nikolakopoulos, a scholar of the period and political scientist, wrote a book entitled H Kaxektiki Dimokratia stin Ellada (1946–1967) [The Feeble Democracy in Greece (1946– 1967)], Athens 2001.

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(Elliniko Logotechniko kai Istoriko Archeio, ELIA).11 As declared in the statutes of the Hellenic League for Human Rights, its main task is “the diffusion, the implementation and the defence of the principles formulated by the general assembly in the Universal Declaration on 10 December 1948”.12 THE FOUNDATION OF THE HELLENIC LEAGUE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND ITS HISTORY UNTIL 1936 The Hellenic League for Human Rights appeared in the public sphere of Greece in November 1918. Its first iteration was established by several radical politicians of the Greek Liberal Party (Komma Fileleftheron) headed by eminent Cretan politician Eleftherios Venizelos, academics from various disciplines13, and intellectuals14 and persons who had studied the socialist ideas abroad, mainly in Germany (the so-called Berlin Circle)15 and, less frequently, in France. The Great War was in full progress in Europe, and the Greek army was fighting Kemalist troops in Asia Minor. In August 1922, the war in Anatolia ended with the resounding defeat of the Greek Army and the slaughter of the Greek and Armenian populations in Smyrna. The Hellenic League for Human Rights suddenly ceased its activity at this point, as many of its members were either dead or had become involved in politics (like Georgios Michail Averof, Panagiotis Aravantinos, Apostolos Doxiadis, Aristotelis Sideris, Loukas Nakos16 or Georgios Kafantaris17). The second establishment of the League was undertaken on 26 April 1936 by a group of well-known lawyers, university professors and other intellectuals from the “art and literature circles” in order to uphold and protect human rights in Greece.18 Its statutes were approved on 5 April 1936 by approximately eighty 11 The Hellenic League for Human Rights does not yet possess an archive of its own. 12 Statutes of the Hellenic League for Human Rights, April 1936, Alexandros Svolos Archive: Political Activity (1936–1956), ASKI. 13 Among these were the director of the Numismatics Museum Athens, Ioannis Svoronos, university professor Konstantinos Triantafillopoulos, Georgios Sotiriadis, Anastasios Aravantinos and Thrasivoulos Petmezas. 14 Among them sculptor Thomas Thomopoulos, Alexandros Delmouzos, Dimitris Glinos, Nikos Giannios and Konstantinos Xatzopoulos. 15 See Giorgos Kasimatis, O Alexandros Svolos kai i epochi tou [Alexandros Svolos and His Age], in: Kasimatis / Anastasiadis (eds.), Alexandros Svolos, 47–109. In 1908, the young scholars Alexandros Papanastasiou, Konstantinos Triantafillopoulos, Alexandros Delmouzos, Alexandros Mylonas, Thrasivoulos Petmezas, Panagiotis Aravantinos and Thales Koutoupis founded a party with proto-socialist principles, the so-called “Sociological Society” (Koinoniologiki Etairia). The core of this group consisted of young men returning from Berlin, where they had studied and come into contact with reformative socialism. 16 Following the conservative coup by General Georgios Kondylis, Loukas Nakos became minister. 17 For his political biography, see Manolis Koumas, Georgios Kafantaris, Athens 2012. 18 According to Antonis Kastrinos, the efforts for the re-establishment of the League seem to have begun one year earlier, in 1935, and were suddenly interrupted when the abortive coup

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members in the hall of the Archaeological Society (Archaiologiki Etairia), and its administrative council (Figure 1) included: Alexandros Svolos, professor of constitutional law at Athens University; Petros Apostolidis (literary pseudonym Pavlos Nirvanas), former head physician of the Supreme Naval Medical Committee, famous writer and member of the Greek Academy; Ilias Tsirimokos, member of parliament (Liberal Party) and lawyer19; Konstantinos Veis, professor at a polytechnic school and vice-president of the Greek Academy; lawyer Antonis Kastrinos; Giorgos Theotokas, a literary writer and lawyer; painter Angelos Spachis; Konstantinos Triantafillopoulos, professor at the Department of Law of Athens University and member of the Greek Academy; Themistoklis Tsatsos, member of parliament (Liberal Party) and fellow at Athens University; Spyros Theodoropoulos (literary pseudonym Agis Theros), lawyer and politician; lawyer and secretary general of the SKE, Stratis Someritis; Aristotelis Sideris, professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences at Panteion University; famous actor Aimilios Veakis; Panagis Skouriotis, lawyer and member of the “Sociological Society”; Georgios Pangalos, consultant in pediatrics at Evangelismos Hospital and fellow at Athens University Medical School; Faidon Vegleris, lawyer and fellow of administrative law at Athens University; university professor and writer Chrisos Evelpidis; journalist G. Makris; Agni Rousopoulou, an essayist, lawyer and aide to Chairman Svolos; and the former minister and lawyer Damianos Kyriazis.20 It is noteworthy that not a single woman besides Rousopoulou was included in the administrative councils of the first or second established leagues in 1918 and 1936.21 The foundation of the Hellenic League took place in the international context of human rights leagues founded in the wake of the establishment of the French League for Human Rights in 1898 during the Dreyfus affair, and the Greek organisation maintained contact with the French League and its chairman Ferdinand Buisson.22 Most national human rights leagues joined the Fédération internationale des droits de l’homme (FIDH) launched in 1922. The creation of the French League for Human Rights signalled a new phase in the history of civil

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by General Nikolaos Plastiras occurred on 1 March 1935. Unpublished article by Antonis Kastrinos [1935], Alexandros Svolos Archive, ASKI. Ilias Tsirimokos was the son of the former minister, eminent member of the Liberal Party and former chairman of the Greek parliament Ioannis Tsirimokos, and was elected to parliament for the first time in January 1936. He was born in Lamia in 1907 and studied law at Athens University as well as political science in Paris. Catalogue of the members of the Administrative Council of the Hellenic League for Human Rights, April 1936, Alexandros Svolos Archive, ASKI. The absence of women probably indicates the social status of women in Greece and their limited role in public affairs until World War II. Women in Greece achieved the right to vote as late as 1952. For the instances of the League established after this date, we come across several women in each council. Ferdinand Buisson, salutatory letter from the French League for Human Rights to the newly created Hellenic League for Human Rights, 6 November 1918, Paris, in: Rizospastis, 18 December 1918.

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Figure 1. The Administrative Council of the League (1936), ASKI.

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society and its institutions, and the Hellenic League for Human Rights sent delegates to the 1922 FIDH congress in Paris.23 The Interwar years were turbulent: There was political turmoil and governmental instability, and the army frequently intervened in politics via coups.24 The leaders of the two main political parties, Eleftherios Venizelos25 of the Liberal Party (Komma Fileleftheron) and Panagis Tsaldaris26 of the Conservative Party (Laiko Komma), had died, as had the interim Prime Minister, professor of law Konstantinos Demertzis.27 During this time, establishing a stable and powerful government was indeed an impossible task. On 9 May 1936 in Thessaloniki and 2 June 1936 in Volos, workers demonstrated against the authoritarian regime of General Ioannis Metaxas, who had come into power without elections following the sudden death of Demertzis in the spring of 1936, while communists were exiled. There was also general social turmoil resulting from the Great Depression of 1929/1932. The mass demonstrations of weavers, metal and tobacco workers ended with bloodshed in both locations: Violent clashes with the police left thirteen workers dead (twelve in Thessaloniki and one tailor in Volos) and several others severely wounded.28 The principal aim of the League was the protection of civil rights and liberties on the individual as well as the collective level. It issued memoranda demanding that the human rights of protesters, prisoners and exiles banished for their political ideology and accused as communists and anarchists should be respected. Committees of lawyers and members of the League, including its secretary Antonis Kastrinos, visited prisons in order to assess the detainment conditions and pressure the Metaxas regime into releasing captured protesters and communists.29 Even League chairman Alexandros Svolos himself faced serious repression: He was dismissed from Athens University and forced into an extended exile on various islands (Anafi, Milos, Naxos, Chalkida). The League also gave lectures on issues relevant to its interests (the protection of human rights and the necessity of the League’s existence).30 But the organisation did not have time to evolve, instead being dissolved on 4 August 1936 by the dictatorial regime of General Metaxas, which remained in power until his death in 29 January 1941.

23 See Wolfgang Schmale / Christopher Treiblmayr, Human Rights Leagues and Civil Society (1898–ca. 1970s), in: Historische Mitteilungen 27/2015, 186–208. 24 For example, the dictatorship of Theodoros Pangalos (25 June 1925), the royalist coup by Georgios Kondylis (22 August 1926), the abortive coups of 1933 and 1935, and the dictatorship of Ioannis Metaxas (4 August 1936). 25 Venizelos died on 18 March 1936. 26 For a political biography of Tsaldaris, see Georgios Vouros, Panagis Tsaldaris 1867–1936, Athens 2014. Tsaldaris died on 17 May 1936. 27 Demertzis died of a heart attack on 13 April 1936, whereupon King George II appointed his deputy and Minister of Defence Ioannis Metaxas as the new Prime Minister. 28 Rizospastis, 10 May 1936, 3 June 1936. 29 Unpublished article by Antonis Kastrinos [1935], Alexandros Svolos Archive, ASKI, 6. 30 Unpublished article by Antonis Kastrinos [1935], Alexandros Svolos Archive, ASKI, 7.

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The subsequent Second World War, which included the occupation of Greece by Axis powers beginning in April 1941, as well as the Greek Civil War that followed between the outlawed Communist Party (Kommounistiko Komma Ellados, KKE) and the Greek government halted the League’s development. The Hellenic League for Human Rights was eventually re-established on 21 December 195331, but the administrative court of first instance in Athens would only approve its statutes as late as November 1954.32 Svolos, who had returned from exile, was very active in politics and participated, along with Tsirimokos, in the National Liberation Front (Ethniko Apeleftherotiko Metopo, EAM) during the period of the National Resistance as a leader of the small political party ELD (Enosis Laikis Dimokratias). He played a leading role in the establishment of the “Committee of Macedonians and Thracians” (Epitropi Makedonon kai Thrakon) in Athens, and as its president from 1941 to June 1943, he organised memorandums and protests in reaction to the brutality of the Bulgarian occupation forces as well as supporting the thousands of refugees who came to Southern Greece in order to save themselves. On 18 April 1944, Svolos was elected chairman of the Political Committee of the National Liberation (Politiki Epitropi Ethnikis Apeleftherosis, PEEA) and became Finance Minister in the National Unity Government of Georgios Papandreou.33 THE PRESENCE OF THE LEAGUE IN THE 1950s AND 60s After the Greek Civil War, which ended with the defeat of the communists, Svolos (along with Tsirimokos, Someritis, Xatzimbeis, Grigoriadis, Stratis, Sofianopoulos and other persons from the socialist political spectrum) participated in the formation of the legal non-communist left-wing party Dimokratiki Parataxi, since the Communist Party had been outlawed in 1947.34 But the right-wing party that had prevailed during the civil war attempted to dominate on the political level as well. The adherents of Dimokratiki Parataxi were persecuted, taken into police custody and imprisoned for their political opinions. There was a repressive legal context against the members of the United Democratic Left and a suffocating 31 Statutes of the Hellenic League for Human Rights, 21 December 1953, EDA Archive, ASKI. Its first chairman after the liberation was the professor of Political Economy and former minister Dimitrios Kallitsounakis (1954–1961). Catalogue of the members of the transient Administrative Council of the League, Charalampos Protopappas Archive, ASKI. 32 Eleftheria, 25 November 1954. 33 See Panagiotis Mantzoufas, O Alexandros Svolos os melos tis PEEA kai tis Kivernisis Ethnikis Enotitas tou Georgiou Papandreou (1944) [Alexandros Svolos as member of PEEA and the National Unity Government of George Papandreou (1944)], in: Kasimatis / Anastasiadis (eds.), Alexandros Svolos, 223–239. 34 For the establishment of the party, its political discourse and the problems ultimately led to its dissolution in 1951, see Michalis Moraitidis, The Formation and the Political Discourse of the Post-civil-war Left-wing Party (Dimokratiki Parataxi and Eniaia Dimokratiki Aristera EDA 1950–1951), unpublished undergraduate thesis, University of Thessaly, Volos 2007.

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political atmosphere. Indeed, the Hellenic League for Human Rights was reestablished and developed within an environment of shrinking and ailing democracy, an environment where the struggle for the protection of human rights was politically dangerous, but nevertheless focused on its goals. The ideologies of anti-communism and nationalism became the official ideologies of the state until the reconstitution of democracy in 1974. Despite the fact that the statutes of the Hellenic League claimed that it was “independent from political parties and governments”35, the organisation did not actually manage to achieve this goal. It was in fact closely affiliated with the United Democratic Left and engaged in both juridical and political activity for the latter’s members and supporters. Svolos died on 23 February 1956, three days after being elected to parliament for the second time after 1950. The first action of the League was the publication of a text in support of a well-known Cretan writer named Nikos Kazantzakis. Kazantzakisʼ work, especially his “Last Temptation”, “Recrucifixion of Jesus” and “Captain Michalis”, had provoked an immediate reaction by the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church, the clergy and the powerful Zoe organisation affiliated with the Church. The Synod demanded the ban of Kazantzakis’ writings for insulting Christ and called for his excommunication. The Ecumenical Patriarchate rejected the proposal of the Holy Synod, however, and as a consequence Kazantzakis was never excommunicated.36 The issue of self-determination of the Greek Cypriot people was also of concern for the League. Its members, like Vice-President Ilias Tsirimokos or the physician Markos Dragoumis, student at Athens University Medical School and first chairman of the Youth of the League, gave lectures in order to further the internationalisation of the Cyprus issue and focus international attention on the right of the Greek Cypriot people to join Greece.37 Tsirimokos served as vice-president of the International Federation for Human Rights during the mid-1950s. His conviction was that Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot people ought to coexist and respect each other.38 At the same time in Athens and Thessaloniki, the Church of Greece and the student movement organised massive demonstrations demanding the union of Cyprus with the Greek State and the termination of British colonial rule over the island. On 1 April 1955, the struggle of members of the National Organisation of Cypriot Combatants (Ethniki Organosis Kiprion Agoniston, EOKA) against the British colonial rule and the hanging of several persons (particularly Michalis Karaolis and Andreas Dimitriou) elicited an intervention by the Hellenic League for Human Rights: It tried to prevent the hangings by sending memoranda to the General Assembly of the United Nations and the International Federation for 35 Statutes of the Hellenic League for Human Rights, 21 December 1953, EDA Archive, ASKI. 36 Eleftheria, 29 June 1954, 3 July 1954, 15 February 1955, 18 February 1955, 22 February 1955, 23 February 1955. 37 The 1950s were a decade of anti-colonial movements all over the world (Algeria, Middle East, Egypt, India, Cyprus). 38 Ilias Tsirimokos, Introduction, in: Markos Dragoumis, O Agon dia tin Kypro [The Struggle for Cyprus], Athens 1955, 1f.

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Human Rights (Figure 2, overleaf)39, and also supported the subsequent appeals by the Greek government to the General Assembly of the United Nations regarding the issue. In the turbulent decade of the 1960s, the League defended the constitutional rights of protesters (mainly students, but also construction workers), especially the individual rights of demonstration, expression and unionism, against the “limited democracy” and the Greek police state. There was a suffocating institutional context at the time that dramatically constrained the constitutional rights and civil liberties of citizens. In March 1961, for example, the League raised objections against the suspension of the student Alexis Karagiorgis – son of Kostas Karagiorgis, an eminent member of the Greek Communist Party – and demanded that the decision be recalled. The League also protested repression by the police and the surveillance of citizens, particularly of students. The right to strike stipulated in the eleventh Article of the constitution of 1952 had been repealed for employees in the public sector. Moreover, the General Confederation of Greek Workers (Geniki Synomospondia Ergaton Ellados, GSEE) was controlled by the government party from 1948 onwards. But the main objective of the League was the struggle against “parasyntagma”, a set of special measures limiting the constitutional rights of members of the United Democratic Left and other people persecuted for their ideology. “Parasyntagma” was much stronger than the official constitution: For example, citizens seeking a job in the public sector, registration at the university or a driving license were required to show a certificate proving they had not been members of the National Liberation Front or its associated bodies during the National Resistance.40 The Hellenic League for Human Rights supported the “union of fired employees in the public sector” and denounced the persecution of locally elected representatives for political reasons. It also published memoranda demanding the release of political exiles and prisoners on Makronisos and Agios Efstratios islands.41 In 1959 and 1960, the League defended the “Hero of the National Resistance”, EDA member and political exile Manolis Glezos, who had been arrested and sentenced for espionage (under Act 375/1936 of Metaxas’ regime). Members of the League provided legal support to Glezos and other arrested communists (including Lefteris Voutsas, Antonis Karkagiannis, Antonis Sigellakis, Fokion Vettas and a French communist, Suzanne Fouzer) and testified for them at the military tribunal.42 A special committee of members of the League, among them the vice-president of the International Federation for Human Rights, Tsirimokos, the former minister and army general Konstantinos Manetas, the former Minister of Justice Dimitrios Papaspirou, and the member of parliament, former member of the National Democratic Hellenic Association (Ethnikos Dimokratikos Ellinikos 39 Eleftheria, 10 May 1956. 40 This requirement to provide a certificate of political affiliation was repealed only after the restoration of democracy in 1975. 41 EDA Archives, ASKI. 42 Eleftheria, 9 July 1959, 18 July 1959. Someritis testified for Glezos at the military tribunal.

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Figure 2. Letter by the International Federation to Prime Minister Karamanlis regarding the violation of human rights in Greece (1957), translated into Greek by the Hellenic League, ASKI.

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Syndesmos, EDES) and former minister Petros Evripaios, sent informational bulletins to the International Federation for Human Rights seeking Glezos’ release. 43 Following the elections on 29 October 1961, known as the “violent and fraudulent elections”, the activity of the Hellenic League for Human Rights focused on various violations (especially in the provinces) targeted primarily against voters of the Left and, to a lesser degree, against the Centre Union parties. 44 In certain provinces, extreme right-wing groups like Tagmata Ethnofylakis Amynis (TEA) had terrorised and forced peasants to vote for the government party, the National Radical Union (Ethniki Rizospastiki Enosis, ERE). In early 1962, at Someritis’ proposal, the League cooperated with the newly established organisation Amnesty International in a worldwide campaign named “Appeal for Amnesty”, which was in fact based on an article in the “Observer” published by British lawyer and Labour Party member Peter Benenson. The article, entitled “The Forgotten Prisoners”, was written after Benenson learned of two Portuguese students imprisoned for raising a toast to freedom. Reprinted in newspapers across the world, his appeal marked the beginning of Amnesty International. In the following years, the League cooperated regularly with Amnesty International, especially in several cases of violations of the rights of students and advocates of peace (1962–1963) (Figure 3, overleaf).45 The Hellenic League for Human Rights also strongly protested the assassination of Grigoris Lambrakis, member of parliament and the EDA, in Thessaloniki. On 22 May 1963, the far-right extremists Emannouel Emannouilides and Spyros Gotzamanis struck Lambrakis on the head with a crowbar from a moving vehicle in plain view of several police officers. He died in AHEPA Hospital five days later, on 27 May 1963. The events following his assassination led to rapid political developments: While Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis resigned and left for Paris in July 1963, thousands of Greek youth formed a new political organisation called the Lambrakis Democratic Youth (Dimokratiki Neolaia Lambraki).46 The League complained about the prohibition of the first Marathon Peace Rally (later an annual event in memory of Lambrakis) on 21 April 1963 and the arrest and abuse of several participants (e.g. the arrest and deportation of a lawyer and member of the Belgian League for Human Rights named Kornill).47 In February 1964, the Centre Union (Enosis Kentrou) won the parliamentary elections, and its leader George Papandreou governed the country until the “Iouliana (July) Events”.48 The majority of the League’s members (Thalia Koliva, 43 Charalampos Protopappas Archive, ASKI. 44 Dimokratis, October 1961, 5. 45 Letter from Joint Hon. Secretary of Amnesty International Peter Benenson to H.E. the Greek Ambassador Seferiades in London for two convictions by Greek courts, 14 December 1962, EDA Archive, ASKI. 46 Dimokratiki Neolaia Lambraki Archive, ASKI. 47 Charalampos Protopappas Archive, ASKI. 48 The subversion of Papandreouʼs government by defectors in his own party along with the massive student demonstrations and violent clashes with police forces following his resignation on 15 July 1965 are known as the Iouliana or Apostasia.

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Figure 3. The Cooperation of the Hellenic League with Amnesty International, ASKI.

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Stratis Someritis, Ilias Tsirimokos, Kostantinos Stefanakis, Giannis Koutsocheras, Giorgos Mylonas, Haris Rentis) were in touch with Papandreou’s government and sent memoranda suggesting various measures in the fields of justice and education. They advocated the repeal of all special laws and the dissolution of the illegal organisations that effectively governed the nation.49 On 23 March 1964, the League petitioned to Loukis Akritas, the Undersecretary of Education, to include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention for Human Rights in the basic citizenship education at Greek schools. Furthermore, appeals supporting the return of various expatriated political refugees and their children from Eastern Europe were sent to the government.50 But despite the interventions and recommendations by the League, its demands for the establishment of a truly democratic state and the abolishment or at least constraint of “parasyntagma” were not met. On 15 July 1965, King Constantine II forced Papandreou to resign, and the right-wing party under the leadership of Panagiotis Kanellopoulos sought to form a new government with defectors from the Centre Union (which is why the July events are also known as “Apostasia”). Tsirimokos and three other members of the government party who were also members of the League (Papaspirou, Rentis, Stefanakis) participated in Papandreou’s overthrow. The League’s reaction was immediate, and the “apostates” were expelled from the association for violating its principles. Stratis Someritis addressed the secretary general of the International Federation for Human Rights, Suzanne Collette Kahn, demanding Tsirimokos’ resignation as vice-president of the Federation. Over the course of about one month, the Centre Union, the United Democratic Left, and various student and labour unions organised massive demonstrations, while the most radical called for “spontaneous” rallies against the interference by the king and for the reconstitution of the elected government. Many of these demonstrations ended in violent clashes with the police, and hundreds of people were arrested and injured. On 21 July 1965, a student at the Supreme School of Economics and Business (ASOEE; today: Athens University of Economics and Business, AUEB), Sotiris Petroulas, was killed by the police during a demonstration organised by the National Union of Greek Students (Ethniki Foititiki Enosis Ellados, EFEE) in Athens.51 On 5 February 1966, in a letter to Defence Minister Stavros Kostopoulos, members of the League complained about the detention of members of the Aspida paramilitary organisation, their imprisonment conditions and the obstruction of their communication with relatives and advocates. The detainees from this secret group of centrist “democratic” low-rank military officers led by Captain Aris Bouloukos and Colonel Alexandros Papaterpos had been accused of being in touch with Andreas Papandreou, the son of the former Prime Minister, and

49 EDA Archive, ASKI. 50 Letter demanding the return of the children of the expatriated political refugees from Eastern Europe (Hungary, Rumania, FYROM, Bulgaria), 1966, EDA Archive, ASKI. 51 Reported by various Greek newspapers (Avgi, Eleftheria, Macedonia), 22 July 1965.

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planning to overthrow the government under Georgios Athanasiadis-Novas (who had been appointed Prime Minister by the king to replace Papandreou).52 In the same year, the chairman of the League, Thalia Koliva, and its secretary general Stratis Someritis signed a petition against the rejection by the Stefanos Stefanopoulos government (the third government of defectors) of a school textbook written by a professor at Athens American College, Kostas Kalokairinos, and entitled “Roman and Medieval History (146 B.C. – 1453 A.D.)”.53 A letter by the League condemned the decision by the dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and professor of Byzantine literature at Athens University, Nikolaos Tomadakis, to expel the members of the student union who supported the circulation of the same book.54 The textbook in question had been approved by Papandreouʼs government and was written under the influence of Marxism, emphasising the social and economic history of the Byzantine Empire and understating the importance of the “Great History”, meaning major political events and famous personalities (emperors, powerful persons, etc.). At the same time, the League opposed a special law demanding the dissolution of the Lambrakis Democratic Youth Organisation (Dimokratiki Neolaia Lambraki, DNL).55 DENOUNCING THE JUNTA FROM PARIS (1967–1974) On 21 April 1967, a military regime established by army colonels toppled the government. This junta would remain in power until 24 July 1974, when the Turkish army invaded Cyprus. The coup by the group around Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos came as a shock a mere few weeks before parliamentary elections which, according to all predictions, the Centre Union would have won. There were rumours about a coup, but very few believed them – and almost no one was prepared for the eventuality. Seven thousand people were arrested and imprisoned in the first days, and one person, Panagiotis Elis, was killed while in custody. The colonels suspended several articles of the constitution that guaranteed civil liberties: freedom of speech was suppressed, the press was censored, political parties and unions were banned, and demonstrations were prohibited.56 Following the establishment of the military dictatorship, the Hellenic League for Human Rights continued its activity from France since it was now outlawed in 52 Aris Bouloukos, Hypotheses Aspida. H Aletheia pou kaiei [Aspida Case], Athens 1989. 53 Kostas Kalokairinos, Istoria Romaiki kai Mesaioniki (146 p.X – 1453 m.X) [Roman and Medieval History (146 B.C. – 1453 A.D.)], Athens 1965. 54 Several documents on the Kalokairinos school textbook case, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Archives, Faculty of Philosophy, Dean Nikolaos Tomadakis. 55 H Genia Mas, 10 December 1966, 6. Announcement of the League regarding the dissolution of Lambrakis Democratic Youth Organisation, 1966, Charalampos Protopappas Archive, ASKI. 56 Polymeris Voglis, ‘The Junta Came to Power by the Force of Arms, and Will Only Go by the Force of Arms’. Political Violence and the Voice of the Opposition to the Military Dictatorship in Greece, 1967–74, in: Cultural and Social History, 8/2011, 551–568.

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Greece. In cooperation with the International Federation for Human Rights in Paris, League members (mainly its secretary general Someritis) denounced the military regime and the torture of members of the opposition.57 The International Federation for Human Rights sent lawyers as observers to the military tribunals trying the members of underground organisations like Democratic Defense (Dimokratiki Amyna) and the Patriotic Anti-Dictatorial Front (Patriotiko Antidiktatoriko Metopo). Dennis Langlois, legal counsellor to the French League for Human Rights and lawyer at the appeals court in Paris, attended the trial of Alekos Panagoulis, a member of the Greek resistance (Elliniki Antistasi) who had unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos near Lagonisi on 13 August 1968, at the Athens military court.58 The International Federation for Human Rights conducted more than a dozen fact-finding missions to alert international opinion to grave violations of human rights in Greece. The military regime restricted not only the rights of citizens who had left Greece during the colonels’ coup (like Melina Mercouri, Eirini Papa, Amalia Fleming and Mikis Theodorakis), but also those of members of the League (Someritis, for example, had his Greek citizenship revoked until 1974). Another member of the League, professor of law Faidon Vegleris, was one of the key witnesses against the junta in the infamous “Greek Case” at the Council of Europe. This case created an important precedent in that Greece became the only state ever to have been evicted from the Council of Europe for systematic violation of human rights.59 From Paris, the League denounced the violent evacuation of a polytechnic school on 17 November 1973 during which police abused several students and other gathered people (the so-called Polytechnic School Uprising of 1973).60

57 The military police (ESA) tortured an army officer, Spiros Moustaklis, as well as other proponents of democracy (mostly students). The junta captured and tortured the member of the Hellenic League for Human Rights and the Democratic Defence (Dimokratiki Amyna), 50year-old political prisoner Charalampos Protopappas. 58 On the Greek Resistance, see Panagiotis Kritikos, Antistasi Kata tis Diktatorias 1967–1974 [Opposition to the Dictatorship 1967–1974], Athens 1996, 126–201. On Panagoulis’ trial, see Denis Langlois, Panagoulis, le Sang de la Grèce, Paris 1969. See also Alekos Panagoulis. Protagonistis kai Vardos tis Antistasis [Protagonist and Bard of Opposition against the Junta], Athens 2008. 59 Following the establishment of the military dictatorship, the Council of Europe expelled Greece. Persons who had left Greece for other European countries testified about the situation in Greece and the serious violations of citizens’ rights before the Council of Europe. Petros Vlassis, Diadromes Zoes. Politikoi kai Politiki [Routes of Life. Politicians and Politics], Athens 2009. Kitty Arseni, Bouboulinas 18. Mia synglonistiki martyria gia ta vasanistiria tis Xountas [Bouboulinas 18. A Shocking Testimony of Torture During the Junta Period], Athens 2005. 60 See Kostis Kornetis, Children of the Dictatorship. Student Resistance, Cultural Politics, and the “Long 1960s” in Greece, New York / Oxford, 2013.

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THE ESTABLISHMENT OF DEMOCRACY (1974–1981) After the collapse of the junta in 1974 and the restoration of democracy, the Hellenic League for Human Rights was once again re-established with Someritis as its first chairman and with the participation of Vegleris and Rousopoulou. Since then it has been operating with a continuous presence and activity in line with its statutes, namely the protection of human rights in Greece. Thankfully, the post-1974 period in Greece provided a safer environment for human rights defenders: The discriminations common in the past began to diminish with the approval of a new liberal constitution (1975) and the repeal of various inequitable laws from the post-civil-war era (1950–1974). One of the first actions of the National Unity Government was to repeal the prohibition of the Communist Party that had been in place for twenty-eight years. The League could now act in a liberal political environment, and discrimination and political persecution of its communist members ceased. In the first years after the establishment of democracy, the League undertook coordinated efforts to contribute to the purging of junta supporters from the state apparatus and the restoration of human rights and civil liberties in post-1974 Greece. In a letter to Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis, the League highlighted that there were still many junta proponents at various administrative levels (ministries, prefectures, municipalities) and demanded that the government act decisively by removing them from their positions.61 A 1976 open-letter appeal to Defence Minister Evangelos Averof suggested launching a campaign for human rights in the Greek army because of its involvement in the coup regime, as well as instituting corresponding seminars in military academies. One year later, the League similarly suggested to the administrations of public television (ERT) and radio (ERA) that they should organise lectures or panel discussions on the issue of human rights.62 In 1981, the rise to power of the Panhellenic Socialist Party (Panellinio Sosialistiko Kinima, PASOK) under Andreas Papandreou accelerated the necessary institutional and political changes, and the majority of the League’s demands were fulfilled. CURRENT FIELDS OF ACTIVITY During the 1990s, the League developed various activities and initiatives, in particular pertaining to freedom of speech, religious freedom, migration, police violence, among others. The debt crisis that engulfed Greece starting in 2009 and the continuous decline of the Greek economy have brought about unprecedented challenges concerning the protection of human rights. The conditions of the economic crisis objectively threaten human rights due to the impoverishment of an increasing number of citizens. On the surface, it is self-evident how the economic crisis 61 Nikolaos Alivizatos private archive (in his possession). 62 Nikolaos Alivizatos private archive (in his possession).

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and the dimensions it has reached since 2009 primarily threaten the enjoyment of social rights, first and foremost in regard to labour rights and the right to a decent life. The challenges faced in terms of labour affect the unrestricted exercise of individual rights, since the primary response of neo-liberal politics to rising protest against diminishing social rights is in fact the curtailment of individual rights. Within this framework, the protection of human rights and a strategic approach to their promotion is of central importance in the work of the Hellenic League for Human Rights. Some of the major issues that concern the League today are the relationship between the Orthodox Church and the state, religious freedom in Greece, protection of freedom of expression and art, combating ultra-right extremism (racist violence and hate crimes against immigrants like the murder of the young Pakistani Shehzad Luqman in 2013), the rise of neo-Nazi ideology and the neo-fascist party Golden Dawn, police repression and violence during demonstrations (e.g. the murder of student Alexandros Grigoropoulos by a policeman in December 2008) and against immigrants, prisoners’ rights and the improvement of the penitentiary system, the rights of foreigners and other vulnerable groups, the antiterrorism laws, the granting of Greek citizenship to the children of second and third generation immigrants, industrial pollution of the Asopos river and the consequences on the health of affected residents, and the protection of the rights of national minorities, particularly their right to self-determination (Greece was condemned on this account by the European Court of Human Rights in 2008). The League is also an active defender of the rights of homosexuals and LGBTQ persons, supporting them in legal cases, through public announcements and press releases endorsing their right to civil partnership and civil marriage, and by condemning attacks against them. In 2013 the League launched a new campaign against ultra-right extremism and expressed its strong objection to the violent shutdown of public television broadcaster ERT by the government. It also made sound suggestions for a new law regarding Greek citizenship (2008–2010) and a new framework for the relationship between the state and the Orthodox Church. For the former issue, the government initially accepted the proposals of the League, but the law was shot down after consultation of the Council of State (Symvoulio tis Epikrateias). As for the issue of state-church relations, there was no apparent political will for a legislation initiative. Since 2008, a branch of the League is active in Northern Greece, based in Thessaloniki (Omada Thessalonikis). In 2012–2016, the League developed a series of initiatives and projects in relation to refugee rights. Finally, the Hellenic League for Human Rights participates in various international institutions and programs like the United Nations Refugee Agency, it participates in the Greek National Commission for Human Rights, in the Councils for Migrant Integration in the municipalities of Athens and Thessaloniki, in the Racist Violence Recording Network coordinated by the National Commission for Human Rights and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and in the activities of the International Federation of Human Rights and the European Association of Human Rights, in whose administrative councils the

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League is represented. The League has also organised many events (congresses, meetings and press conferences) and published three books on issues of its interest.63 Finally, it is worth mentioning that in August 2016, the League’s former chairman (2003–2011) Dimitris Christopoulos was elected president of the FIDH, becoming the first Greek and the first non-French speaking person from Europe to hold the office. In conclusion, the Hellenic League for Human Rights is the oldest organisation with the goal of protecting human rights in Greece. It currently has approximately 600 members. The organisation continues to take action in Greek society today for a wider and more advanced range of rights intertwined with the contemporary social, political and economic history of the country. For more than eight decades, it has been intervening effectively in favour of minor as well as major individual and collective rights in Greece.

63 See Michalis Tsapogas / Dimitris Xristopoulos, Ta dikaiomata stin Ellada 1953–2003. Apo to telos tou Emfiliou sto telos tis Metapolitefsis [The Rights in Greece 1953–2003. From the End of the Greek Civil War to the End of the Restoration of Democracy], Athens 2004. Dimitris Xristopoulos, O Theos den echei anagki eisaggelea. Ekklesia, blasfimia kai Xrysi Avgi [God Does Not Need a District Attorney. Church, Blasphemy and Golden Dawn], Athens 2013. Kostis Papaioannou, Epeidi den einai oloi opos theloun na fainontai. As milisoume kathara gia tin Akrodexia [Because They Are Not All as They Seem. Let Us Speak Clearly About Right-Wing Extremism], Athens 2014.

THE LEAGUE FOR THE DEFENCE OF HUMAN AND CIVIL RIGHTS IN INTERWAR POLAND (1921–1937) Izabela Mrzygłód “As requested by an assembly of 500 Polish citizens, please be advised that the Polish League for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights has been called into being today in Warsaw. The activities of the famous French League shall be an inspiration for its younger sister.”1 These words were written on 10 March 1921 by members of the newly-established League for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights (Polish abbreviation: LOPCiO) in a telegram to Ferdinand Buisson, president of the French League for Human Rights founded in June 1898 at the time of the scandalous Alfred Dreyfus affair. The text of the telegram was presented to the meeting participants gathered in a hall of the Hygienic Society in Warsaw by Stanisław Posner, an activist of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and Freemason who had extensive contacts within the French cultural and scientific milieus and was presumably the main initiator of the Polish League. 2 It was also Posner who – a few years previously, during the First World War – had successfully requested the support of the French League for the notion of independent Poland.3 Incidentally, Posner referred to this fact in the abovementioned telegram as well as in his speech delivered during the constituent assembly. The purpose of the meeting held on 10 March was to present the organisation to a broad public and ensure support for the goals of the League. The event saw public contributions delivered by the creators of the League and by activists with democratic and progressive views4 supporting the organisation. Just over a fortnight earlier, on 23 February 1921, the League for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights had been entered into the register of associations and unions kept by 1

2

3

4

Liga Obrony Praw Człowieka i Obywatela, in: Robotnik, 12 March 1921, 7. Text and all Polish quotations translated into English by Mikołaj Sekrecki. I would like to thank the translator as well as Prof. Włodzimierz Brodziej, Prof. Natalia Aleksiun, and Łukasz Bertram for their comments on an earlier version of this article. I am also grateful for the research tips offered by Prof. Andrzej Friszke. Testimony by Adolf Dąb, Archives of Modern Records (Archiwum Akt Nowych, AAN), Collection of Testimonies on the Labour Movement (Zbiór relacji dotyczących ruchu robotniczego, ZR), R-143, 2. Alicja Pacholczykowa, Stanisław Posner, in: Emanuel Rostworowski (ed.), Polski Słownik Biograficzny, vol. 17, Wrocław 1972, 688f. Leon Chajn, Polskie wolnomularstwo 1920–1938, Warsaw 1984, 342. Conference poster, AAN, League for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights (Liga Obrony Praw Człowieka i Obywatela, LOPCiO), 180/I-6, 1.

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the Ministry of the Interior.5 According to the statutes, its objectives were to defend and champion human rights, to countervail discrimination on grounds of nationality, gender, confession or political views, to seek legal reforms and to promote tolerance and development of civic awareness.6 The establishment of LOPCiO in the early days of Poland’s regained independence (in 1918, after 123 years of foreign rule) can be considered a statement by the circles of progressive intelligentsia in a debate going on at the time about the shape of the state system and the principles of social order. At the same time the League was being set up, the Legislative Sejm was concluding its work on the draft constitution and parliamentary factions were debating its provisions. The final text of the fundamental law was ratified on 17 March 1921, giving the young state the shape of a parliamentary democracy with a constitution guaranteeing civic rights and freedoms. A few years previously, Stanisław Posner had written the following in a brochure discussing the history of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen and promoting the ideas of the French Revolution: The constitution and a declaration of rights must live in the consciousness of the entire nation, in the entire legal framework, each brick forming the likeness of laws and legal institutions. It is then that the declaration has the greatest power (…). And that is why those declarations of rights are of true value and solid seriousness which precede the constitution, that were fought for, supported and solidified by the sacrifice of the entire nation, and not declarations of rights which are merely oratory ornaments of constitutional acts imposed or given. 7

Thus the intention of the creators of LOPCiO was to support efforts by the young state to build a civic society and, as Posner wrote in a policy article published in the socialist daily “Robotnik [Worker]”, to make sure that the rights of its citizens were truly protected and social obligations anchored in the collective consciousness.8 In this article, I would like to make the first attempt not only in Polish historiography to sketch out the history of the Polish League for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights. My goal is to outline the main fields of activity of the League and present the main activists behind the project, as well as to discuss the political and ideological evolution the organisation underwent from its establishment in 1921 until it was disbanded by the state authorities in 1937.

5

6 7 8

Statut Ligi Obrony Praw Człowieka i Obywatela, Warsaw 1921, 15. In January 1921, the establishment of the Polish League for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights was predicted by Gabriel Sèailles, president of the central committee of the French League in his text for “Tydzień Polski”. See Polska Liga Praw Człowieka, in: Tydzień Polski 2/1921, no. 2, 2. Statut Ligi, 3f. Stanisław Posner, Deklaracja Praw Człowieka i Obywatela, Warsaw 1907, 33. Henryk Bezmaski [Stanisław Posner], O prawa człowieka, in: Robotnik, 11 March 1921, 4.

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Figure 1. Lecture poster from 1921, National Digital Library Polona.

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STATE OF RESEARCH In the early 1980s, Helena Zatorska, a communist activist who was linked to the League in the 1930s, wrote: Memories are not an occasion for producing wish lists. And still I would like to once again defend on these pages the idea voiced a long time ago to set up a museum of the League for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights named after Andrzej Strug. Still alive are people who knew him, who were active participants in the beautiful action in defence of human rights. 9

Her suggestion, stemming from the great respect of the interwar leftist milieus for the authority of Andrzej Strug, writer and the last president of the League10, has never come to fruition. What is more, the League was never very popular with Polish historians, whether at the time of the Polish People’s Republic or after 1989, and has never been the subject of thorough study until today – not even of a monographic article of particular length. Indeed, mentions of it can be found only in the margins of works dealing with other social and political issues of the Second Polish Republic and the biographies of its members and supporters.11 Somewhat more attention has been devoted to LOPCiO by researchers focusing on the pacifist movement in the interwar period12, and Leon Chajn’s work presenting the history of Freemasonry in the Second Republic13 even features a short chapter in which he describes the League’s milieu and activity. Wacław Barcikowski, a lawyer, defence counsel in political trials and member of the League, also attempted a synthetic approach to the history of the organisation in

9 Helena Zatorska, Spoza smugi cienia, vol. 1, Kraków 1982, 248. 10 For information on the role of Andrzej Strug in the milieu of leftist intelligentsia, see Samuel Sandler (ed.), Wspomnienia o Andrzeju Strugu, Warsaw 1965. 11 See for example Anna Kargol, Strug. Miarą wszystkiego jest człowiek, Warsaw 2016. Andrzej Friszke, Wstęp, in: Aniela Steinsbergowa, Widziane z ławy obrończej, Warsaw 2016, 5–93. Adam Puchejda, Odpowiedzialność i polityka wolności. Rzecz o Mieczysławie Szererze, in: Mieczysław Szerer, Śmiertelni bogowie. Rzecz o demokracji i o dyktaturze, Warsaw 2014, 7– 26. Hanna Kirchner, Nałkowska albo życie pisane, Warsaw 2015. Alicja Wójcik, Myśl polityczna Stanisława Augusta Thugutta (1873–1941), Lublin 1992. Arkadiusz Kołodziejczyk, Maciej Rataj (1884–1940), Warsaw 1991. Natalia Obrębska, Witold Wyspiański (1886– 1945), in: Z pola walki 26/1983, no. 2, 139–152. 12 See Karol Fiedor, O działalności pacyfistów w międzywojennej Polsce, in: Stanisław Ciesielski / Teresa Kulak / Krystyn Matwijowski (eds.), Polska – Kresy – Polacy. Studia Historyczne, Wrocław 1994, 225–233. Idem, Polski ruch antywojenny i antyfaszystowski w okresie międzywojennym (1918–1939), in: Tadeusz Dubicki / Krzysztof Kuczyński (eds.), Niemcy – Austria – Polska w XIX i XX wieku, Łódź 2003, 67–101. Idem, Polskie organizacje antywojenne i antyfaszystowskie wobec problemu rozbrojenia w okresie międzywojennym, in: Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Historica 42/1991, 47–78. Idem, Ruch pacyfistyczny: studia nad genezą i formami działania do 1939 roku, in: Dzieje Najnowsze 12/1980, no. 2, 51–91. Jacek Ślusarczyk, Problemy wojny i pokoju w polskiej myśli politycznej, Białystok 2001. 13 Chajn, Polskie wolnomularstwo, 342–353.

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his memory-fuelled contribution of 196014, but his narration is rather one-sided and very much in the spirit of ideological criticism of the Second Polish Republic. The main source material that research in the area has hitherto been based on are the documents kept at the Archives of Modern Records (Archiwum Akt Nowych, AAN) in Warsaw, primarily a resource of the League for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights taken over as part of the archive of the Unit for the History of the Polish United Workers’ Party. It features heavily thinned-out documentation of the Warsaw-based LOPCiO executive board as well as a relatively extensive legacy left by the League’s branch in the region of Zagłębie Dąbrowskie. Much of the organisation’s files must have been dispersed (if not destroyed) during the Second World War, as was the case with several letters written to the League about political prisoners, which were lost to fire during the Warsaw Uprising.15 Some documents related to the League have likely found their way into archives in Moscow, as the aforementioned resource features photocopies from Russian archives. The AAN also contains documents from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs providing information about the League’s contacts with foreign organisations, the preparations for its participation in the 1936 Peace Congress in Brussels, and protests opposing the disbanding of the Polish League staged by its sister organisation in Czechoslovakia in 1937. My search at the Archives of Modern Records went beyond merely revisiting the resources already used by other researchers. I additionally looked at the material left by former members of the League – Teodor Duracz, Wacław Barcikowski, Helena and Aleksander Zatorski, Halina Krahelska – as well as performing a preliminary study of a resource at the Ministry of the Interior. Regrettably, this latter search failed to uncover any materials related to the activities of LOPCiO. I nevertheless managed to find a number of previously unknown accounts by prewar leftist activists concerning the League. They were recorded at the Unit for the History of the Party in March and April 1964 and are now kept at the AAN as a separate resource. As these statements were provided mainly by activists linked to the communist movement or the united front, they focus on the League’s activities in the 1930s and often highlight communist influence in the milieu. The transcripts also feature direct interventions by other persons or references to what they said, which suggests that the recordings were made collectively. This in turn may have impacted the individual accounts. Looking for sources related to the Polish League for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights, I also consulted a resource in the police files of the Government’s Commissariat for the Capital City of Warsaw, kept at the State Archive in Warsaw (Archiwum Państwowe w Warszawie, APW) hitherto hardly used by researchers writing about LOPCiO. It provides a host of information concerning the activities of the League and its contacts with the communists. I have also 14 Wacław Barcikowski, Liga Obrony Praw Człowieka i Obywatela i Kongres Pokoju w Brukseli, in: Księga wspomnień 1919–1939, Warsaw 1960, 7–52. See also: idem, Ze wspomnień o Andrzeju Strugu, in: Sandler (ed.), Wspomnienia, 203–237. 15 Testimony by Wacław Barcikowski, AAN, ZR, R-143, 64–66.

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examined publications by the League itself – books and brochures – and conducted a preliminary press search, which shed some light on what the organisation was doing during the 1920s. Of particular value is the information I found in “Robotnik”, the voice of the PPS, and “Tydzień Polski”, a periodical linked to democratic milieus published in Warsaw in 1920–1924. A wealth of interesting information also came from journals, diaries and memoirs of the members and supporters as well as observers of the League, such as “Autobiografia [Autobiography]” by Stanisław Thugutt16, the memoirs of Wanda Wasilewska, a socialist and later communist activist17, “Kroniki tygodniowe” by popular poet and publicist Antoni Słonimski18, or the diaries of famous writer Zofia Nałkowska.19 THE MILIEU A report drafted for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1936 states the following about the League for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights: [The League] is directly influenced by the Polish Socialist Party. [It] is relatively vibrant, often staging public gatherings and meetings of its members, and although their numbers are not great, the range of its influence should be considered relatively major given the stature of its leaders.20

This description captures quite concisely both the ideological and social nature of the organisation. Although it was clearly influenced by communists during its last years of operation and many initiatives were conducted in the spirit of the united front, LOPCiO would remain until its very end a platform for the exchange of ideas21 and for cooperation between various groups of progressive (and typically leftward-leaning) intelligentsia. Its meetings bought together socialists and activists of the popular movement, democrats and communists, lawyers, men of letters and union activists. The mission and activities of the League fit well with the ethos of Polish intelligentsia, understood as a dogma of service to society and the nation – the conviction that it was intelligentsia that co-created moral culture and provided the direction for civilisational development.22 The leaders and members of the League belonged to the political, social and cultural elite of the Second Polish Republic, which made the organisation influential and respected in society. In the 1920s, many members and supporters of 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Stanisław Thugutt, Autobiografia, Warsaw 1984. Wanda Wasilewska, Wspomnienia, in: Z pola walki 11/1968, no. 1, 115–195. Antoni Słonimski, Kroniki tygodniowe 1927–1939, 3 vols., Warsaw 2001–2004. Zofia Nałkowska, Dzienniki, ed. by Hanna Kirchner, vol. 3–4, Warsaw 1980–1988. AAN, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych, MSZ), 2142, 5. Testimony by Jan Nepomucen Miller, AAN, ZR, R-143, 82. See Magdalena Micińska, Dzieje inteligencji polskiej do roku 1918: Inteligencja na rozdrożach 1864–1918, Warsaw 2008, 73. Jerzy Jedlicki, Jakiej cywilizacji Polacy potrzebują, Warsaw 2002, 18f.

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LOPCiO were members of parliament or held other high positions in the public administration or the frequently changing government cabinets. The founding group included Stanisław Thugutt, a politician in a radical peasant’s party, MP and Minister of the Interior in 1918–1919, Stanisław Patek, an eminent lawyer and diplomat who attended the Paris Peace Conference, later becoming Minister of Foreign Affairs and, in 1921, Polish ambassador to Japan, and the already mentioned Stanisław Posner, senator for the PPS from 1922 and vice speaker of the Polish Senate in 1928–1930. The first presidents of the League were: Eugeniusz Śmiarowski, a lawyer and defence counsel in political trials, most probably at the helm of the League from its establishment in 1921 until his death in 193023; Stanisław Thugutt, from 1930 to 1934; and the socialist activist and writer of great authority, Andrzej Strug, from 1934 until the disbanding of the League in 1937. Stanisław Posner was vice-president in the 1920s, followed by Prof. Zygmunt Szymanowski, a well-known bacteriologist and member of the PPS.24 Women were also significantly active in the work of the League. Already during Partition times, they had been social and political activists, often associated with socialist milieus since they supported equal rights for women.25 One of the League’s founders was Teodora Męczkowska26, a suffragette and educational activist, and the writer and educator Władysława Weychert-Szymanowska was often seen at rallies and assemblies. Both of these women were members of the Progressive Women’s Political Club from 1919.27 Furthermore, Dorota Kłuszyńska, one of the leading politicians of the PPS, served on the last executive board of the League.28 A large percentage of the members and supporters of LOPCiO were associated with Freemasonry. In his book focusing on Freemasonry in the Second Republic, Leon Chajn is straightforward in saying: As regards Poland, the League was not just a school or extension of Freemasonry. When it was not possible for the position of Polish Freemasons to be revealed (…), the League was an

23 Both Leon Chajn’s book and some other accounts claim that the first president of the League was Stanisław Posner, a statement refuted by press reports from 1921, e.g. a report from the League assembly: Liga Obrony Praw Człowieka, in: Tydzień Polski 2/1921, no. 47, 9. 24 League for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights – information, The State Archive in Warsaw (Archiwum Państwowe w Warszawie, APW), Government Commissariat for the Capital City of Warsaw, no. 35, 19, 49. 25 See Joanna Dufrat, Kobiety w kręgu lewicy niepodległościowej: od Ligi Kobiet Pogotowia Wojennego do Ochotniczej Legii Kobiet (1908–1918/1919), Toruń 2001. 26 Jolanta Sikorska-Kulesza, Teodora Męczkowska (1870–1954), in: Francisca de Haan / Krasimira Daskalova / Anna Loutfi (eds.), Biographical Dictionary of Women’s Movements and Feminisms in Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe. 19th and 20th Centuries, Budapest / New York 2006, 324–327. 27 Sylwia Kuźma-Markowska, Soldiers, members of parliament, social activists: the Polish women’s movement after World War I, in: Ingrid Sharp / Matthew Stibbe (eds.), Aftermaths of War. Women’s Movements and Female Activists, 1918–1923, Leiden 2011, 265–286, 281. 28 League for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights – information, APW, Government Commissariat, no. 35, 19, 49.

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Masonic Lodges drew leading figures of the League, many first belonging to the Lodges of the Grand Orient de France, then – after Poland regained its independence – to those of the National Grand Lodge of Poland.30 Among others, five out of seven founders of the League were Freemasons, as were its presidents Eugeniusz Śmiarowski, Stanisław Thugutt and Andrzej Strug. The latter, in fact, was Grand Master of the Grand Lodge in 1921–1923 and honorary Grand Master from 1926, but nevertheless ceased his Freemasonry activities in 1929.31 Several national branches of the League were established by Freemasons as well – for instance in Łódź, Katowice, Kraków, Lublin or Sosnowiec.32 In the 1930s, particularly under the leadership of Strug, when the League was very active and dynamic, an important role was played by activists linked to the Communist Party of Poland (KPP), like legal counsel Teodor Duracz, who defended communists in court trials. Because communist activities were considered illegal and were severely punished by Polish authorities (although the KPP was not formally outlawed) throughout almost the entire interwar period, organisations like the League were used as protective umbrellas by communists as they allowed them to make their involvement appear legitimate and pursue their own political goals under the guise of another organisation.33 At the same time, the ideology of the united front and a shift of some Polish socialists to more radical positions were conducive to creating favourable conditions for such cooperation. Adolf Dąb, a lawyer and activist of the PPS, reminisced as follows in 1964: The climate of the united front, the popular front within the League, started much earlier than the very lively participation of communists in the activities of the League. (…) very many communist activists did a great service to the League. They did not need to go into hiding in the League or conceal their views. They would come and be received with open arms. 34

The Foreign Ministry report quoted at the beginning of this section was also correct in regard to the range of the impact and influence of the League. It seems that the key actors were the executive board in the Polish capital and the Warsaw branch of the League, who set the tone and initiated most of the activities which were then taken up by the provincial branches in large Polish towns: Lwów (Lviv), Łódź, Włocławek, Lublin, Sosnowiec, Katowice, Kraków, and Wilno (Vilnius).35 Although some provincial LOPCiO branches sought to expand their 29 Chajn, Polskie wolnomularstwo, 344. 30 Biographies of League members in a dictionary of Freemasonry: Ludwik Hass, Wolnomularze polscy w kraju i na śwíecíe 1821–1999. Słownik biograficzny, Warsaw 1999. 31 Tadeusz Cegielski, Andrzej Strug – wolnomularz, in: Anna Kargol (ed.), Andrzej Strug. Dzieło i czasy, Warsaw / Kraków 2014, 205–220. See also Kargol, Strug, 141–225. 32 Chajn, Polskie wolnomularstwo, 342f. 33 For information on the strategy of communist members of the League: AAN, ZR, R-143, testimony by Mieczysław Bibrowski, 107; testimony by Juliusz Burgin, 123. 34 Testimony by Adolf Dąb, AAN, ZR, R-143, 20f. 35 League for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights – information, APW, Government Commissariat, no. 35, 49.

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activities to embrace workers in the 1930s36, the League never became a mass phenomenon and remained quite elitist for the entire duration of its existence. 37 In 1936, the Warsaw branch had 266 members, which the board considered a major organisational success of the League.38 ATTEMPTED PERIODISATION As the body of documents related to the League is incomplete, it is difficult to present its activities in a systematic fashion. While the actions taken in the 1930s have left traces in numerous memoirs and documents, the League’s activity during the 1920s must be reconstructed mainly on the basis of press reports. The materials collected allow two major periods of activity by LOPCiO to be discerned. The first period from 1921 to 1923, when the organisation voiced its opinion in important public debates, was devoted to sounding an alarm in the face of threats to Polish democracy, along with attempts to influence legislative solutions and the way the young state functioned. In the second period from 1933/34 to 1937, the League was resolute not only in acting against specific abuse on the part of the authorities, but also in its criticism of the authoritarian regime in Poland as such. It would eventually also take up the slogans of the popular movement and oppose Fascism.39 At the same time, the view expressed by one witness in 1964 that the League had suspended its activities completely during the early 1930s appears mistaken.40 As for the decade between 1923 and 1933, various actions by the League can be determined, e.g. a series of public conferences on the relations between Poland and Germany, organised in cooperation with the German League for Human Rights in 1929.41 It seems, however, that the activities of LOPCiO were not as regular or frequent during these years as they were in the two periods described above. One can easily discern the moment when LOPCiO changed its political direction: at the beginning of the 1930s, when the case of 18 opposition politicians (former MPs) imprisoned, humiliated and mistreated by the authorities during the 1930 electoral campaign came to light.42 Together with other social organisations 36 Testimony by Adolf Dąb, AAN, ZR, R-143, 5. 37 Andrzej Strug disapproved of attempts to widen the social base of the League. See Kargol, Strug, 269. 38 Testimony by Adolf Dąb, AAN, ZR, R-143, 27. 39 Interview with Andrzej Strug, in: Po prostu, 1936, no. 11, 1f. 40 Testimony by Adolf Dąb, AAN, ZR, R-143, 1–3, 6. 41 Interview with Stanisław Thugutt: W imię pokoju, in: Robotnik, 5 May 1929, 3. See also Nie chcemy wojny, in: Głos Poranny, 29 March 1929, 3. Czy grozi wojna między Polską a Niemcami, in: Głos Poranny, 23 April 1929, 6. 42 In August 1930, Józef Piłsudski took personal control over the government and dissolved the parliament. On the night of 9/10 September 1930, prominent politicians of the opposition were arrested and imprisoned in the Brześć fortress. One of the prisoners was Wincenty Witos, leader of the Peasant Party and Prime Minister in 1920–1921, 1923 and 1926.

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such as the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the Polish Free Thought Union and the Workers’ University Society, the League protested on 4 January 1931, unambiguously condemning the actions by Józef Piłsudski’s camp. They also called for those responsible to be punished.43 The prelude to the parting of ways between the milieu of the League and Piłsudski’s supporters came with a brochure entitled “The Voice of the League for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights on Political Prisoners”, published in 1927 following Józef Piłsudski’s coup d’état in May 1926. The publication featured scathing criticism of the existing legal and penitentiary systems as well as an appeal to the authorities to reform them.44 It was soon confiscated (see Figure 2), and two of the signatories faced criminal charges for endorsing it.45 The press, in turn, began a debate on the League’s position during which President Śmiarowski also spoke out. Although he saw the May coup as “freeing society from lies and injustice and leading it towards light and the truth”, he pointed out that the confiscation of the League’s brochure and freedom-of-speech restrictions contradicted the ideas behind the coup.46 It should be noted that in 1926, many League activists supported the coup by Piłsudski, whose origins lay among the socialist intelligentsia that hoped the change of government might bring further social reforms. It soon turned out, however, that Piłsudski sought to build an authoritarian system, and the growing disenchantment of some of the progressive intelligentsia with the direction of Polish politics steered LOPCiO towards a clearly negative view on the ruling camp in the 1930s. On the one hand, the League’s position fit perfectly well with the progressively changing approach on the part of some milieus of progressive intelligentsia towards Józef Piłsudski and his policies47, while on the other it correlated with the policy of the Polish Socialist Party, which initially supported Piłsudski and his seizing of power, yet became an opposition force as early as autumn 1926.48 ACTIVITIES The activities of the League for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights followed a number of different paths. The League organised lectures and workshops, protested against state terror, issued appeals to the government and directed public attention towards human rights violations, for example by publishing brochures 43 Protest stowarzyszeń społecznych i kulturalno-oświatowych w sprawie Brześcia, in: Robotnik, 4 January 1931, 3. 44 Głos Ligi Obrony Praw Człowieka w sprawie więźniów politycznych, Warsaw 1927. National Digital Library Polona, https://polona.pl/item/17167840/0/, consulted 30 June 2016. 45 Jakże to będzie, panie sędzio śledczy, in: Robotnik, 23 April 1927, 2. 46 Eugeniusz Śmiarowski, W obronie odezwy, in: Ster 2/1927, no. 11, 3f. 47 See Eva Plach, The Clash of Moral Nations. Cultural Politics in Piłsudski’s Poland, 1926– 1935, Athens (Ohio) 2006. Daria Nałęcz, Sen o władzy. Inteligencja wobec niepodległości, Warsaw 1994. 48 Adam Próchnik, Pierwsze piętnastolecie Polski Niepodległej, Warsaw 1957, 258f.

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Figure 2. Front page of the brochure “The Voice of the League for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights on Political Prisoners” featuring the handwritten word “Confiscated”, 1927. National Digital Library Polona.

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about them. At least three areas of activity can be differentiated: 1) educational and information activities targeting both its members and a broader public, aimed at promoting human rights and civic values as well as notifying the public of violations of those rights; 2) mobilising public opinion around urgent political and social issues and seeking to exert pressure on the authorities to make them act accordingly; 3) lobbying for the introduction of desired legislative solutions and intervening with the authorities in special cases. As stated by one of the League’s vice-presidents, the League acted spontaneously. There was never time for getting organised and setting up a systematically operating office with all the branches (…). The main modus operandi was responding to events as life delivered them, and there was a myriad of them. 49

This lack of a proper structure and the scarcity of surviving archive materials make it impossible to precisely recreate the decision-making processes and operational principles of the League. The League’s interests included various aspects of public life. Besides voicing its opinion on current matters like electoral campaigns or mass protests, it spoke out on education and the functioning of the school system. Its main focus, however, was on three issues: protection of the rights of national minorities, pacifism and political prisoners. LOPCiO objected to any form of exclusion of citizens on grounds of their nationality, which is why it resolutely opposed the 1923 attempt to introduce a numerus clausus at universities that targeted Jewish students50, and in the 1930s harshly condemned the anti-Semitic campaign by the nationalists.51 It was also against the use of war as a political tool, with its members attending international pacifist congresses. In this regard the Polish League cooperated closely with the German League for Human Rights, co-organising conferences and readings, which was a unique phenomenon during the 1920s, when PolishGerman relations remained tense or even hostile.52 In the international arena, it also maintained close links to the French League for Human Rights and was an attending member of the Fédération internationale des droits de l’homme. In 1936, LOPCiO was preparing to attend the Brussels Peace Congress (see Figure 3) and conducting wide-ranging publicity actions, yet the Polish authorities eventually prevented the representatives of the League from travelling to the Congress. A particularly important topic of the League’s interest was political prisoners, primarily communists and members of nationalist groupings associated with national minorities. Already at the time of the first general election in 1922, the issues of penalising citizens for their political views and mistreating ideological 49 Testimony by Julian Maliniak, AAN, ZR, R-143, 40. 50 Liga obrony praw człowieka przeciw numerus clausus, in: Chwila, 22 March 1923, 3. Przeciw Numerus clausus, in: Chwila, 26 March 1923, 3. For more information on the 1923 attempt to introduce a numerus clausus, see: Ewa Maj, Związek Ludowo-Narodowy 1919–1928. Studium z dziejów myśli politycznej, Lublin 2000, 246ff. Piotr M. Majewski (ed.), Dzieje Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego 1915–1945, Warsaw 2016, 146f. 51 Do społeczeństwa polskiego, in: Robotnik, 13 June 1936, 3. 52 See Jerzy Krasuski, Stosunki polsko-niemieckie 1919–1932, Poznań 1975.

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Figure 3. Leaflet “Peace” from 1936. National Digital Library Polona.

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prisoners featured on the agenda. At the time, the League was a vocal opponent of the state authorities’ suppression of certain political groupings53 and protested the arrest of a communist MP54 after the election. In the years to come, the League frequently raised the issue of the classification of political crimes (postulating penalties for acts committed rather than beliefs and ideology pursued) and called for changes in the approach of judicial authorities and the police to political prisoners and their treatment in jail.55 Although during the 1920s LOPCiO did not want to be associated with the communist campaign concerning political prisoners, instead emphasising its independence56, it would eventually forge a close cooperation on the topic with the communists during the 1930s, calling for amnesty for political prisoners and offering assistance to those released from prison. The left radicalised its approach and consolidated in reaction to the activities of the authoritarian regime and the establishment of the detention camp in Bereza Kartuska in 1934, where political opponents were incarcerated without court rulings. LOPCiO had condemned the camp from the very start as a symbol of the shaming of human dignity and the trampling of civic freedoms. It was also quick to stage a protest action and mobilise public opinion regarding the issue. On 16 October 1935, a resolution calling for the closing of the camp and full amnesty for political prisoners was signed by the League and eight other social organisations.57 In police reports from the 1930s, the involvement of the League for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights in these issues was viewed as evidence of strong communist influence in the organisation, up to and including its full control.58 It seems that such suspicions were only partly justified given the League’s earlier statements. While from 1936 onward the League may have cooperated with Red Aid in Poland, the Polish section of the International Organisation for Aid to Revolutionaries (an agency of the Communist International), it nevertheless retained its independence and was prepared to criticise the system of the U.S.S.R. In 1936, it published a declaration on the Moscow trial of the so-called Trotskyists, describing the proceedings as “laughably inhuman” and expressing its conviction “that the liberation of mankind can and should be effected without resorting to such methods”.59 As the League for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights was becoming increasingly active in protests against the authorities, it was eventually disbanded on 26 May 1937 by the Government Commissariat for the Capital City of Warsaw. This decision was preceded by the suspension of the entire League and its local 53 54 55 56

O czystość wyborów parlamentarnych, in: Robotnik, 2 November 1922, 3. Protest, in: Robotnik, 16 November 1922, 4. Głos Ligi. In “The Voice of the League …” could be read the following: “Led by communists, this action is purely political in nature and not always reveals enough good faith.” See Głos Ligi, 3. 57 AAN, LOPCiO, 180/I-2, 1. 58 League for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights – information, APW, Government Commissariat, no. 35, 24–27. 59 Epoka 3/1936, no. 8, 14.

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branches on 8 April.60 In a letter of appeal, which was also published in the press, Andrzej Strug explained that in its apolitical activity and championing of human rights, the League was guided by its strong conviction that only a state with citizens aware of their rights – respecting their freedom and human dignity (…) – can count on their fulfilment of obligations towards society and the state. 61

Neither this appeal nor protests staged by the Czechoslovakian League for Human Rights at the Polish legation in Prague62 effected any result, however. The decision to disband the League was upheld by the Ministry of the Interior in its ordinance of 15 November 1937, with the official justification reading that “the operation of the League transgresses the law in force” and “jeopardises security, peace and public order”.63 Thus ended the activity of the League for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights in Poland.64 In memoirs and several documents, one can find accounts claiming that a Polish section under the leadership of Herman Lieberman, a lawyer and socialist, operated in Paris at the French League for Human Rights65, continuing the organisation’s work after its disbanding in Warsaw. This could only be confirmed, however, if the source base was expanded and further studies were performed on the history and the role of the League in shaping civil society during the Second Polish Republic. RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES The search conducted to date across Warsaw archives and libraries helps sketch out the history of the Polish Human Rights League and point out possibilities for future archive studies and research. More in-depth studies of the history of LOPCiO will require analysis of documents from local and foreign archives. Firstly, the archives of the Ligue des droits de l’homme kept at the Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine should be studied, as they should provide a rich source of information on the relations between the Polish and French Leagues. It will also be necessary to examine resources in Lublin, Katowice and Kraków, where archive material from the respective local branches of the League is located. The legacies of various activists kept at the archive of the 60 Decision by the Government Commissariat for the Capital City of Warsaw, APW, Government Commissariat, no. 35, 93. 61 Pismo Andrzeja Struga przewodniczącego Zarządu Głównego Ligi do Komisariatu Rządu na m.st. Warszawę, in: Robotnik, 23 April 1937, 3. 62 Protest by the Czechoslovakian League for Human Rights, 16 April 1937, AAN, MSZ, no. 2143, 4f. 63 Akt urzędowy, in: Czarno na Białem 2/1938, no. 7, 8. 64 A year later, anticipating the presidental decree of 22 November 1938, Masonic Lodges dissolved themselves. See Chajn, Polskie wolnomularstwo, 300. 65 Report on 9 May 1936, APW, Government Commissariat, no. 35, 12. Testimony by January Grzędziński, AAN, ZR, R-143, 114f. See also the editors’ introduction, 29f.

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Unit for the History of the Peasants’ Movement in Warsaw should likewise be studied. Private archives, incidentally, are a vast research area which in Poland may bring as much hope as disappointment. I had high hopes for my visit to the Andrzej Strug Museum, where the archives of the writer and his wife Nelly Strugowa née Grzędzińska are kept. Yet my search there yielded very modest results as the entire Strug archive had in fact been transferred to the Warsaw Arsenal by Nelly Strugowa, where it was destroyed during the Warsaw Uprising. Nevertheless, the legacies of many writers, lawyers and social activists involved in the work of LOPCiO, stored at the Museum of Literature in Warsaw as well as in other public and private archives, have yet to be examined. Another source of information on the League could be materials from Polish interwar Masonic Lodges, since many League members were associated with them. Unfortunately, only few Freemason archives have survived, with many completely destroyed during the war or by the Freemasons themselves after the Lodges were disbanded in 1938.66

66 Leon Chajn discusses this topic extensively in his book: Chajn, Polskie wolnomularstwo, 5f.

THE LEGA ITALIANA DEI DIRITTI DELL’UOMO (ITALIAN HUMAN RIGHTS LEAGUE)1 Eric Vial The Italian Human Rights League, Lega italiana dei diritti dell’uomo (LIDU), developed out of antifascist exile2 and mainly played a role in the Interwar years, although it later had successors in Italy itself. It is known to have been created on the pattern of the older French League (LDH), even “completely analogous” to it.3 This formula, however, is liable to create the illusion of a purely aid-oriented association, a “Red Cross”4, while its role was political, like its French homologue and probably more so for a certain time, at least on the level of exile, in which it was the largest organisation around 1930. It has long been ignored by a historiography focused on the origins of the parties of post-war Italy, and was rediscovered from France5, the main host country of Italian exiles, in the framework of the Centre d’Etudes et de Documentation sur l’Emigration Italienne (CEDEI)6, followed by contributions of young Italian historians.7 Its study, which began in the early 1980s when witnesses were still living, combined the exile press, which was better preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France than in Italy (with the addition of friendly French journals), with the enormous archives of the 1 2 3

4 5

6 7

The translation of this text has been carried out by Brita Pohl, Vienna. See Charles F. Delzell, Mussolini’s Enemies. The Italian Anti-Fascist Resistance, Princeton 1961. E.g. Luigi Salvatorelli / Giovanni Mira, Storia d’Italia nel periodo fascista, Torino 1964, 602; Aldo Berselli, L’antifascismo all’interno e all’estero, in: Emilio Agazzi et al. (eds.), La dittatura fascista, Milan 1983, 341–381, 355. Santi Fedele (ed.), Filippo Turati e i corrispondenti italiani nell’esilio. Vol. I (1927–1932), Manduria / Bari / Rome 1998, 69. See e.g. Franco Livorsi, Turati, Milan 1984, 426f. Stéfanie Prezioso, Itinerario di un “figlio del 1914”. Fernando Schiavetti dalla trincea all’antifascismo, Manduria 2004, 350ff. Éric Vial, L.I.D.U. 23–34. Une organisation antifasciste en exil, la Ligue Italienne des Droits de l’Homme de sa fondation à la veille des Fronts populaires, PhD diss., EHESS, Paris 1986, and idem, L.I.D.U. 35–40. Une organisation antifasciste en exil, la Ligue Italienne des Droits de l’Homme entre Fronts populaires et seconde guerre mondiale, Mémoire de l’École française de Rome, Rome 1988. See Leonardo Rapone, Emigrazione italiana e antifascismo in esilio, in: Archivio storico dell’emigrazione italiana 4/2008, 53–67, 56ff. Particularly Antonio Baglio, Campolonghi, La LIDU e la lotta per la pace, in: idem et al. (eds.), Per la pace in Europa. Istanze internazionaliste e impegno antifascista, Messina 2007, 141–225. Enrico Serventi Longhi, De Ambris. L’utopia concreta di un rivoluzionario sindacalista, Milan 2011; Pietro Pinna, Migranti italiani tra fascismo e antifascismo. La scoperta della politica in due regioni francesi, Bologna 2012.

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Mussolini police bureaucracy at the Archivio Centrale dello Stato in Rome8 – the French archives, while interesting, are less rich with regard to a Francophile association that was under much less strict surveillance9; these are supplemented by private collections, for instance in Florence10, and the archives of the family of Luigi Campolonghi, the driving force behind the Lega, at the Istituto Nazionale per la Storia del Movimento di Liberazione in Italia (INSMLI) in Milan11, and at the Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine (BDIC) in Nanterre.12 These sources enable us to sketch a history whose origins are slightly vague, but which thrived on a real, practical function of aid and allowed for the role of a forum of political debate that was divisive as well as unifying in an antifascism involving a range of ideologies from liberal to anarchist, before the difficulties resulting from the global economic crisis, a relative withdrawal at the period of the Fronts populaires, followed by its disappearance imposed by World War II and Occupation, and a heritage until this day, which has, however, not been examined in depth yet. FROM THE ORIGINS TO TAKE-OFF Even the date of the foundation of the LIDU is debated; some have argued it was as late as 1927.13 Actually, it goes back to late 1922, when Aline Ménard-Dorian, a vice-president of the Ligue des droits de l’homme (LDH), wished to create as many national leagues as possible14 in order to expand the Fédération internationale des ligues she presided over. She had been in contact with Luigi 8

9

10 11 12 13

14

See Mario Missori, I fuorusciti antifascisti della sinistra non comunista nelle carte conservate nell’Archivio centrale dello stato, in: Coll., L’emigrazione socialista nella lotta contro il fascismo (1926–1939), Florence 1982, 305–325. See, for the difference between the LIDU and the communists who were submitted to much stricter surveillance, Michel Dreyfus, Aux sources de l’émigration italienne en France, in: Coll., Piero Gobetti et la France, Milan 1985, 57–69; on a very general level, see Ségolène de Dainville-Barbiche, Les sources de l’histoire de l’émigration italienne en France conservées aux Archives nationales, in: Coll., L’emigrazione italiana 1870–1970, Rome 2002, 257– 269; Gildas Bernard, Les sources départementales françaises de l’immigration italienne, in: ibid., 270–278; Coll., Les Étrangers en France. Guide des sources d’archives publiques et privées, XIXe et XXe siècles, 4 vols., Paris 1999–2005. See Costanzo Casucci, Archivi di Giustizia e libertà (1915–1945), Rome 1969. Daniela Murgia, Fondo Fernando Schiavetti, Florence 2007. Gaetano Grassi (ed.), Guida agli archivi della Resistenza, Rome 1988, 74f. See Michel Dreyfus, Aux sources. For instance Ariane Landuyt, Campolonghi Luigi, in: Franco Andreucci / Tommaso Detti (eds.), Il movimento operaio italiano Dizionario biografico 1853–1943, vol. 1, Rome 1975, 477–482, 481. The post-1945 memories of its activists are vague, and they place the foundation of the LIDU in 1924 or 1926; see La Stampa (Sta), 11 March 1962; BDIC, GF delta res 70, La voce della lega, March 1963; ibid., GF delta res 59, Letter dated 4 December 1965. Michel Dreyfus, Campolonghi Luigi, in Jean Maitron / Claude Pennetier (eds.), Dictionnaire biographique du mouvement ouvrier. Quatrième partie: 1914–1939. De la première à la seconde guerre mondiale, vol. 21, Paris 1984, 117–119, 118.

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Campolonghi since the pre-war period; he had been exiled in France as a young socialist activist during the Italian unrest of 1898 and later returned as a journalist15, and actively participated in the LDH’s protests against the legal assassination of the libertarian pedagogue Francisco Ferrer in Barcelona in 1909, as well as the pogroms in tsarist Russia.16 He then campaigned for the entry of Italy into the war in 191517, represented his brother-in-law, socialist reformer and minister Leonida Bissolati in France, and expanded his contacts to include even the President of the Republic Raymond Poincaré. But it was his wife, Ernesta Cassola-Campolonghi, a friend and volunteer secretary of Mme Ménard-Dorian18, who came from a family that had distinguished itself during the Italian unification and was a close friend of reformist leader Filippo Turati19, who became the first president of LIDU.20 It included the interventionists of 1915, the anarcho-syndicalists from the circle of Alceste De Ambris, a long-standing friend of Campolonghi, dissident socialists, republicans, and moderates like Ubaldo Triaca, an executive of the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Paris and “garant d’amitié” of the Grand Orient of Italy at the Grand Lodge of France.21 It was at the time an office of legal aid for emigrants, and especially for exiles without legal residence, based in Paris. Headed by Triaca, it led a modest existence in the shadow of its French homologue, which handled cases of expulsion or abusive extradition, and its activist life was limited: the first membership card only came in 1925, and in early 1926, it had 351 members, nearly all of them in the Paris region. De Ambris and Campolonghi were busy with a different matter: in 1915, interventionism had brought them closer to Mussolini, and they had been intermediaries for his funding by France when he had broken with neutralist socialism22; in 1919, they had been interested in the earliest form of fascism, but very quickly fled like so many future antifascists. Just before the March on Rome, they dreamt of a powerful operation around

15 See Coll., Luigi Campolonghi. Une vie d’exil (1876–1944), Paris 1989. Pierre Milza, Voyage en Italie, Paris 1993, 198ff. 16 Lorenzo Gestri, Luigi Campolonghi e il “caso Ferrer”. Due inediti, in: Annuario 1980 della Biblioteca civica di Massa, 211–228, republished in: idem, Storie di socialisti. Idee e passioni di ieri e di oggi, Pisa 2003. 17 See Luigi Campolonghi, Nella tormenta. Diario di un inviato sul fronte belga nel 1914, Mulazzo 2014. 18 Lidia Campolonghi, La Vie d’une femme antifasciste, Florence 1994, 52 and passim. 19 See Maurizio Punzo (ed.), Filippo Turati e i corrispondenti italiani. Vol. II (1893–1898), Manduria / Bari / Rome 2008, 284. 20 In March 1926, a heavily ironic piece in the journal of the Italian Fascists in Paris titled the “Gospel of the Exiles”, after having referred to Campolonghi, continued: “11 – take his wife, who is a woman, seriously when she participates in the assemblies of the Droits de l’Homme”; see La Nuova Italia, 20 March 1926; four in twenty-four points dedicated to an organisation still in its infancy show its importance for its adversaries. 21 Santi Fedele, La Massoneria nell’esilio e nella clandestinità, in: Gian Mario Cazzaniga (ed.), Storia d’Italia. Annali 21. La Massoneria, Turin 2006, 678–700, 686. 22 Pierre Milza, Mussolini, Paris 1999, 180f.

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nationalist poet Gabriele D’Annunzio to outpace Mussolini23, and later chose exile. When the regime seemed shaken after the assassination of socialist party leader Giacomo Matteotti, they were actively involved in the creation of Garibaldi legions, which were supposed to support a possible uprising in Italy. The affair came to a sudden end, the standard-bearer of the legions turned out to be a provocateur sold to Rome, a scandal ensued, and, most importantly, the dictatorship became firmly ensconced in Italy. The fact that the opposition parties were wiped out confirmed the two friends’ idea of creating new structures for “activist elites”, and of federating antifascism in exile – and why not in the LIDU. In the SouthWest of France, De Ambris published a journal, “Il Mezzogiorno”, and directed rural syndicates; Campolonghi tried his hand at managing a farm at the Douazan castel, in Nérac (Lot-et-Garonne)24 and directed the Pagina italiana, a page in Italian in the daily paper “La France de Nice et du Sud-Est”, which provided them with a base in the provinces. When the parties reconstituted themselves in exile, Campolonghi wanted to merge them into an activist organism with the LIDU at its core. The socialist reformers followed suit, mainly to counter a “united front” project by the PCI, the Communist Party, but refused to condemn the Church and the Crown as accomplices of fascism, and, like the PRI, the republicans of Mazzini’s heritage, defended the identity of the parties, in which they were incidentally supported by the French government, which saw in them a guarantee of serious politics against adventures of the kind of the Garibaldi legions. In mid-October 1926, the “Douazan congress” only resulted in a vague action centre. The parties in exile were joined by their national leaders, whom the fascistissime laws had chased from Italy, so no one was able to replace them with a new organisation. Campolonghi took due note and proposed a system of alliances, which in 1927 led to the Concentrazione antifascista25, the antifascist focus, a cartel uniting the PRI, the two socialist parties (reformist and maximalist), the CGL union allied with the reformists, and the LIDU, which welcomed activists of these organisations, but also anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists, and some rare liberals or Catholics in exile. It only remained to exclude Triaca by reproaching him for his deference to the monarchy, his lack of concern for activists from the provinces, his apathy; the members approved, and Campolonghi was elected president. De Ambris became secretary general, the organisation proclaimed itself republican, even if that meant upsetting the reformists, who still counted on the king to confront Mussolini. With 23 De Ambris had been his cabinet director during the Fiume (Rijeka) affair, which was something between a nationalist operation regarding an Italian city conceded to Yugoslavia by the peace treaties, a short-lived operetta principality, a laboratory of fascism, and a base for revolutionary dreams uniting syndicalists, Soviet Russia, and so on. See Renzo De Felice, Sindacalismo rivoluzionario e fiumanesimo nel carteggio De Ambris-D’Annunzio (1919–1922), Brescia 1966. Regarding a preventive March on Rome, see e.g. Gaetano Salvemini, Memorie e soliloqui, (18 novembre 1922–24 settembre 1923), in: idem, Opere, vol. 6: Scritti sul fascismo, vol. 2, Milan 1966, 3–233, 185. 24 Hubert Delpont, Ernesta et Luigi Campolonghi. Immigration italienne et antifascisme en Albret, Nérac 1991. 25 See Santi Fedele, Storia della Concentrazione antifascista 1927–1934, Milan 1976.

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its activists from all directions, it was able to outflank the parties’ organs and thus became a place of discussion and confrontation, with its active membership growing from 1,405 in France and Switzerland in 1927, 2,010 in 1928, 2,242 in 1929 (plus seven in Belgium), 2,090 in 1930, 2,639 in 1931 (with some sections in the Americas, in Australia26, and in Tunisia: 1,438, 2,374, 2,577, 2,462, 3,065). These paying members were only the tip of the iceberg, as far from all activists paid fees27, but even considering only its paying members, it was clearly the most important organisation of Italian exile, overtaking the communists in 1930, and the network of sections grew accordingly: two in 1926, thirty in 1927, sixty in 1928, eighty in 1929, and 125 in 1930. AID, ANTIFASCISM, AND INTERNAL CONFLICT Political function and recruitment were made possible by an activity of simultaneous aid and antifascist action, authorised by its political supporters. Campolonghi’s address book probably included the support of Freemasonry; most of the founders were members, which fuelled the hostility of the PCI as well as the frenzy of fascist extremists.28 Even though after 1927 the French Lodges seemed to admit it was impossible to eliminate the Italian regime, they shared their premises and helped with their influence in the administration. The non-communist left was sympathetic, too, sometimes reinforced by a personal relationship with Campolonghi29, for instance with Vincent Auriol, the socialist mayor of Muret in the south of Toulouse, who much later became President of the Republic, or the radical leader Édouard Herriot, mayor of Lyon, or the director of the daily paper “Le Petit Provençal” in Marseille. And above all, there were the initiatives of the LDH, which, thanks to its members, its legal experts, and its parliamentary intergroup, denounced abusive expulsions based on empty dossiers, or made it known that to confront the LIDU was to confront itself. Thus extraditions could be prevented on the national level, and the methods of fascism could be denounced when charges were untenable (having exchanged a counterfeit bill of ten lire) or concerned a political offence (having stolen a boat, but in order to escape from Lipari, the prison island for opposition members). Most importantly – there were 26 These scattered sections mainly had a symbolic function and took little part in the life of the LIDU, in spite of the financial support of those in the U.S.A.; in general, they had neither the territorial network nor the contacts that were instrumental for aid work in France and Switzerland. 27 Moreover, it seems that the sections outside of France and Switzerland often did not pay a share of the fees to central management, or were exempt from this, like the one in Tunisia, and often their members were not charged a fee. 28 See for example a report quoted in: Dario Biocca / Mauro Canali, L’informatore. Silone, i comunisti e la Polizia, Milan / Trent 2000, 213, and an article in Romano Canosa, A caccia di ebrei. Mussolini, Preziosi e l’antisemitismo fascista, Milan 2006, 363. 29 For cases where he appears to have been a very valuable intermediary, see Fedele (ed.), Filippo Turati, 68; Mario Bergamo, L’Italia che resta, Milan 1960, 256.

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only around twenty extradition cases between 1928 and 1930 –, this support allowed interventions against expulsions at the local level, and, in case of failure, at the national level, even if this meant renouncing your opinions a little by pleading the apoliticism of refugees who were nevertheless political, like one man who was reported to have become a member of the PCI for the love of a cell head’s daughter.30 Also if it meant asking yourself if, given limited funds, it was necessary to help adversaries, such as communists, even if that provided a chance to fight fascism and demonstrate the virtues of democracy, which recognises its errors and corrects them. And if it finally meant regretting, like the LDH, that expulsions were the competence of administration and not the judiciary, and wanting to re-launch the member of Parliament and mayor of Valence’s, Marius Moutet’s31, bill in this matter, in 1928 and 1929 – without success. Help also came in the form of hospitality: lodging and feeding new arrivals, if this didn’t exceed local means, and above all, finding them initial employment thanks to small businessmen members32 and work cooperatives linked to the reformists, to allow them to obtain a residence permit, even if this meant again haunting the antechambers of administration, and being accused of exploiting this temporary but cheap labour by the communists. And also in the form of giving legal advice, intervening in lieu of the fascist consulates to make sure the treaty of 1919 was applied, which guaranteed equal treatment to Italian workers, and to defend them before the “juges du travail”, labour courts, or to apply for exemption from official documents the consulates refused to issue, for instance for a marriage in France. More discretely, the sections on the borders organised clandestine expatriations, which the national leadership financed but wanted to remain ignorant of. In addition, there were, here and there, French courses to facilitate the integration of the workers, some courses in historical and political culture, and a local social life (parties, balls, sports, mutual support) to make exile liveable. These activities were in themselves antifascist, as they ran counter to the policies of the consulates and allowed people to do without them. More explicitly, Campolonghi denounced Mussolini’s regime, for instance, to the emigrants in the aforementioned Pagina italiana, and, for the use of the French, in the “Cahiers des droits de l’homme”, the LDH magazine, and at some of the lectures he held for the LDH, which made him criss-cross France, contacting emigrants and urging them to found LIDU sections. If the discourse on the dangers of fascism in France itself was heeded little by the autochthone population, the exiles were very concerned about the question of how to

30 Cahiers des droits de l’homme (CDH), 1929, 450; 1930, 571; 1931, 643. 31 See Éric Vial, Le projet Marius Moutet de statut des étrangers et les exilés antifascistes italiens de l’entre-deux-guerres, in: Revue drômoise 96/2004, 325–333. 32 Between its activists and even permanent staff, some of whom had been proletarised by emigration, and small businessmen and petty notables who had refused fascism and gave their services to the organisation (for instance the president of the section of Nancy, a former translator at the consulate and later at court), the LIDU’s membership base is somewhat different from the very proletarian Italian emigration; but this may even have contributed to its influence within it.

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Figure 1. Poster announcing a lecture by Luigi Campolonghi for the LDH in 1934. Archives départementales de l’Isère, Grenoble.

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react in case of a Franco-Italian war, which they both feared and hoped for, in spite of the fact that the call to fight for France, De Ambris’ hobby-horse, ran counter to the patriotism of the PRI as well as socialist pacifism, and Campolonghi would have preferred the subject to be raised less often. Just like the Garibaldi legions, direct action against Italy was rejected, even if the liberal-socialist militant group Giustizia e Libertà33, or GL, founded in 1929, was received with sympathy in the rank and file and used the LIDU to contact workers in exile. The thirst for action was directed against the consulates and fascists in France, but for fear of provocation, the direction wanted to keep activities within the limits of the law: denunciation of abuse of power and consulate espionage. All these activities, and the simple fact of enabling contact between political functionaries and the mass of emigrants, gave the LIDU and its leaders an irreplaceable role. But it was also cumbersome for the parties’ leaderships, who claimed to be the voice of the activists and of the gagged voters in Italy: the Concentrazione antifascista was a cartel of party leaderships dominated by the most moderate one, the reformists; but the LIDU mixed its activists and those of other groups, gave voice to minorities, stimulated confrontation and disagreement. Campolonghi used this to republicanise it and put himself at its head, and then to proceed to republicanise the cartel in spite of the reformists. In the circle of De Ambris, the dissenters dreamed of a National Council representing activists and not parties; in the name of the reformists, Giuseppe Emmanuele Modigliani wanted to silence them and to transform the League into a simple aid office. In order to maintain its relative autonomy, and even its existence, Campolonghi found a provisional compromise with the help of the LDH leadership. But the status quo led to tensions with De Ambris34, and the two camps were at a standoff; regional federations split over the issue35, and because of the purely confrontational atmosphere, part of the efforts at recruitment collapsed – this explains the decline in membership between 1929 and 1930, even if growth picked up again in 1931. In a system in which the parties of the Concentrazione were represented in the executive committee of the League and enjoyed a kind of veto power there, in which it was therefore always necessary to compromise, the only moment of quasi-unanimity is to be found in 1929, against the concordat between the State of Italy and papacy, but also for the exclusion of journalist Giuseppe Donati36 from the League, as fervent a Catholic as an antifascist, who had welcomed it. It is nevertheless important to avoid exaggerating dissent. There was dissent because there was dialogue. The League had a fundamentally unifying function in

33 See Stanislao G. Pugliese, Carlo Rosselli. Socialist Heretic and Antifascist Exile, Cambridge, Mass. 1999. 34 See Serventi Longhi, De Ambris. 35 See Pinna, Migranti italiani. 36 See Giuseppe Ignesti, Donati, Giuseppe, in: Francesco Giorgio Campanini (ed.), Dizionario storico del movimento cattolico in Italia 1860–1980, vol. 2, Casale Monferrato 1982, 181– 190.

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antifascism outside the PCI37, in France and most probably in Switzerland and Tunisia, too, where it is difficult to estimate the number of members because no portion of membership fees was sent to Paris, but where it provided structure to some of the Italians, even though its activity was later outshone by the PCI’s in activist memory.38 Nevertheless, its growth, its support, even its united existence remained fragile. IN CRISIS The global economic crisis, which began to be felt in France at the beginning of 1931, hit the organisation with full force: xenophobic opinions were increasing39; Paris wanted to accommodate Mussolini – in particular after Hitler had come to power, whom Mussolini initially opposed; the support of the LDH weakened, and it remarked that in the face of the difficulties of autochthone workers, “theoretical internationalism has to yield”40; on the other hand, the necessity of finding employment forced activists to relocate and thus fall away from their sections, and registered members were struggling to pay their fees. More and more often, it was necessary to intervene in favour of victims of the administration, and nationwide success rates of such interventions dropped to less than 40 per cent41, resulting in discouragement. Italy had reopened its borders, and many activists blamed the new arrivals for having tolerated fascism until then, and in fact for competing on an already stretched labour market. In the eyes of the reformists, the order of the day was to restrict the aid function so the LIDU might become a simple useful appendix to the Concentrazione; for De Ambris’ friends, inversely, in the name of the purity of antifascist activism. In both cases, this meant a break with the masses of workers’ emigration42, which differed little from political emigration.43 At the same time, the lack of perspective exacerbated purely personal conflicts, and reformist hegemony, which was strengthened when most of the maximalists 37 See Angelo Tasca, Per una storia politica del fuoruscitismo, in: Itinerari 2/1954, 230–250, 355–367. Éric Vial, La Ligue italienne des Droits de l’Homme comme élément d’unité au sein de l’émigration italienne antifasciste en exil / La Lega italiana dei Diritti dell’Uomo come vettore di unità nel fuoruscitismo, in: Moreno Guerrato (ed.), L’antifascismo italiano tra le due guerre: alla ricerca di una nuova unità, Jesolo 2005, 65–94. 38 See Leila El Houssi, L’urlo contro il regime. Gli antifascisti italiani in Tunisia tra le due guerre, Rome 2014. 39 See e.g. Marie-Claude Blanc-Chaléard, Histoire de l’immigration, Paris 2001, 39ff. 40 CDH, 1932, 609. See Éric Vial, La Ligue française des Droits de l’Homme et la LIDU, son homologue italienne, organisation d’exilés antifascistes dans l’entre-deux-guerres, in: Le Mouvement social 183/1998, 119–134. 41 La Lega, 15 April 1932. 42 See Éric Vial, Tirer l’échelle? Tensions et rejets des nouveaux arrivants au sein de l’immigration antifasciste italienne, in: Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales 20/2004, no. 2, 39–56. 43 See Émile Temime, Émigration “politique” et émigration “économique”, in: Coll., L’Émigration politique en Europe aux XIXe et XXe siècles, Rome 1991, 57–72.

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joined them, infuriated their opponents. The latter protested against the admission of GL into the Concentrazione, which they believed to be the reformists’ vassal, the PRI left the cartel and distrusted the LIDU, what was left of the maximalists stormed out on both of them. An exhausted De Ambris withdrew. Membership was in free fall, from 1,949 paying members in 1932 down to 1,307 in 1933 (in total 2,058 and 1,431). Morale was low and the coffers were empty. This did not mean that the League abandoned all hope; its executive board even launched a campaign to recruit new members and create sections, and it stabilised (at a low level) in 1934 (1,369 paying members in France and Switzerland in 1934, 1,431 in total), aid increased for the simple fact of the crisis, between food aid, literacy courses, information of emigrants about the French social measures of 1931 (pensions etc.), but it was limited by the difficulties that put a stop to any intentions to win the economic migrants, and, for the time being, it counted less than purely political activism, especially as the difficulties of European social democracy seemed to encourage the dissenting wing. The Concentrazione, riddled by internal conflict, now exacerbated by the opposition between reformist socialists and GL, was dissolved in May 1934, and its demise left a void that the former dissenters wanted the LIDU to fill. But although it benefited from the return of some maximalists and from the sympathies of certain anarchists, it did not, for example, dispose of the material means to establish its own permanent autonomous newspaper, and thus depended on other groups for the simple information of its members. What is more, the Parisian riot of the far right of 6 February 1934 triggered very lively concerns, all the more so as it coincided with the socialists being crushed in Austria; under the following governments, foreigners in France were confronted with serious difficulties with the administration44, and it was even more difficult to maintain aid work. Of course, the mentioned riot, which was experienced as an attempted coup d’état, caused the LDH to find its Italian sister organisation useful as an illustration of the dangers of fascism, but this was a meagre consolation. In short, the LIDU could only stand back. Furthermore, the arrival of Hitler in power in 1933 and the Parisian riot of February 1934 had changed the European, and the French, political landscapes, orienting the tactics of the Communist International towards supporting western democracies, which no longer were perceived to be the main enemy. Alliances and equilibriums in antifascist exile were turned upside down. Meanwhile, even if the break in the context of the dissolution of the Concentrazione, and – symbolically – the death of De Ambris in the same year, may mark the end of an era, everything continued, and the crisis didn’t come to an end, and neither did the difficulties. The Franco-Italian diplomatic rapprochement in early 1935, which was ideological as well as turned against Nazi Germany, even caused Campolonghi to be threatened with expulsion should he speak out against the govern-

44 See Éric Vial, Pratiques d’une préfecture: les demandes d’expulsion de ressortissants italiens dans l’Isère de 1934 à la seconde guerre mondiale, in: Marie-Claude Blanc-Chaléard et al. (eds.), Police et migrants en France, 1667–1939, Rennes 2001, 167–180.

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Figure 2. Participants at the general assembly of the LIDU, Grenoble 1934, with identification added by Mussolini police. Archivio centrale dello Stato, Rome / CEDEI.

ment in Rome in lectures. Even if one or the other minister could still be approached, success rates dwindled to one in ten attempts. People were even looking for alternative host countries, appealing to Norwegian social democracy, or, closer to home, to Belgian Catholics by way of don Luigi Sturzo, founder of the (Christian democrat) Partito popolare in 1919, himself an exile. The LDH did help, of

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course, but it was more interested in German refugees or in the Austrian or Spanish situation, and did not or no longer want to help any but political refugees stricto sensu, which compounded the break with the mass of emigrants; the number of paying members shrank, the economic crisis explains the failure of many events organised to raise funds for local sections. Moreover, hopes for a fall of fascism linked to a possible defeat in the conquest of Ethiopia quickly vanished into thin air in early 1936, and the foreseeable victory of the left in the general elections aroused little enthusiasm, as its previous victory in 1932 had not resulted in a real change for the better in the exiles’ situation. A slight easing of xenophobic pressure from the end of 1935, partly due to the demand of employers troubled by too many expulsions, was only a slight relief. THE POPULAR FRONT PERIOD Nevertheless, 1934 marked a turning point, as we said. The PCI was no longer in open conflict with the rest of antifascism. Combined with the return of the maximalists or the sympathies of anarchists, this accounts for a stabilisation of membership numbers, though far from the levels of 1931: round about 1,100 paying members in 1937 and 1938 – the PCI abstained from flooding the LIDU with its activists, as this would have rendered it useless for cooperation with other groups and the authorities. What is more, the formation of a government under socialist, and not only radical (i.e. moderate left), leadership and the social measures after the great strike movements of June 1936 had real effects. Too often, the administration still took repressive action, but the rank and file of the LDH showed more solidarity, some prefects were favourably inclined. It was easier to intervene, and interventions were more successful than before. Ernesta Campolonghi taking tea with Mme Thérèse Pereyra Blum, the wife of the head of government, in order to talk about “painful cases” was a symbol of possibilities, and their limits. Where repression had been very harsh, it became possible to agitate – which explains a flurry of activity in Lorraine and Tunisia – in this French protectorate the local bulletin of the LIDU now had 600 buyers and 120 subscribers, many of them more proletarian and more southern than in metropolitan France. But this rapid development was harmful: demands increased, funding grew little; the LIDU reacted by accentuating its withdrawal into purely political activism, and at the 1937 congress Campolonghi finally pretended that this had always been his only goal.45 What is more, weakened by the crisis, it had too much given up on economic emigration to enjoy real autonomy: on a symbolic level, even though it does not constitute statistical proof, it had appeared mostly by itself in the propaganda material collected by fascist police before 1934, while the proportions were now

45 La Giovine Italia, 3 June 1939.

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reversed, and it was lost amongst other groups.46 Most importantly, it was paralysed by a conflict between the PCI (and often its reformist allies) and the others. This started with the war in Ethiopia, in which the protest conference47 in Brussels organised in October 1935 by the PCI (following a veto of the French authorities) convinced neither the (nationalist) PRI nor GL and the anarchists (who were militant and allergic to grandiloquent events). Campolonghi had to allow complete freedom in the sessions and to exert himself to avoid division, even though he was in favour of the congress and even presided over a session and drafted a final appeal, and though immediately afterwards, a PCI cadre joined the executive committee. Conflict mainly flared up with the anarchists and the maximalists close to the Catalan POUM, who the PCI regarded as “Trotskyists”, whom the Comintern had ordered it to seek out and condemn. Many sections were homogenous, close to the PCI, for instance in Lorraine and Tunisia, sometimes to the point of losing their substance, like in Toulouse, or on the contrary, won over by its adversaries; but the most visible section in Paris was mixed, and tensions there were fierce, as in the annual congresses and in the exile press. Each camp represented some 40 per cent of the members; between them, Campolonghi and the PRI and GL activists were able to find majorities, but in the interest of the League, they supported both sides in action and recruitment, disowning them when they became divisive. Most importantly, they were exasperated by the hegemonic drive of the PCI, but their Francophilia could not be reconciled with the absolute pacifism of the maximalists – and the progress towards war strengthened this consideration. Confronted with the Moscow trials, this situation forced them to resort to vague phrases regarding the right of defence or against the death penalty; it forced them to accept that the PCI banned anarchists and maximalists from the commemoration for Giuseppe Miceli, a young PCI and LIDU activist killed by Italian sailors on shore leave on the LIDU premises in Tunis in September 1937.48 Most importantly, it forced it to equivocate in Spain: the civil war there had initially been met with enthusiasm, offering an opportunity for armed confrontation with fascism in the illusion of unity with the French popular front. Despite initial official prudence, mirroring the attitudes of the Socialist and Communist Internationals, the LIDU was very proud of its hastily enlisted members.49 It also successfully mobilised 46 Paola Carucci et al., Volantini antifascisti nelle carte delle Pubblica sicurezza (1926–1943), Rome 1995. 47 See, from the perspective of the PCI, Giuliano Procacci, Il socialismo internazionale e la guerra d’Etiopia, Rome 1978, esp. 174f. 48 See Juliette Bessis, La Méditerranée fasciste. L’Italie mussolinienne et la Tunisie, Paris 1981, 199f. and passim. 49 See e.g. Enrico Acciai, Viaggio attraverso l’antifascismo. Volontariato internazionale e guerra civile spagnola. La sezione Italiana della Colonna Ascaso, PhD diss., Università della Tuscia, Viterbo 2010. Some already were on the ground, in particular deportees from France, Belgium etc.; a section in Barcelona established links with Lluís Companys, president of the Catalan Generalitat since 1934, and arranged for example for Italian deserters not to be surrendered to Mussolini: see Giustizia e Libertà, 21 February 1936.

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material aid for volunteers, and established a kind of consulate50 issuing passports, obtained pensions for the families of combatants killed in battle, helped prisoners, particularly after the POUM was crushed by the Stalinists in Barcelona in May 193751, and was accused of promoting desertions before it was marginalised in early 1938. The events of Barcelona, with the murder of Camillo Berneri, a famous Italian anarchist52, came as a shock to many activists, but the leadership toned down the first emotional response, and during the process against the POUM one year later, it again resorted to the vague generalities about the Moscow trials. Even that was too much for totalitarian minds: according to Giorgio Amendola, a PCI cadre, “it should no longer be possible in the LIDU to blaspheme against that which every worker holds most sacred, from the heroic Spanish government to the Soviet Union and its leader, Stalin.”53 Non-communist League members were also infuriated by the attitude of the Unione Popolare Italiana, the Italian Popular Union (UPI)54, a PCI mass organisation established in March 1937, which claimed 20,000 and soon 40,000 members and focused on the economic emigration the LIDU had abandoned. It clashed with their traditional anticlericalism55, their antifascism by aiming at the masses “influenced by fascism”, their patriotism by systematically agreeing with official French positions, including the most negative foreigners’ laws, or by only seeing the geopolitical aspect of the question of Italians in Tunisia, while the LIDU wanted to defend their specific interests (separate schools, access to public functions, naturalisation etc.). Even worse, the UPI wanted to reveal to the authorities which Italians were, or were not, friends of France, excluding its adversaries and thus enabling it to endanger them. But neither was Campolonghi able to agree with the maximalists, who wanted to restrict membership by excluding PCI cadres and insisting on aid (for them, this was also a question of talking about the victims of Stalinism), while means were scarce and the return of a governmental alliance of the radicals and the right wing had again changed the situation of foreigners for the worse. Above all, the shadow of war obliged the direction of the League to come to a compromise with the PCI, which was even too Francophile, but, precisely, ready to fight. In short, everyone accepted to swallow the bitter pill.

50 See Éric Vial, Mario Angeloni e la Lega Italiana dei Diritti dell’Uomo, in: Nuovo Archivio Trimestrale 1987, 496–519. 51 See George Orwell’s testimony in Homage to Catalonia, London 1938. 52 See Giampietro Berti / Giorgio Sacchetti (eds.), Un libertario in Europa. Camillo Berneri fra totalitarismi e democrazia. Atti del convegno di studi storici, Arezzo, 5 maggio 2007, Reggio Emilia 2010. 53 La Voce degli Italiani, 8 July 1938. 54 See Éric Vial, L’Union Populaire Italienne 1937–1940. Une organisation de masse du parti communiste italien en exil, Rome 2007. 55 See Éric Vial, L’anticléricalisme dans l’émigration antifasciste italienne à l’époque des fronts populaires, in: Olivier Forlin (ed.), Anticléricalisme, minorités religieuses et échanges culturels entre la France et l’Italie, de l’antiquité au XXe siècle. Hommage à Jean-Pierre Viallet, historien, Paris 2006, 139–156.

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WAR The progress towards war reduced the role of aid and social life even more, even though these activities were more or less restarted at the eve of the conflict. The difficulties did not prevent a growth in membership in 1939, with 1,650 paying members, due to an engagement of the LDH and an afflux to an organisation that was generally believed to be too closely linked to the latter to be illegalised, as nobody expected the collapse of the Republic. Attention was also drawn to its attitude in case of war. Campolonghi dreamt of autonomous military action to liberate a fragment of Italy, proclaim the Republic there, counting on revolts and mutinies elsewhere if France demanded neither territories nor reparations – which the president of the Council Édouard Daladier had promised in 1939. In spite of maximalist protests, in spite of Modigliani, a former Zimmerwaldian, leaving the LIDU, in spite of some evoking the risk of being used as cannon fodder, the position it advocated differed from the UPI one, which was unconditional engagement in the French army. At the time of the Anschluss, the French government had approved the project but only because it preferred a potential future Italian legion under Franco-English supervision to immediate individual enlistment, which would irritate Mussolini. And the army did not want any of that, torn between profascist sympathies and its contempt for Italians, who had a reputation of not knowing to fight since the medieval fabliaux.56 But finally, the LIDU might be able to play an important political role for the first time since 1934, supporting an entente between PRI and GL in order to detach the reformists from their alliance with the PCI. When war broke out, aid was out of season, as the authorities had other things to worry about besides responding to petitions. The communist obstacle may have disappeared with the German-Soviet pact, which was condemned by all other groups; the recent Francophile and most of all antifascist members of the PCI may have been recovered, but the departure of PCI cadres left some sections in disarray, and moreover, even though the UPI was greatly weakened, it was not dissolved, because it had condemned the pact; and it promptly launched a systematic smear campaign against the League in the name of the latter’s own past importance. The fact remains nonetheless that the LIDU was a more reliable intermediary for France. It outlined structures in exile, a “secret committee” with PRI and GL, which was expanded into a “National Council” including the reformists, even if it had to limit itself to preparing an Italian legion. In February 1940, the project suffered a rupture with the former volunteers of 1914 from the circle of Sante Garibaldi, who dreamt of turning Italy against Germany and the U.S.S.R., and it suffered most importantly from French hostility: the “National Council” was not authorised to publish a newspaper, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Georges

56 See Noël Coulet, La malédiction de Babel, in: Yves Lequin (ed.), La Mosaïque France. Histoire des étrangers et de l’immigration en France, Paris 1988, 173–192, 178.

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Bonnet, an appeaser and future Vichyist, convinced Daladier not to sign the order to form the Italian legion; volunteers now had no choice but the Foreign Legion. The situation was worse in England, and it ended in tragedy. England was home to one of the sections that did not become involved in organisational life, but its head, a successful tailor who had emigrated in 1911, had tried to convince the British of the dangerousness of fascism, and had incurred the wrath of the bureaucracy: his naturalisation was refused in 1935, amongst other reasons because of his contacts to the LDH. At the request of the Labour party, he still provided the Home Office and the Ministry of War with lists of refugees who needed protection in 1938, 1939, and 1940. They, including himself, were arrested in June 1940, then put on a prison ship bound for Canada, which was sunk by a German submarine.57 In France, Campolonghi was struck down with hemiplegia in April 1940; his provisional successor, republican Alberto Tarchiani, future ambassador of Italy to Washington from 1945 to 1955, was too hostile to the communist rank and file and too much in conflict with GL, which he had left because of his moderate views. At any rate, the collapse of France put an end to all projects, the exiles scattered, some left across the Atlantic, some to Italy, some were arrested, in any case they were unable to achieve anything any more, even though in Tunisia, anarchists and League members fell in with the British consulate and engaged in assaults on their fascist compatriots. The Italian League survived in Switzerland, where the Geneva section organised a federation, dreamt of an international leadership in the United States, and raised funds for starving children in occupied Greece as well as for some former leaders in serious trouble, including the Campolonghi family. It was however frowned upon by a Confederation boasting a very pro-German neutrality, and its activities declined (holiday camps, Italian language courses).58 Campolonghi returned to Italy in 1943 and died there in late 1944. His last symbolic act was to send a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt via his wife on occasion of the American landing in Sicily in 1943, reminding him of the democracies’ previous and guilty indulgence towards Mussolini. In France, two League members of the first hour, Treasurer Ferdinando Bosso and a PRI activist, Aurelio Natoli, started to attempt a clandestine reconstitution early in the same year, which hardly made sense for an organisation whose main activity were contacts with the administration and elected representatives, but reflected the unifying political function of the League. They regularly met with former reformist, maximalist, anarchist, and Freemason representatives, were open towards Christian democrats, but were rejected by the PCI which excluded its old adversaries, including the PRI, and reached out to former fascists, wanting to show the French

57 See Alfio Bernabei, Esuli ed emigrati italiani nel Regno Unito, Milan 1997; Judith Walkowitz, Nights Out. Life in Cosmopolitan London, New Haven 2012, 135 and 337. 58 Mimmo Franzinelli, I tentacoli dell’OVRA. Agenti, collaboratori e vittime della polizia politica fascista, Torino 1999, 623f.

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the “good Italians”:59 the tensions were the same as in the UPI period. Other clandestine sections may have existed, for instance in Lyon. FROM ANTIFASCIST EXILE TO REPUBLICAN ITALY At the Liberation, the LIDU re-established itself in Paris. Ernesta Campolonghi presided over it, the LDH and some politicians rendered emotional homage to the memory of her husband60, sections seemed to be reborn here and there, even a federation in the region of Nice; the main task was to fight a wave of Italophobia, and, as before, to help migrants, for example by drawing attention to the fact that they had no right to support in the form of war damages from either of the two countries, by demanding a consulate in Nice, or by trying to annul or alleviate old expulsion orders – there is a trace of a deportee of 1925 who was authorised to spend fifteen days in France in 1956 …61 In Tunisia, the League members wanted to help their compatriots victimised by a policy of chasing the Italians and confiscating their assets in the context of a frenchification that would quickly be outstripped by decolonisation.62 In fact, most of all, the former combatants of antifascism relived their memories, got annoyed when seeing consulates again occupied by staff inherited from fascism, cultivated a refusal to choose between the Vatican and Moscow, and got by between illusory communiqués63 and commemorations.64 The LIDU disintegrated with Ernesta’s aging and her death in 1962, even though in the following year, old activists attempted to re-launch a bulletin, organised a congress, announced the founding of sections in Carcassonne or Lille, even at Varese and Verbano, owing to migrants who had returned to the home country, and the situation of an activist caused an interest in the fate of naturalised individuals who were refused pensions for their previous work in Italy. This heritage may have passed into Italy, a culture of human rights that was unknown to previous traditions is for instance apparent in the constitution adopted in early 1948.65 But while exile had left its mark on part of the political class66, the actual model might be a different one, American. The filiation is clearer for a 59 La Lega, 19 May 1945. 60 BDIC, GF delta res 67; in 1957, at the death of Leonida, Luigi and Ernesta’s son, she still received many letters of condolence from important personalities like the former president Vincent Auriol; see BDIC, GF delta res 65. 61 INSMLI, Milan, fondo Campolonghi, b. 4, f. 6, untitled press cutting, 18 January 1957. 62 BDIC GF delta res 68. See Martine Tomassetti, Séquestre et liquidation des biens italiens en Tunisie (1940–1954), derniers enjeux de la présence française, PhD diss., Université de Provence, Aix-en-Provence 2003. 63 The Nice section thus “respectfully” addresses President Eisenhower to ask him to pardon the Rosenbergs, see BDIC, GF delta res 69, letter dated 15 June 1953. 64 For example a Garibaldi commemoration in Nice; see Sta, 4 July 1957. 65 See F[ranz] Brunetti, La culture italienne face à la défense des Droits de l’Homme. Du fascisme à la constitution républicaine, in: Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie religieuses 65/1985, 257–269. 66 See for example Aldo Garosci, Storia dei fuorusciti, Bari 1953, 295ff.

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LIDU founded in Florence, which, referring to Luigi Campolonghi, contacted Ernesta, and seems to have spread across Italy with 78 sections in 1947, even though outside Tuscany, the regions most exiles actually came from were strangely underrepresented.67 But it, too, declined, quarrels caused the Rome section to collapse, most of the press ignored its communiqués, and, for example in 1949, Ernesta Campolonghi, on a visit to Bologna, did not succeed in founding a section there, which incidentally was supposed to exist already: her daughter remarks that her lectures could “neither recreate the movement nor give life back to the past”.68 Nonetheless, interventions can be traced for stateless individuals in Italy in 1950– 1952, in 1952 for the Italians of Trieste, a city not yet reintegrated into the country at the time. The situation was confused: the Florentine or Roman League members made Ernesta their representative at the LDH, but became members of the International League for Human Rights founded in New York during the war; between the two, a merger may have seemed possible, but tensions became more serious when the Fédération internationale des droits de l’homme was reestablished in Paris – of which Ernesta was one of the vice-presidents – because of ideological differences in the Cold War setting.69 This self-effacement may explain the foundation of a Lega internazionale dei diritti umani in Milan, from 1971 presided by Riccardo Bauer, a clandestine activist of GL and prisoner under fascism, and a famous Resistance fighter70; he had been president of the Società Umanitaria from Liberation until 1971, which had been founded in 1893 as an aid organisation and think tank, but was shaken by the protests of 1968. 71 This Lega was affiliated to the League in New York in 1974, but in spite of a network that, in theory, covered the whole country and beyond, seems to have had only a fleeting existence.72 The Lega italiana dei diritti dell’uomo, affiliated in its turn to the Fédération internationale in Paris, re-established itself from Rome more recently73, and proposed to merge the two associations.74 There are traces of other organisations, too, possibly phantoms. For instance in 1952, the journal of the socialist party polemically alluded to a Lega internazionale in Milan, earlier than the aforementioned one and without any relationship to the LIDU affiliated to 67 BDIC, GF delta res 70, 16 November 1947. 68 Campolonghi, La Vie, 226. 69 The Roman LIDU declared not to acknowledge but the Universal Declaration of 1948, and not the French ones of 1789 and 1793, because of the right of rebellion or resistance to oppression, see BDIC, GF delta res 70, letter dated 11 January 1953. It also protested because the LDH and the Fédération internationale refused to support Italy in Trieste, see ibid., 12 November 1952. 70 See Giuseppe Sircana, Bauer Riccardo, in: Massimiliano Pavan (ed.), Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 34, Rome 1988, 321–324. 71 Arturo Colombo, Presentazione, in: Gabriella Solaro (ed.), Il mondo di Piero. Un ritratto a più voci di Piero Malvezzi, Milan 2008, 7–10, 7. There are still very close links to l’Umanitaria. 72 http://www.omdu.org/, consulted 2 April 2016. 73 http://www.liduonlus.org/, consulted 2 April 2016. 74 http://www.liduonlus.org/images/COMITATO%20CENTRALE%2017%20LUGLIO%20 2010.pdf, consulted 2 April 2016.

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Paris75, and the Roman headquarters of what may be yet another LIDU, which is described as humanitarian, where its president, his assistant, and its archives were housed, were destroyed in a fire in 1991 …76 In practice, these organisations seem to have had little impact. Comparing the sites of large daily papers in early 2016, there are 870 occurrences for their French homologue in “Le Figaro” since 1996, 7,292 in “Le Monde” since 1945, 985 in “Libération” since 1994, and 1,325 in “L’Humanité” since 1996; in Italy, between full names and acronyms, three in “Il Giorno” since 2006, 84 in “La Repubblica” since 1994, and “L’Unità” has only mentioned the Lega italiana dei diritti dell’uomo eight times since 1945, mostly in a historical context, and the Lega internazionale six times. With even less pretence to scientific method, and for the very recent past, the Facebook page of the LDH boasts 114,174 likes, against 838 for the LIDU affiliated to the same Fédération. The 2016 map of the sections of this same LIDU is limited as well as unbalanced: there are 24, with a single one in Piedmont, none in Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy and Liguria, and 14 between Campania, Apulia, and Calabria77; in 2011, there were no more than a hundred paying members.78 Its connection to the past is an artificial construction with a reference to a foundation around 1900 by Ernesto Nathan79, the first “secularist” mayor of Rome, of which there is no trace in antifascist exile, or by placing Campolonghi and socialist leader Pietro Nenni, who had kept apart from the exile LIDU, on the same level.80 FOR FUTURE RESEARCH Schematically, and starting from indications given in the rare press references, which would have to be supplemented by other sources, we can imagine a history parallel to what historian Giovanni Spadolini, head of the PRI and the first head of a non-Christian-democrat government since 1945 in 1981, called the “Italy of the secularists” or “minority Italy”81, with the liberal, republican, social-democrat, and, from the 1960s, socialist parties: hopes of an upswing after Liberation, followed by suffocation between the Christian-democrat government, on which they 75 L’Avanti, 20 September 1952; BDIC, GF delta res 70, copy of a letter dated 30 September 1952. 76 L’Unità (U), 6 August 1991. 77 http://www.liduonlus.org/Sedi%20e%20Comitatii.html, consulted 2 April 2016. 78 http://www.liduonlus.org/lettere%202012/Verbale%20Esecutivo%202%20maggio%20 2012.pdf, consulted 2 April 2016. 79 http://www.liduonlus.org/Le%20Origini.html, consulted 2 April 2016, but on the same site, there is a summary matching what was said above: http://www.liduonlus.org/images/ report%2008%2009.pdf, 62, consulted 2 April 2016. 80 http://www.liduonlus.org/Le%20Origini.html, consulted 2 April 2016. The memory of the Lega internazionale in Milan is just as uncertain, and it now claims to be founded in 1974; see http://www.omdu.org/, consulted 2 April 2016. 81 Giovanni Spadolini, L’Italia dei laici. Lotta politica e cultura dal 1925 al 1980, Florence 1980. Idem, Italia di minoranza. Lotta politica e cultura dal 1915 ad oggi, Florence 1983.

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depended, and the two opposition blocks dominated by neo-fascists and communists; a new beginning at the end of the 1960s, in a period of protest and social reform (referendum, regionalisation, divorce, majority at the age of 18). In the following years, the League of Human Rights, or the leagues, experienced an eclipse, as the “secular space” was partly linked to Freemasonry, which is relatively weak in Italy due to the importance of the political traditions mentioned above. The Lega italiana dei diritti dell’uomo had particularly close ties with it; its president from 1970 to 1974, for instance, was Lino Salvini, Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy, who also pointed out that this presidency was the only one judged to be compatible with his Masonic responsibilities.82 Freemasonry, however, was in the centre of the storm in the context of the discovery of a secret Lodge, P2 or Propaganda 2, which assembled military, political, media, and economic-financial elites around an at the very least authoritarian project of “democracy” – and the head of this Lodge, Licio Gelli, later highlighted important payments to the LIDU.83 This was obviously very bad publicity for the LIDU or any other organisation with a similar name (like the one earlier presided over by Riccardo Bauer), and it took years to achieve a difficult recovery. This picture, leading up to the current situation, may seem sombre. It is probably unfair. Beyond Riccardo Bauer, it can be offset by the mention of very respectable personalities: elected representatives, academic legal experts, or members of the Constitutional Court who became involved as national or local presidents or honorary presidents. It may also be counterbalanced by scattered interventions, sometimes linked to individual initiative; in number, they cannot be compared to those of the LDH, but they are still very respectable, whatever the organisation carrying them: protests against pressure on teachers or magistrates in 196884, against the torture of an Italian woman in the Greece of the Colonels, against the links between the Colonels and the neo-fascists at the time of the “strategy of tension”, against the Vietnam war, against the Ethiopian army accused of committing genocide in Eritrea, for an anarchist sentenced to 31 years of prison under fascism for a political crime who had not benefitted from any amnesty, for loans to child welfare institutions, for the right of abortion, and against doctors condemning it in order to practice it in secret and at a high price.85 During the “Years of Lead”, and in particular at the time of the murder of the former chief of government Aldo Moro by the Brigate Rosse, there were protests against terrorism and attempts to alert the Fédération internationale des droits de l’homme and its president Daniel Mayer. Later, there are interventions at the time of the Rwandan genocide86, and later again a defence of the right of privacy of HIV82 Sta, 19 September 1973. 83 La Repubblica (Rep), 12 July 1984. 84 On Italy in this period, see Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy. Society and Politics, 1943–1988, London 1990; and idem, Italy and Its Discontents. Family, Civil Society, State 1980–2001, London 2001. 85 See respectively U, 29 May and 1 August 1968; Sta, 2 September 1970, 20 May 1973. U, 23 February 1973. Sta, 19 September 1975, 14 March 1975, 17 May 1975. 86 Sta, 18 March et 11 May 1978, 10, and 14 May 1994.

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positive individuals, combined with an engagement for the victims of transfusions87, another engagement for those of road accidents, a concern for the rights of biological fathers, the overburdened justice system, the integration of “non-E.U.” immigrants, an early anxiety regarding islamist terrorism, or an inquiry into the death of an Italian in the prison of Grasse in France.88 And in recent years, the website of the Lega affiliated with the Fédération internationale in Paris shows an interest for the penal system and education in prison, a concern with social dumping, a concern for religious freedom in Egypt (and in general), or a defence of the European Union.89 It is probably not the task of a historian whose research has focused on an organisation of exiles to judge its afterlife following the end of exile. This would ask for in-depth research, combining all available sources beyond those sketched here, and probably drawing from a collection of oral testimonies, at least for the most recent period, unravelling what relates to the different groups and clarifying their relationships with each other, distinguishing projects and reality by trying to measure the efficiency of activities, between hopes and the risk of disappointment: history is a thing in permanent construction, which we can no more bring to a close than the need to defend human rights, whatever the circumstance.

87 Gruppo Abele, Annuario sociale 2000. Cronologie dei fatti, dati, ricerche, statistiche, leggi, nomi cifre, Milan 2000, 36. 88 See respectively: Sta, 19 March 2004, 21 May 2005 and 22 June 2012; and Rep, 22 June 2010; ibid., Savona edition, 15 February 2003; ibid., 4 June 2002; ibid., Palermo edition, 8 November 2003 and 7 November 2011; Rep, 29 October 2004; ibid., Florence edition, 17 August 2013. 89 http://www.liduonlus.org/, consulted 2 April 2016.

THE ROMANIAN LEAGUE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS – A “CHILD OF THE COMINTERN”? (and possible comparison with the Bulgarian League) Stilyan Deyanov The first “history” of the interwar Romanian League for Human Rights, established in Bucharest in 1923, was written by the secret service of the time, the Siguranță. One of the main objectives of the Siguranță – to protect the Romanian state against its denigrators, especially those related to the Third International – is reflected in the way the League was perceived and the meticulous reports on its activities interpreted. Since then, this history has been rewritten several times, but the structure and internal logic of the story of the League has remained mostly unchanged. The Romanian communist historiography, willing to underline and amplify the role of the Communist Party in the interwar period, places the League among the organisations “created, directed or influenced” by the Party in its fight for the rights of those oppressed by the bourgeois regime. In this interpretation, the League is certainly no longer a traitor as it previously was for the Siguranță, but instead a “reaction of the masses against the state of illegality and of abuse maintained by the authorities, against the arbitrary violation even of those civil rights and liberties provided by the bourgeois laws.”1 Though the interwar League has not been the subject of a separate study since the Romanian Revolution of 1989, most of the modern research mentioning its existence still refers to it as closely related to the Romanian Communist Party and the Comintern2, probably reproducing the inertia of the communist historiography while of course once again exchanging the roles of the traitor and the defender of the national interest. In all three periods, even though some internal contradictions within the League itself are mentioned, the approaches remain quite Manichean, and the possibility of the existence of a league fighting against governmental terror while at the same time not working hand in hand with the Communist Party or the Comintern is rarely taken into account.3 The same applies to the notion that 1

2

3

Liga drepturilor omului, in: Organizații de masă legale și ilegale create, conduse sau influențate de P.C.R. 1921–1944, vol. 1, Bucharest 1970, 92. N.B. All the Romanian-English translations in this article were carried out by its author. See for instance Stelian Tănase, Clienții lu’ tanti Varvara, Bucharest 2001, 79–97, or Adrian Cioroianu (ed.), Comuniștii înainte de comunism. Procese și condamnări ale ilegaliștilor din România, Bucharest 2014, 260. A notable exception to this tendency is: Mihai Burcea / Marius Stan, Liga contra prejudecăților în vizorul siguranței, in: Miliția spirituală, October 2013. Even though it begins with the

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the Romanian League for Human Rights was presumably not uniform throughout the years of its existence, and that its various actors could have maintained contradictory positions. One of the few archives that can be found today on the Romanian League are precisely the files of the Siguranță kept for years – significantly – in the archives of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party. 4 A proper archive of the League does not exist, but this fact seems not to be the only reason for the abovementioned Manichean interpretations of the League. For the Siguranță, it was surely more comfortable to have to fight an organisation related to the communists and the external enemies of the country than to deal with a league that addressed real problems in the interwar Romanian society. For the communist historiography, this separation (expressed in terms of the “progressive forces” led by the communists and fighting against the “terror of the bourgeois landowners’ regime”5) was perfectly suited to the way it wanted to rewrite the interwar history. Finally, it also meshes with one of the strong currents in post-1989 Romanian historiography that speaks about the return of the country to its normal precommunist track. Nowadays, when (in south-eastern Europe, but not only there) simplified black-and-white explanations of what is happening appear to be gaining ground once again, and encompassing categories like “rubladjiis” or “sorosoids” are used to make the plurality of actors seem more uniform, the study of the interwar Romanian League for Human Rights gains an even greater topical interest. 1923 – THE FIRST STEPS OF THE ROMANIAN LEAGUE The information on the Romanian League provided by the Siguranță files is supplemented with a large number of newspaper articles from the time. The centreleft newspaper “Adevărul” served not only as a tribune for the organisation, but – especially during the first months of its existence – also as a news bulletin. It is therefore helpful in retracing the League’s first steps.6 The Romanian League for Human Rights is first mentioned in “Adevărul” on 3 June 1923.7 A short article reports that a first meeting took place at the initiative of 100 intellectuals, writers, artists and workers. Several decisions are reported to

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7

classic “In the period of its illegal existence, the Communist Party exercised its influence and power through political and civic organisations (…) such as the League for Human Rights”, the authors also state that “some of these organisations (…) should not be viewed strictly as annexes of the Communist Party”, among them the League for Human Rights. Arhivele Naționale Istorice Centrale (ANIC), Arhiva CC al PCR, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1177, 1178, 1179. Liga drepturilor omului [1970], 93. Not counting the articles signed by League members, “Adevărul” published 14 articles directly related to the League from June to September 1923, as follows: on 3, 7 and 24 June, on 3, 15, 17, 19, 23, 27 and 31 July, on 1 August, and on 9, 22 and 26 September. Liga drepturilor omului, in: Adevărul, 3 June 1923.

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have been made: to organise a first congress of the League (which would elect a permanent central committee) once it had reached 2,000 members; to write a manifesto explaining the purpose of the organisation; and to elect a provisional committee which would elaborate the statutes. The article underlines that the organisation aimed to exclude any political affiliation. Four days later, several lines were published in “Adevărul” stating that there was great enthusiasm about the establishment of the League among the population.8 The actual founding date of the Romanian League, however, should be considered to be 24 June 1923, when it published an appeal to all Romanian citizens to join the organisation. Beginning with the entire text of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the appeal states that “starting from today, the League for Human Rights, Romanian section, is established.”9 On 17 July, “Adevărul” reported that the first (temporary) committee of the League had been instated three days earlier on 14 July.10 Two months later, in his programmatic article “The League for Human Rights and Fascism”11 on 22 September 1923, Constantin Costa-Foru12, founder and prime mover of the League, mentions the same temporary committee. The article also presents the two vicepresidents Constantin Mille, a famous journalist and president of the General Association of the Romanian Press, and Dem. Dobrescu, president of the Union of

8

“Adevărul” featured a real awareness campaign on the new organisation: on 3 July 1923, for example, the article “The League for Human Rights” offered a literary dialog between two Romanians, one explaining to the other what the League should be (“the League won’t be a political organisation”) and how it could help the country and its citizens; on the 31 July, the newspaper published a communiqué by the League announcing that it would distribute a circular with the technical details of registration due to the impossibility of replying personally to each of the large number of applications. The circular letter can be found in the National Archives of Romania, col. 152, Liga Drepturilor Omului, f. 19; it also contains the statutes of the League. The communiqué also stated that all correspondence with the League should be sent to C. G. Costa-Foru at his personal address, which was also the address of the League: 3, Aleea Mitropoliei, Bucharest. 9 Liga drepturilor omului către toți cetățeni României, in: Adevărul, 24 June 1923. 10 It had the following composition: President Vasile Stroescu, Vice-Presidents Dem. Dobrescu and Constantin Mille, Secretary General C. G. Costa-Foru, Secretaries C. Petrescu, Eugen Filotti and Milozzi, Cashier Mr. Davidovici, and members Z. Arbore, P. Bujor, C. RădulescuMotru, N. Schina, P. Brănisteanu, Istrate Micescu, Sever Bocu, Radu Rosetti, Iosef Nadejde, I. Negreanu, Ilie Moscovici, Cezar Parteniu, Victor Eftimiu, I. Mihalache, Gr. Iunian, N. Lupu, V. Anagnoste, C. Hoisecu, I. Pitulescu and Cireseanu (Mizil). The committee for drafting the statute and maintaining relations with the French League consisted of: Dem. Dobrescu, C. Petrescu, I. Vinea, M. Lotar and Eug. Filotti. The committee for investigations: C. Mille, Pompiliu Ioanițescu, eng. Topliceanu, major Răutu and V. Rodan. The committee for propaganda and creation of branches: V. Stroescu, C. G. Costa-Foru, Petre Dragomirescu, V. Iamandi, V. Madgearu, N. D. Cocea, T. Teodorescu Braniște, Tita Bobeș, P. Vârtosu and Tudor Ionescu. 11 Liga Dreptului omului și fascismul, in: Adevărul, 22 September 1923. 12 Constantin Costa-Foru was a journalist and lawyer from a famous and wealthy family with Aromanian origins. More details follow below.

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Romanian Lawyers, as symbols of “the two big powers the League leans on: the press and the judiciary.”13 There is contradictory information regarding the relations between the Romanian League and the French League (respectively the International Federation of Leagues) in the first months of its existence. On 17 November 1923, “Adevărul” published an article by its correspondent in Paris, referred to as “I.”, about the Federation’s international congress.14 The author underlines that there was not a single representative of the Romanian League present. Upon asking the secretary why this was so, he was told that the Federation had not received any information about the existence of a league in Romania, otherwise it would have been happy to invite its representatives. In the abovementioned programmatic article “The League for Human Rights and Fascism”, however, Costa-Foru had claimed that “the League liaises with all the Leagues for Human Rights abroad” and “the League for Human Rights is an old institution of French origin (…)”. In the “Cahiers des droits de l’homme”, the bimonthly journal of the French League, the first appearance by representatives of the Romanian League (“Mr. Costa-Foru and Mr. Labin”) is mentioned for the International Congress in June 192615, a fact confirmed by Costa-Foru himself in his speech in front of the Congress.16 A LEAGUE WITH COMMUNIST ROOTS? During the 1960s, the Institute for History of the Party, which was directly attached to the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Romanian Workers’ Party until 1965), launched a broad campaign to define the Party’s role in the socalled “legal and illegal mass organisations created, led and influenced by the 13 Liga Dreptului omului și fascismul. This article is particularly interesting because it introduces a theme which has not been studied enough in existing research on the League, namely its attitudes towards the far-right organisations, and particularly against anti-Semitism. The programmatic text states that “two new institutions stand face to face: the League and fascism” and “the League and fascism are destined for an inevitable clash and unceasing fight.” With the term “fascism”, Costa-Foru was most probably referring to the National-Christian Defence League (a virulently anti-Semitic political party formed by Alexandru C. Cuza in the same year). Costa-Foru also addresses the problem of the minorities Romania had to deal with at the time: “The patriotism of the League means the unification of the different nationalities living in Romania today, who must live like brothers without distinctions based on birth or religion.” A month after this article, Costa-Foru claimed to have already been faced with accusations of “selling out to the Jews”. În fată morții, in: Adevărul, 17 October 1923. 14 Congresul internațional al Ligilor pentru apărarea Drepturilor Omului, in: Adevărul, 17 November 1923. 15 Le congrès international des Ligues des droits de l’homme, in: Cahiers des droits de l’homme (CDH), 26 August 1926. 16 Le congrès international, 418. In this speech, Costa-Foru also describes the situation in Romania: dictatorship, massive electoral frauds, arrests of opposition leaders, violence by the army, police and Siguranță. He stresses the direct responsibility of King Ferdinand, and asks for the support of the International Federation.

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Communist Party” between 1921 and 1944. As early as 1964, a first article bearing this name17 and presenting a short description of such organisations was published in the institute’s review. Among the organisations mentioned therein is the Romanian League for Human Rights:18 After its creation, and especially during the period when it operated illegally, the Romanian Communist Party – in order to better be able to deal with the activity of mobilising and organising the masses in the fight against capitalist exploitation, for democratic rights and liberties, against fascism, for peace – founded, led or guided a large number of legal mass organisations.19

The first of the two large volumes presenting the history of these organisations was published in 1970. Its preface defines the framework in which the research was conducted: As the Secretary General of the PCR, Niculae Ceausescu, has underlined, all the important moments in the life of our homeland are related to the fight of the masses – the engine of social progress, the true maker of the history of Romania.20

In this spirit, the history of the interwar Romanian League written in 1970 claims that there had been an initial attempt to create a league for human rights in 1920. There was indeed a short article in the newspaper “Socialismul”21 at that time reporting that “Luptătorul” was initiating the establishment of a league for human rights, and expressing the paper’s support for the idea. On the basis of this information, the 1970 article concludes that “the position of the Socialist Party regarding the idea of the foundation of this organisation was favourable from the beginning”22 and makes out a continuity between the two initiatives: “In the summer of 1923, the initiative group revived the propaganda and agitation work for the protection of civil rights for the creation of the organisation League for Human Rights.”23 There is no factual evidence that the failed 1920 initiative was 17 Fl. Dragne, Cu privire la organizațiile de masă create, conduse sau îndrumate de P.C.R., in: Analele Institutului de istorie a partidului pe lângă C.C. ai P.M.R. 10/1964, no. 6, 120. 18 Wolfgang Schmale and Christopher Treiblmayr describe the disapproval of various communist regimes in regard to the study of human rights leagues. Wolfgang Schmale / Christopher Treiblmayr, Human Rights Leagues and Civil Society (1898–ca.1970s), in: Historische Mitteilungen 27/2015, 186–208, 189. In this respect, the Romanian League forms an exception along with the German one. 19 Dragne, Cu privire la organizațiile de masă, 115. 20 Organizații de masă legale și ilegale, Preface, V. The preface also states that “the Romanian Communist Party initiates and directs the creation of legal and illegal organisations which will give it the opportunity to help the victims of bourgeois terror. In this way were founded, during the years 1920–1924, the Socialist Red Cross (1920) (…), the ‘League for Human Rights’ (1923–1928) (…).” Ibid., IX. 21 Liga Drepturilor Omului, in: Socialismul, 8 October 1920. At the time, the newspaper was the official organ of the Socialist Party of Romania. After the so called “maximalist” majority within the organisation, affiliated with the Comintern, took control of the Party in 1921 and turned it into the Communist Party of Romania, “Socialismul” became the organ of this newly created Bolshevik-influenced political organisation. 22 Liga drepturilor omului [1970], 94. 23 Liga drepturilor omului [1970], 95f.

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in any way related to that of 1923, however. In fact, the opposite seems more likely judging by the position of “Socialismul” on the two cases: On 28 June 1923, now as the organ of the Communist Party, “Socialismul”24 announced the establishment of the League in an article displaying anything but a favourable position, thereby contradicting allegations that the League was created at the initiative of the Comintern. The information this article provides is intentionally absent from the 1970 interpretation; intentionally because the text is in fact quoted in a different context, and hence was known to the author. As it represents the first reaction by the Communist Party to the creation of the Romanian League, the article merits being quoted in its entirety: The League for Human Rights and Us The horrible misery which has befallen the lower classes, and hence the small bourgeois class, is producing stronger and stronger agitation and fluster among those classes. The workers are more and more resolutely following the path of revolutionary class struggle in order to conquer the political power and establish Socialism – the only possible way out of the current crisis. The small bourgeoisie, by contrast, kneads the political soil in the same place it always has and runs up against a wall, against the economic realities which it cannot understand. A part of the small bourgeoisie follows the noisy and bloody currents of fascism, believing it will be able to impose a Romanian social “harmony” with the aid of the baton, the knife and the revolver once it exterminates those several millions of citizens who do not speak Romanian, once it assassinates the Bolshevik agitators and the workers organised in trade unions – a mere formality, hence, and a small expenditure in ammunition. But another part of our small bourgeoisie is still democratic. It is true that the “democratic” agitations against the usurpatory liberal government, and above all the furious and democratic screams against the communist workers, have not yielded any results. Now, the agitation starts again “outside of the parties” for the defence of “the Human Rights”. Through countless signatures and legal propaganda, the members of the League wish to restrain the fascist anarchy and governmental illegality. When the fascists assassinate workers in the street, the leaguers will shout: “We want legality”; when the government kills in Bessarabia and in the jails, when it leaves the population starving as a result of high prices and small salaries, the leaguers will shout: “We want democracy”, and when the workers go out in the streets in order to protect themselves from the killers and the bloodsuckers, the leaguers will shout: “Down with Bolshevism”, and they will “sustain unconditionally” the government for the restoration of order and legality. The illusion that it is possible to defend “the Rights of Man” without organising the revolutionary class in order to obtain the “Rights of the Class” will kill the League with or without the fascist baton. But are these rights of man that constantly nag at us truly above the classes and … independent from parties? No. These are the rights of a propertied class and of a disinherited class. The words that the French revolution has left for us are beautiful. But it was a bourgeois revolution. And the bourgeois claws can be seen through the paper of the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Property is holy, that is what the “Rights of Man” tell us. Well, we dare to believe that the holiness of bourgeois property was the only principle that has truly been respected by the bourgeoisie. The holiness of property has killed the other beautiful principles of the “Rights”, and those who fight for the holiness of property fight against the principle of liberty of mankind.

24 Liga drepturilor omului și noi, in: Socialismul, 28 June 1923.

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The small bourgeoisie will, in part, follow the League. There is something good in every bad. Dispelling the illusions of the League will help the small bourgeoisie to find its way to the proletariat. The condition for this is that the proletariat manifests itself like a block that defies the democratic illusions. The United Proletarian Front must be our answer to the League. How strong our fight for this united front must be is shown to us by the social democrats whose leaders, who vigorously refuse the united front with the workers, nevertheless sign the manifesto of the League, sign the principle of the individual property, sign in to a united front with the League’s bourgeoisie. The bourgeois elements that join the League probably have illusions. The social democratic elements that refuse the workers’ help but are hand in hand with the bourgeoisie and the small bourgeoisie from the League are obviously traitors. Against the terror and government starvation, against the fascist danger, against the illusions of the League, against the social democratic betrayals, our response is: The UNITED PROLETARIAN FRONT

By contrast, the position of the pro-government centre-right newspaper “Universul” towards the creation of the League was generally positive, even though it expressed reservations against some of the names implicated in the organisation. In an article from June 1923, we can read the following: (…) the mixture of names with a high value with other depreciated ones forms a mosaic with which the League cannot win. With this reservation, which is not at all negligible, as those who wish to see it truly succeed should recognise, we consider that the League for Human Rights satisfies a necessity and is a benefit to our national democracy. 25

The creation of the League was welcomed in most newspapers at the time, for example in “Neamul Românesc” published by the famous Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga, who personally wrote a front-page article on the subject.26 The attitude of C. G. Costa-Foru, founder and secretary general of the League whose personal address doubled as the seat of the organisation, also seems to preclude any possible relations with the Comintern. On 31 May 1923, only four days before the intention to create the League for Human Rights was announced, Costa-Foru published an article entitled “For a program of hard work”27 in which, besides the usual criticism of King Ferdinand and Prime Minister Brătianu, he declared: Bolshevism is a state of tyranny: a tyranny by those below, called the tyranny of the proletariat, that is to say of the many. Horrible like every tyranny, this one is surely the ugliest and most horrible of all. In its name, those who tyrannise are the ones who have succeeded in making the many raise them to supreme power. Once raised above everyone else, the representatives of the many exercise a tyranny in the name of the many, yet against the latter and for their own profit. First, they undertake the personal security measures that keep them at the top of the state, undisturbed and unaffected by the changeable and unpredictable masses. 25 Liga dreptului omului, in: Universul, 25 June 1923. 26 Liga drepturilor omului, in: Neamul Românesc, 8 July 1923. 27 Spre un program de muncă grea, in: Adevărul, 31 May 1923.

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This anti-Bolshevist stance is, of course, also omitted in the 1970 history of the League. One of the two vice-presidents of the League after its foundation, Dem. Dobrescu, who was also the president of the Union of Romanian Lawyers, exhibited similar attitudes in the programmatic articles he published in “Adevărul” surrounding the creation of the League. On 23 July, he wrote that “between Mussolini and Trotsky there is only a class difference, but not a theoretical one, because Trotsky is a workers’ Mussolini and Mussolini is a bourgeois Trotsky (…)”.28 A week earlier, in an article in which he criticised the general political situation in Romania, the abuse of power, the terror, the lacking freedom of the press, the bad situation of minorities, the racial, class, and confession violence as well as moral decadence, Dobrescu had declared: Long live the white Bolshevism and down with the red Bolshevism, because some people want everything, immediately; and other people do not want to give up anything, ever. Trotsky in the name of the labourers, and Mussolini in the name of the bourgeoisie, hold the sword of violence in one hand and the revolution with which they will ignite the world in the other.29

According to Dobrescu, the League was to be “the fire department of public morality”; as an attorney, he underlined that the League would request the support of all lawyers in the country in order to achieve its purposes, and argued that the League should be a “social arbiter”, “above the parties and the classes”, and “the magistrate of Romanian public opinion”.30 But the attitude towards the League in the pro-government media changed rapidly. By July 1926, “Universul” had already classified Costa-Foru and the League as being on the side of Moscow, which proves that the communist historiography did not have to contrive this affiliation. It sufficed to merely reproduce (and also misleadingly ascribe to the moment of the League’s creation) a division that already existed in the interwar period: After having created in Bucharest, at the order of the Third International in Moscow and following the model of the ‘Barbusse Committee’ in Paris, the League against the Terror, the well-known international agent and propagandist Mr. Costa-Foru was summoned to the capital of France, on the eve of the visit by H.M. King Ferdinand, to give a report in front of the League for Human Rights on the “tragic” situation in Romania. Here we present – according

28 “Liga Drepturilor Omului”, “Uniunea Cetățenească” și “Fascismul”, in: Adevărul, 23 July 1923. 29 Liga drepturilor omului, in: Adevărul, 15 July 1923. 30 Liga drepturilor omului.

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to the Paris newspaper “L’Œuvre” (no. 156) – how the abovementioned agent serving the different international revolutionary leagues went about fulfilling his odious mission. 31

The reason for this change of attitude can be explained by the positions that the Romanian League for Human Rights and its founder Costa-Foru had expressed in the first years of its existence. 1924–1925 – DEFENCE OF COMMUNISTS OR COMMUNISATION OF THE LEAGUE? At the beginning of 1924, as one of its first actions, the League for Human Rights publicly defended vis-à-vis the government three communist students “detained and mistreated in the prison of Jilava”.32 The secretary general of the League published an article with the premonitory subtitle “An entire party was outlawed” on 2 January 192433, four months before the Romanian Communist Party was officially banned on 11 April. Costa-Foru’s argument was that given the fact that the charges against the students were “completely imaginary”34, they had been arrested to “make them tired of socialism and communism”.35 His conclusion was that “socialism – and especially communism – is outlawed and considered a crime against the security of the state.”36 It is significant that a few lines later, CostaForu felt obliged to make the following clarification: The League does not engage in politics, and is far from having preferences for the Communist Party. But justice and equality are needed for everybody, and this is the field in which the League will stay.37

Although the first secret service documents concerning the League for Human Rights in the archives of the Siguranță are dated 1925, there is a separate folder containing press clippings beginning with a “Dimineață” article from 25 April 1924 – the period immediately after the Communist Party was outlawed. Is it hard to say whether these clippings were collected at the time when the articles were published or whether they are part of a retrospective by the interwar Siguranță performed when the League was put under strict observation. They could conceivably even be part of a reconstruction by the communist archivists under the Central Committee. The press clipping folder also contains a solitary typewritten note from 26 April, with no Siguranță header, reporting that the League was preparing a meeting to discuss the situation of the arrested communists. Merely an incidental interest in the League in the days after the Communist Party was outlawed? 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Acțiunea Ligii drepturilor omului împotriva regelui României, in: Universul, 17 July 1926. Liga drepturilor omului. Un întreg partid scos din lege, in: Dimineața, 2 January 1924. Liga drepturilor omului. Liga drepturilor omului. Liga drepturilor omului. Liga drepturilor omului. Liga drepturilor omului.

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In any case, throughout 1924 the League sustained initiatives to protect the rights of the detained communists. The abovementioned “Dimineață” article, for instance, reports on a request38 by the League to the Ministry of Justice for permission to visit the men (among them the famous militant Dobrogeanu-Gherea) in the prison at Jilava. The visit was allowed, and testimonies by the detainees concerning the conditions in the prison and their abuse by the Siguranță are published in the article. At around the same time, Costa-Foru published another article in which he advanced a theory he would repeat at several occasions, namely that the persecution of communists did not in fact discourage them, but rather create them. In order to “purge and change” their “wrong ideas”, he claimed, suitable propaganda would be much more useful than terror.39 But as this did not occur and the state instead used only terror, Costa-Foru concluded: “Me, a conservative, I will fight with all my powers for you socialists and communists.”40 These actions by the League and its secretary general Costa-Foru during 1924, the year the Communist Party was outlawed, and 1925 presumably contributed to the increasing interest in League activities by the Siguranță. The concept of the abovementioned article “Între drept și forța” was reproduced, one year later, in the controversial brochure “The abuses and crimes of the Siguranță. The declarations of the victims”41, published in 1925 in the name of the League for Human Rights with a preface and conclusion by Costa-Foru. Criticism of this publication has been voiced as recently as 2005: the Romanian writer and historian Stelian Tănase, for example, considers it “proven that the brochure was ordered and paid for by the Comintern”.42 His proof is a short activity report by the Balkan office of the International Red Aid organisation sent to the Executive Committee of the Comintern, which states that “during the trials in Bucharest and Chisinau, the Central Committee of the International Red Aid has printed two brochures (written by Costa-Foru, a well-known public figure in Romania).”43 But does “printed” necessarily equate to “ordered” or “influenced its content” – and, ultimately, can an account given to the leadership be taken at face value? The accusations of communism were obviously already part of the debate in 1925. In the preface of the “abuses and crimes” brochure, Costa-Foru states: There will be objections against us – as there already have been – that the League is compromising itself by defending some communists. We vigorously protest. The League stays outside and above the political parties. In defending these citizens, we do not defend com38 The entire text sent to the Ministry of Justice is published in: Liga drepturilor omului și comuniștii arestați, in: Adevărul, 22 April 1924. 39 Între drept și forța, in: Adevărul, 24 April 1924. 40 Între drept și forța. 41 Abuzurile și crimele Siguranței generale a statului. Declarațiunile victimelor, Bucharest 1925. The brochure was translated into French (“Les crimes de la Sûreté”) and into German, and can be found in the National Archives of Romania, Fond 152, Rola 468, Frames 284– 324. 42 Tănase, Clienții, 82. 43 Arhivele Naționale Istorice Centrale, Copilăria Comunismului românesc în arhiva Kominternului, Bucharest 2001, 172.

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munism, but the law; for in a civilised state, nobody can be outlawed because of his political opinions.44

Most of the authors discussing the Romanian League agree that it reduced its activity after the creation of the Committee for Amnesty in 1928, and ceased to exist in 1929. There are, however, various documents contradicting these assertions. A secret service report from 1945 says: The activity of the League began to diminish in the fall of 1935, with the death of Costa-Foru and with the start of prosecutions by the authorities, and permanently disappeared at the beginning of 1937.45

There are indirect leads suggesting that a Romanian League for Human Rights existed as late as 1938. In the archives of the French League (section “Rights of Foreigners”) we can find the following letter from 21 June 1938, addressed to Radu Florian and signed by the “Secretary General”: Sir, as stated in our previous communication, we hasten to inform you that we have submitted your documents to the Romanian League for Human Rights [italics added] for review and will deliver to you, if it is the case, a political refugee certificate as soon as we have the opinion of our colleagues.46

Another letter from 17 May 193847 likewise makes reference to the Romanian League, and in the same archive we can also find a newspaper article entitled “The Romanian question and the international situation” stating that an information conference gathered on 10 January [1938], organised by the Central Committee and attended by the representatives of the Central Committee of the LDH (…) and the representatives of the German, Spanish, Romanian and Yugoslav Leagues. 48

In fact, a large number of documents related to this meeting and its proceedings can be found in the Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine (BDIC). As a consequence of the discussions, the French League sent a request to the Council of the League of Nations asking it to intervene with regard to violation of the rights of Jews in Romania. Despite the insistence of the French League, however, the League of Nations considered the petition to be inadmissible.49 Of course, all mentions of the Romanian League for Human Rights after 1929 might actually refer to the League in Cernăuți, which will be discussed later in this article.

44 45 46 47 48 49

Abuzurile și crimele. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 2. BDIC, Archives de collectivité: Ligue des droits de l’homme (France), F delta res 798/390. BDIC, Archives de collectivité: Ligue des droits de l’homme (France), F delta res 798/390. BDIC, Archives de collectivité: Ligue des droits de l’homme (France), F delta res 798/128. BDIC, Archives de collectivité: Ligue des droits de l’homme (France), F delta res 798/128.

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THE MAN BEHIND THE LEAGUE – CONSTANTIN G. COSTA-FORU Constantin G. Costa-Foru, founder of the Romanian League for Human Rights, was born into a wealthy and well-known Romanian family with Aromanian origins.50 His father was the first rector of Bucharest University, one of the first Romanians to bear the title Doctor of Law from a French university, minister in several governments, and signatory of a commercial treaty between Romania and Austria-Hungary in 1870 as diplomatic representative in Vienna. Constantin G. Costa-Foru himself was born in 1856 and studied in Heidelberg, Dresden and Paris. After returning to Romania, he went into politics (Conservative Party) and even became a Member of Parliament for a short period, but was soon disappointed and opened a petrol business, which was likewise unsuccessful. He finally became renowned as a publicist, starting as a collaborator in the conservative “Epoca” in 1885 and frequently writing against the National Liberal Party. CostaForu is best known for his articles in the leftist press and especially in “Adevărul”, where he became a permanent contributor in 1911, but also wrote for “Dimineață”, “Jurnalul”, “Avântul” and other newspapers. He was a staunch antimonarchist and republican as well as a Freemason, and frequently voiced objections against Germany’s militarism. In 1916, this militarism became the reason for the self-proclaimed pacifist Costa-Foru to adopt the position that Romania should enter the war. He took part in World War I himself, during which he lost his son. After World War I, Costa-Foru vigorously opposed King Ferdinand and the succeeding National Liberal governments. In 1919, he was once more elected to parliament as an independent candidate. During this period, he also served as president of the Association of the Press and worked as a lawyer, taking part in some of the famous trials of the 1920s. In October 1924, the well-known far-right and anti-Semitic politician Corneliu-Zelea Codreanu, who would establish the Iron Guard three years later, killed the police prefect of the city of Iași, Constantin Manciu. Nobody dared to defend the interests of Manciu’s widow in court except for Costa-Foru. During 1925, he was one of the lawyers in the trial of Chisinau following the Tatarbunar uprising51, and on 10 December 1925, right-wing students assaulted him at the railway station in Cluj. At the end of June 1926, CostaForu represented the Romanian League for Human Rights at the International 50 The biography of the founder of the Romanian League and the history of his family have been the subject of detailed studies both before and after 1989. The information provided here is taken from: Florea Nedelcu / Florian Tănăsescu, C. G. Costa-Foru. Din viața și opera unui mare democrat român, Cluj-Napoca 1986. Mihai Sori Rădulescu, Genealogii, Bucharest 1999, 235–247. 51 This uprising against the Romanian authorities took place in September 1924 in the village of Tatarbunar (interwar Eastern Romania, today in Ukraine). In mainstream Romanian and Soviet (Russian) historiography, there exist contradictory explanations regarding its motivation. According to one explanation the uprising was provoked by Soviet propaganda, while according to another it was entirely due to the discontent of the predominantly Slavic population, catalysed by unpopular agricultural reform.

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Congress of the International Federation for Human Rights in Brussels. He was also particularly active in the campaign for amnesty in 1928. During the final years of his life, Costa-Foru suffered from rheumatism, causing his activity to decline considerably. He died on 15 August 1935, aged 79. THE ARCHIVES After 1925 – a League under Observation As mentioned above, the few existing documents on the Romanian League for Human Rights are the files of the interwar secret services, the Siguranță. They are currently located in the National Archives of Romania, section Central Historical National Archives, and during most of the communist period were kept in the Central Archive of the Institute of History of the Party subordinate to the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party (Romanian Workers’ Party between 1948 and 1965).52 The Romanian revolution in 1989 began with the destruction of the Central Committee building housing the archives. The archives themselves were evacuated and kept by the Romanian army until 1995 53, when they were eventually transferred to the National Archives. The main archive concerning the interwar League is kept in an original Siguranță folder (Figure 1, overleaf) from the 1930s significantly entitled “Liga Drepturilor Omului ‘Costaforu’ [The League for Human Rights, ‘Costaforu’]”, thereby indicating the central position of the founder and secretary general of the organisation.54 The folder contains 127 files and begins with 3 files dating from 1945 and 194655, which proves that the entire folder was put together after 1946 (and before 1959, as the first inventory was made on 19 February 1959). It was consulted by a researcher for the first time in 1963. As early as 1964, following a decision by the Politburo, some of the files were transferred to other folders or microfilmed.56 Several other folders from the same collection contain a small number of Siguranță files57 and interwar newspaper cuttings concerning the League58, as well as letters sent to it.59 These folders were apparently also compiled during the first 52 Here I owe a debt of gratitude to my friend, Romanian historian Ovidiu Olar, who helped me find my way through the logic of the Romanian archives. 53 Ilarion Țiu, Cum a ajuns Armata în posesia Arhivei Comitetului Central al PCR, in: Sfera Politicii 177/2014, http://www.sferapoliticii.ro/sfera/177/art08-Tiu-02.php, consulted 10 January 2016. 54 ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179. 55 ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 1–3. 56 ANIC, Colecție N° 152, Liga drepturilor omului. 57 ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1178. Unlike 1179, these files are kept in a headerless folder bearing the title “Various communist materials”. 58 ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1177. 59 ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 7766.

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Figure 1. The Siguranță folder containing the main archives on the Romanian League. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179.

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Figure 2. Seal of the Romanian Workers’ Party. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179.

part of the communist period, as they are sealed with the stamp of the Romanian Workers’ Party (Figure 2). The first files in the main Siguranță folder on the League, dated 1945 and 1946, consist of regular typewritten pages with no headers. These documents (001, 002 and 003) are located ahead of the rest of the files in the folder, which generally follow a chronological order. The first file reports that the League resumed its activity on 23 August 1944 as “an association without funds that is not a legal entity”.60 A rather symbolic appearance on the very date of the Romanian coup d’état, which during the communist period was considered the start of a new fascism-free era for the country. The second file is a rather brief reconstruction of the history of the interwar League. This document is interesting because it is a perfect example of the large number of inconsistencies between various Siguranță reports regarding even basic facts concerning the League: it states, for instance, that the League was created in 1924, thereby contradicting the previous document (which specifies 192361) as well as other documents dating its foundation to 1922.62

60 ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 1. 61 ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 1. 62 ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 112.

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These inconsistencies, along with the context in which the files were written, the way and the period during which the folder was put together, and the conditions of conservation in the troubled times of the revolution in 1989, represent obvious reasons to approach these sources with caution. Nevertheless, the Siguranță files provide some priceless information on the history of the organisation and how the secret service viewed it, especially in the context of the lack of proper League archives. Chronologically, the first full report about a meeting of the League dates from 21 January 1925, nearly two years after the creation of the League. 63 It is signed by the General Inspectorate of the Siguranță in Bessarabia (the eastern province attached to the country in 1918 but disputed by the Soviet Union, and hence representing a sensitive topic in the interwar period) and gives a meticulous account of the meeting that announced the creation of a branch of the League in the town of Chisinau. Beginning with this date, and especially after Costa-Foru’s brochure containing the declarations of the victims of the Siguranță had been published in April 192564, the activities of the League were tracked more and more intensively.65 The visit by the secretary general of the French League, Henry Guernut, in Romania at the end of June 1925 was observed in great detail. 66 Following the Chisinau trial in September 1925 and the visit by Henri Torrès67, the Romanian secret service even became interested in what was happening during meetings of the French League in Paris: there is a translation68 of a press clipping from the Parisian newspaper “L’Œuvre” reporting on a meeting about the “flouted justice in Romania” (“la justice bafouée en Roumanie”) in the Salle des sociétés savantes with the participation of Barbusse, Torrès and the famous Romanian writer Panaït Istrati. Ubiquitous Monitoring The activities of other national Leagues for Human Rights, especially the Bulgarian one, were also carefully monitored:

63 ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 4–5. 64 ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1178, f. 8–12. The secret service reports the advertisement of the brochure in “Adevărul” on 7 April (f. 9) and in “Dimineață” on 9 April, as well as its ultimate appearance at newspaper kiosks on 15 April. 65 According to William Irvine, this was also the case for the French League in Paris, which was monitored by the French secret service: “The government obviously took these meetings seriously, dispatching (at least until the 1930s when the archival record runs out) hundreds of agents to report on the League’s deliberations. Rarely did a meeting of the League take place without some agent of the Ministry of the Interior (…).” William D. Irvine, Between Justice and Politics. The Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, 1898–1945, Stanford 2007, 16. 66 ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1178, f. 14. 67 The impressions of H. Torrès about the trial can be found in: Henri Torrès, Le procès de Kichinew, in: CDH, 10 February 1926. 68 ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1178, f. 17.

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In the aftermath of the trial in Chisinau, the section of the Siguranță in Giurgiu (southern Romania, near the Bulgarian border) reported in detail on the intention of the French League to launch an investigation of its own in Bulgaria, based on the suspicion that the government in Sofia was assassinating its political opponents.69 As the situation of the Bulgarian minority in southern Dobrudja was one of the important topics addressed by the League in Sofia, the Siguranță followed its activities on the issue. On 7 June 1926, the Giurgiu branch of the Romanian secret service reported70 on a meeting organised by the Bulgarian League in the town of Ruse and concerning the situation of the Bulgarian population in southern Dobrudja. In December 1929, the director general of the Siguranță was informed about the composition of the Bulgarian League’s new steering committee and its first decision to ask the Federation in Paris for help in making the necessary arrangements to obligate Romania, Yugoslavia and Greece to respect the clauses of the peace treaty regarding the protection of the Bulgarian minorities in those countries.71 In August 1933, the Giurgiu service provided a detailed report on a visit by Henri Guernut, vice-president of the French League, accompanied by Venelin Ganev, president of the Bulgarian League, to Varna in order to meet with Dobrudja refugees. The Siguranță was also interested in the attitude of the Bulgarian League towards the xenophobic and particularly anti-Semitic organisation “Kubrat”72, as well as in the applications for amnesty by Bulgarian emigrants to Paris (February 1927).73 To confirm its comprehensive tracking of the Leagues for Human Rights, the Siguranță also presented a full account of an 11 May 1927 meeting in Vienna of the Committee against the White Terror in the Balkans, chaired by the vice-president of the Austrian League, Rudolf Goldscheid.74 Furthermore, there exists a file from November 1932 regarding the intent of the German League to launch a campaign against the “reactionary governments” of various states.75 The correspondences of the League and of Costa-Foru himself were spied upon. In the archive of the Siguranță we can find a letter to Costa-Foru by a certain “Dr. Leo” concerning the pan-Germanic war and the German League for Human Rights, both in the German original and in a Romanian translation (Figure 3, overleaf). Following the logic of its main preoccupation, the Siguranță was of course also interested in the attitude of the League towards the Soviet Union. As early as June 1927, we can find clippings from newspaper analyses on this topic ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 14. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1178, f. 19–20. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 60. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 16. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 36–39. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1178, f. 37–38. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1178, f. 43.

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Figure 3. Letter addressed to C. G. Costa-Foru in the archives of the Siguranță. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1178.

in its files: an article from the newspaper “Aurora”, for instance, states that the French League had protested against summary executions in Russia with a simple press release – while elsewhere, the French League is said to “initiate

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meetings and cover Paris with inflammatory posters” in reports about Romanian or Polish convicts.76 – In 1936, the director general of the Siguranță wrote to the chief of the criminal police in Paris claiming that the Romanian services had “unmasked the communist action hidden under the name of the League for Human Rights” during the workers’ revolts in the town of Lwow. He explains that “these communist actions have their source in Paris, and it is from there that the propaganda in Poland is directed through the local Leagues for Human Rights”, and argues that “the communists’ turbulences among the intellectuals are directed from Paris not only in Poland, but also in Romania.”77 The letter also asks for information about a certain Lotterstein, who had allegedly sent money to the victims. The French police replied with a meticulous report on the individual in question, confirming that he had been fighting against the Polish government and for the defence of the rights of political prisoners in Poland. While the report claims that Lotterstein had close ties to the International Red Aid, however, it does not mention any relation to the League for Human Rights.78 The microfilmed archives79 also provide some precious information, as many of them seem to have been taken from an archive that belonged to the League itself. They feature no Siguranță headers or other signs of having been extracted from the secret service folder. One item of interest is a list of the members of the League dated 1924, a year after its creation, which shows that the League had around 1,000 members (the highest member number in the list is 992) at the time. The list contains a large number of Jewish names. Also to be found on the microfilms are Costa-Foru’s brochure on the crimes of the Siguranță, another brochure entitled “From the Houses of Death in Greater Romania” and signed by Vasile Spiru, a copy of the first statutes of the League, a number of letters addressed to the secretary general, and the manifesto for amnesty from 25 November 1928. Another Romanian League? A further interesting fact is that a large number of documents in the folder “The League for Human Rights, ‘Costa-Foru’” are not in fact related to the Bucharest organisation or its founder. At the end of August 1931, the Bucovina police inspectorate announced the establishment of a branch of the League for Human Rights, modelled on the French League, in the town of Cernăuți, an important administrative centre in the north-eastern province neighbouring the Soviet Union.80 In response to Siguranță order N° 45338-S, the Cernăuți inspectorate 76 77 78 79 80

ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1178, f. 35. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 99. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 100–102. ANIC, Colecție N° 152, Liga drepturilor omului. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 61.

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compiled a detailed report on the new organisation.81 According to this report, the organisation had “an obvious tendency towards internationalism” and was not related to either the French League or the one in Bucharest. The investigation showed that its statutes were similar to those of the German League, and that the real initiator is the German journalist Herman Lerner, 37 years old, allegedly a Romanian citizen, born in [the city of] Roman, correspondent for the newspapers “Liga des Menschenrechtes” [sic!] and “Wossische Zeitung” [sic!] situated in Berlin, where he studied for a number of years.82

According to “unconfirmed sources”, he had been “convicted of communist activity” both in Switzerland and in Germany.83 A Siguranță “History” of the Romanian League The Cernăuți League, which remained under surveillance, plays a role in the undoubtedly most informative document within the archive. In July 1937, the secret service wrote a 15-page report that narrated chronologically (starting in 1923) the history of the Romanian League for Human Rights. To this end, it used most of the data accumulated by the secret service throughout the years. This “history” could potentially be very useful for research on the League, not only because it provides hints on documents missing from the archive, but also because it offers the opportunity to read between the lines the secret service’s overall view of the League’s activity – something much more visible here than in the usual short dispatches. Naturally, the possibility that the report could be a fake should never be excluded for the previously mentioned reasons, and in this particular case also because the text is on simple typewritten pages, with no header or seal of the secret service. The motive for the creation of this “history” is declared unambiguously in the introduction of the report itself (taking into account that it was written in 1937): Among the recent decisions of the directorate of the Communist Party of Romania, related to the plan to attract the small bourgeois masses to its ideas (but not to involve them directly in the Party), is the plan to renew the League for Human Rights in the country. As is known, the League for Human Rights has its main seat in Paris and many sections in almost all the countries of Europe and America. Until a few years ago, the League for Human Rights only assumed a role of protest against the persecution of communists in different countries. But recently the League – especially the French one which is the most active and the most important – has come under the direct control of the Comintern. As a consequence, the French League for Human Rights was transformed from an organisation protesting the persecution of communists into an active political one with initiatives on an antifascist and Popular Front platform in compliance with the directives expounded by Georgi Dimitrov during the seventh

81 ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 63. 82 ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 63. 83 ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 63.

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congress of the Third International, and is one of the organisations constituting the Popular Front in France.84

The report goes on to reiterate most of the notes taken throughout the years, showing a particular sensitivity to the communist influences and the denigration of the Romanian state abroad. Thus it underlines the visit of Henri Guernut to Galati and Bucharest in June 192585, the Costa-Foru speech on the situation in Romania during the congress of the Federation in 192686, the letters sent to the secretary general by the “communist leader Georges Pioche” and by Henri Torrès87, but also the various articles in the foreign press provoked by the attitudes of the League and its leader. Besides the German, Czechoslovak and French press, the Russian newspaper “Komunist” is cited with articles in which “it comments on the exclusion of Costa-Foru from the Trade Union of Journalists [because of the publication of the brochure on the crimes of the Siguranță] and thus calumniates the Siguranță and the Romanian government.”88 Even though the report claims that the League terminated its activity in 1929 after achieving amnesty for political prisoners, the narrative continues with the activity of the Cernăuți League in 1932–1933 as though it were the same organisation. The story ends with the information that the president of the League for Human Rights in Cernăuți, Dr. Simionovici, had refused to stand by the International Federation of the Leagues because the decisions of its congress “undermined the sovereignty of the Romanian state”.89 There is no document to corroborate this claim in the archive. The conclusion of the report is full of suggestion: In close relations with the three Henris – Barbusse, Torrès, and Guernut – who, disguised as defenders of humanitarianism, had ultimately affirmed themselves as deliberate agents of the Third International, Costa-Foru, in keeping with his sentiments, defends the communist Boris Stefanov and transforms the League for Human Rights into a league against terror, an obvious emanation of the Third International in Moscow. 90

⁎⁎⁎ The First Communist History of the League (1937) According to the Siguranță, the abovementioned report had been motivated by the attempts of the Communist Party to reorganise the League and, in particular, by a honorific edition dedicated to Costa-Foru “with the title Notes from the History of

84 85 86 87 88 89 90

ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 112. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 122. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 123. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 123, 124. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 123, 124. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 125. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 125.

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the LDH91, signed Mihai Rolea, a pseudonym for the engineer Mihail Roller from the central agitprop of the Communist Party”.92 As early as 1936, the secret service reported that such an edition was being prepared.93 It was published in April– May 1937 in 3,500 copies94 (with an introduction dated March) featuring the motto “In memory of the fighter for liberty and peace C. G. Costa-Foru.”95 Distribution of this publication was undertaken at least in part by Costa-Foru’s family, as proven by a number of letters with orders for the book in the archives donated to the Institute for the History of the Party by one of the two sons of the League’s founder.96 The author claims to have used “the archives of the organisation [the League for Human Rights]”.97 He is obviously not referring to the Siguranță files that we have today, but rather to the League’s own archive (probably given to him by the family, as the book provides no references or quotations), whose traces have been lost ever since. Rolea (Roller) tells the history of the League from 1923 to 1929, focusing on four major activities of the organisation: 1. the fight for freedom of conscience (the fight for the rights of religious minorities); 2. the fight for freedom of opinion (the activity of defending persons, most of them communists, persecuted for their political beliefs or affiliation); 3. the fight against violence in politics (that is, the violence by far right organisations); 4. the fight for amnesty. Compared to the history of the League written in 1970, Rolea speaks much less about the defence of communists – a fact that appears to be based not only on the desire “to attract the small bourgeois masses”, but also on the information found in the League’s lost archive. According to Rolea, this archive held entire volumes of complaints by members of the religious minorities.98 “From the History of the Human Rights” also provides us with a very important facsimile of part of a letter by Costa-Foru to the Ministry of Cults protesting the violation of the rights of the Adventists. In the introduction to his book, Rolea, the later mainstream historian and propagandist of the Romanian Communist Party in the first years after World War II quotes a letter by the university professor Constantin Radulescu-Motru to Costa-Foru from 17 June 1923 confirming his desire to become a member of the League for Human Rights. “Your merit will be to convince our public opinion that the respect of a human being is not a leftist or a rightist idea (…).”99 The centreleft Radulescu-Motru, who had formerly been a conservative just like Costa-Foru, 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

Mihai R. Rolea, Din istoria drepturilor omului, Bucharest 1937. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 112. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 1179, f. 106. The order to the printing house Scrisul românesc can be found in the National Archives of Romania: ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 7766, f. 100. Rolea, Din istoria. ANIC, Colecție N° 50, Unit. de păstr. 7766, f. 90–98. Rolea, Din istoria, 9. Rolea, Din istoria, 9. Rolea, Din istoria, 8.

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joined the National Peasants’ Party in the late 1920s. Rolea himself emphasises that the League was “an association outside the parties” and that it included “personalities from all democratic parties”.100 Communist Romania’s History of the League (from 1970) The 1970 history of the League, already mentioned earlier in this article, uses Rolea’s book as an unquestioned source while slightly adapting its conclusions in order to conform to the requirements of the volume in which it is included. After introducing the communist origins of the League as described above, it goes on to present the leading role of the working class. Although it accepts that “the intellectuals had a significant role in organising this League”, it states that the defence of the human rights remained the responsibility of the democratic forces, and first and foremost of the workers. They have constituted the only homogeneous class capable of fighting for their own rights and for those of the other exploited social categories. 101

The same idea is repeated in different words to dispel any doubts regarding the leading role of the workers: “The League was the first legal mass organisation to include, besides the workers, a relatively large number of intellectuals.”102 The 1970 history of the League has the merit of being the most complete one, and the only one to use traceable quotations. Beside Rolea’s book, it cites the Siguranță files and the newspapers of the time. It never questions the trustworthiness of the archives, however, and omits several press articles that do not support its conclusions. Besides the already mentioned examples, there is one more that clearly evidences the tendency to distort. Once again showcasing the close relation between Moscow and Costa-Foru, the author of the 1970 history cites an article in the newspaper “Dimineață” stating that on 19 August 1925, the International Legal Office [Biroul Juridic International] in Moscow asked the Secretary General of the Romanian League for Human Rights to intervene in the case of the workers Tibuer, Rout-Rowsky and Rvinsky, whose trial was being judged in Warsaw.103

Costa-Foru’s response is not mentioned, even though it was published on the same page of the issue of “Dimineață”104 and can also be found in the Siguranță files kept in the archives of the Central Committee of the Party. It reads as follows:

100 101 102 103 104

Rolea, Din istoria, 13. Liga drepturilor omului [1970], 95. Liga drepturilor omului [1970], 103. Liga drepturilor omului [1970], 117. Liga drepturilor omului. O telegramă a biroului juridic internațional din Moscova, in: Dimineața, 20 August 1925.

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The League in the 1986 Costa-Foru Biography The same omission is made in the otherwise very well-documented anthology and biographical book on the life of Costa-Foru, written in 1986 by Florea Nedelcu and Florian Tănăsescu.106 This can be explained by the fact that the short chapter concerning the League reproduces some of the conclusions from 1970. CostaForu’s personality is presented much less one-sidedly in this biography, however: There is a curious, a paradoxical contradiction between the facts (…) and some of his [CostaForu’s] articles in which he tackles, with a slight penchant for moralising and polemic diction, the problem of “Bolshevism” (…), of the “unconsciousness” of the authorities which have employed, according to his words, inadequate methods to “fight” against “the leftist threat” etc.107

The authors reprove Costa-Foru’s “mistaken explications” of the “causes for the revolutionary movement” and the “reasons why people who suffered persecution by the authorities adhered to communism”. They explain this with a lack of clear understanding of the Marxist ideology108 and the “class limitations” which prevented Costa-Foru from “transcending his condition of humanist-democrat activist with a bourgeois imprint”.109 The “curious, paradoxical contradictions” are apparent in the following text included in the book by Nedelcu and Tănăsescu: They say I am a bad Romanian (…). A communist, a Bolshevik, sold to Moscow just like the foreigners Guernut, Torrès or Barbusse. Me, a communist! If I was, I would have said so, I have the courage. I have always been a conservative, and conservative I will remain, but not enrolled in a Party (…). If I were for sale, there are enough parties that would have bought me.

And further: It is true that I have received, on two or three occasions, letters of grateful acknowledgment from the communists in Moscow, because I have helped the communists persecuted by our

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Liga drepturilor omului. Nedelcu / Tănăsescu, Costa-Foru. Nedelcu / Tănăsescu, Costa-Foru, 66. Nedelcu / Tănăsescu, Costa-Foru, 67. Nedelcu / Tănăsescu, Costa-Foru, 67.

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government for the only reason that they were communists. The League for Human Rights, whose Secretary General I am, imposes on itself respect for all opinions (…).110

On the Impossibility of Not Being in One of the Two Camps (even from a 2005 Perspective) As we have already seen, this position of Costa-Foru did not convince the Siguranță in 1925, was ignored by the communist historiography in 1970, and was viewed as a mistake due to his bourgeois origins in 1986. But the possibility of the existence of a position opposed to both white terror and the Comintern seems not to be considered even in 2005, when Stelian Tănase mentions the League and its founder in the context of a study on the 1924 events in Tatarbunar. Tănase begins his description of “what happened” in Tatarbunar by quoting the pro-government newspaper “Universul”, thus accepting its interpretation of the events, namely that Bolshevik brigands entered Romania from the U.S.S.R. and committed atrocities in the village of Tatarbunar.111 While the events were presented as an uprising of the local population by Moscow, they were in fact a pretext for an armed intervention in the disputed province of Bessarabia. One of the consequences of the incident was a trial against their organisers, which took place in Chisinau a year later. The Comintern organised a massive campaign against this trial: “Sympathies in the press have been bought (…) in this way the brochure by Costa-Foru was financed.”112 In this context, Tănase asks: “Was he won over by the Bolshevik cause? Was he a travelling companion? Was he bought? It is hard to say today. But that the brochure was ordered and paid for by the Comintern is proven.”113 At the same time, Tănase excludes the possibility that the brochure was a continuation of the activities by Costa-Foru and the League for the defence of the human rights of the communists during 1924: The fact that Costa-Foru’s brochure was not a simple action of the defence of human rights did not go unnoticed by the professional circles in Bucharest. Behind this mask hid the Comintern, that is the interests of the U.S.S.R. The Trade Union of Journalists excluded the author [of the brochure] in December 1925 (…).114

110 C. G. Costa-Foru, Scrisori către studenți, Bucharest 1925, as cited in Nedelcu / Tănăsescu, Costa-Foru, 245. 111 Tănase, Clienții, 79. 112 Tănase, Clienții, 81. 113 Tănase, Clienții, 82. 114 Tănase, Clienții, 82.

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CONCLUSION The relations of the Romanian League for Human Rights with Moscow, the Comintern or the Romanian Communist Party are at the very centre of the debate regarding the organisation – not only in recent texts dealing with it, but already in the discussions during its period of existence. The same is true for another southeastern European interwar league: the Bulgarian one.115 Paradoxically, the activity of the league in Sofia has received a diametrically opposite interpretation by communist historiography. Despite operating with the same mind-map (“bourgeois” against “communists”), the historians of the communist period on the southern bank of the Danube saw the local league as a “bourgeois” organisation par excellence: according to Velichko Georgiev, it was created in 1922 to help the members of the right-wing Constitutional block, and collaborated with the bourgeois governments of the 1920s and 1930s.116 Was the Bulgarian League so different? Was it more “on the right” because of the particular context in which it was established (the violent years of the agrarian government of Aleksandar Stamboliyski), because of the fact that Bulgaria was among the losers of World War I (and, in contrast to Romania, had to protect minorities outside of its borders), or perhaps because of the comparatively much stronger and more violent communist movement in Bulgaria during the first part of the 1920s? Or is it only a matter of interpretation, of the particular needs of the respective communist historiography? In the memoires of the right-wing Bulgarian Prime Minister Aleksander Tsankov, responsible for the white terror during his government (1923–1926), we can read conclusions regarding the League that are similar to those of the Romanian governing elite of the time. On the 1925 Sveta Nedelia church assault, Tsankov writes: The infernal plan [to take advantage of the assault in order to seize power] of the Comintern has failed. But the fight against the government and against Bulgaria continues through other means. Always at the front line is the League for Human Rights. The fight takes place all over Europe (…).117

Documents exist, however, that show that the Bulgarian League took a stand both against Tsankov’s terror and against the perpetrators of the assault.

115 More information about the Bulgarian League can be found in my contribution to the first study of the archives of the French League for Human Rights: Stilyan Deyanov, La Ligue bulgare à travers les archives de la Ligue française, in: Grégory Cingal / Sonia Combe (eds.), Retour de Moscou. Les archives de la Ligue des droits de l’homme 1898–1940, Paris 2004, 71–82. 116 Величко Георгиев [Velichko Georgiev], Масонството в България [Freemasonry in Bulgaria], Sofia 1986. 117 Александър Цанков [Alexander Tsankov], България в бурно време. Спомени [Bulgaria in turbulent times. Memoirs], Sofia 1999. See pages 193, 220 and 222.

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A full comparison between the Bulgarian and the Romanian League would merit a study in itself, and is of course not the topic of this conclusion. It can help us to transcend the perspective from which they were described through the years and go beyond the Manichean “communist” vs. “bourgeois” juxtaposition, however: the entirely opposite definitions in communist historiography of two organisations that were similar in so many aspects ultimately illustrate the relativeness of the two clichés. If we look beyond these extreme definitions, we would likely see two organisations which were neither “too communist” nor too “bourgeois”, but simply trying to deal with actors ready to stigmatise them as belonging to one of the two “camps”. Of course, replacing theses clichés with a third, namely “authentic defenders of human rights”, would be similarly unproductive as it would hide from our sight the many contradictions existing between the different members of the leagues, between the different periods of their existence, and between their different reactions to both internal and external events. Naturally, what the true relations of the two mentioned leagues with Moscow and the Comintern were remains a topic of prime interest. The study of the Romanian and Bulgarian examples (expressing a particular (south-)eastern European sensibility to this relation, understandable due of the geographic proximity of the “big brother”) can provide precious information facilitating analysis of the activities of other national leagues for which these topics may have been less important. Finally, returning to the Romanian League exclusively, a further study of its dealings should probably take into account other explanations for the decline (or the ceasing) of its activity after 1928–1929 besides the usual starting with 1928, when the workers’ movement intensified its fight for amnesty (…), most of the members of the League concentrated around a new organisation initiated and led by the Romanian Communist Party, namely the Committee for Amnesty. 118

The deaths of two of Costa-Foru’s main political enemies, King Ferdinand I and Prime Minister Ion I. C. Brătianu (in 1927), the rise to power of the National Peasants’ Party in 1928, the obtainment of amnesty, Costa-Foru’s own advanced age and his possible suspicion of Comintern infiltration119 of the League are hypotheses that likewise deserve to be explored.

118 Liga drepturilor omului [1970], 123. 119 And this not only with regard to the Romanian League, but also to the French one. Referring to the lack of a strong reaction by the league in Paris to the Moscow trials (1936–1938), Emmanuel Naquet says: “But starting at the end of the 1920s, a more distant look and even a lack of interest can be observed. The collectivisation, the ongoing industrialisation, the planification of the economy gave rise only to a few published texts. (…) The Ligue des droits de l’homme could have denounced or at least studied the effects of dekulakisation in particular, and the Stalinisation of the regime in general.” See Emmanuel Naquet, Pour l’Humanité. La Ligue des droits de l’homme de l’affaire Dreyfus à la défaite de 1940, Rennes 2014, 559f.

THE AUSTRIAN LEAGUE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS AND ITS INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (1926–1938) Christopher Treiblmayr INTRODUCTION The Austrian League for Human Rights is Austria’s oldest human rights organisation. It was officially founded in 1926 and quickly became involved in a variety of activities. After the National Socialists took power in Austria in 1938, the League was dissolved; immediately after the end of the World War II, it was reestablished under a new executive committee. Since its foundation, the organisation has championed a universal approach of safeguarding human rights and has always been part of a network of international human rights leagues. The world’s first league, the Ligue pour la défense des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, was founded in France in 1898 in response to the anti-Semitic Dreyfus affair. Its members initially campaigned for the wrongfully convicted Captain Alfred Dreyfus, but soon turned to other matters as well. Central among these was the improvement of relations between France and Germany, a concern they shared with the anti-militaristic Bund Neues Vaterland, founded in Berlin in 1914. The cooperation between these two civil society organisations was stepped up in 1921/22, when the Bund Neues Vaterland changed its name to Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte and the French League to Ligue française des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, and both bodies together established an umbrella organisation based in Paris so that they now formed national sections of an international association of human rights leagues, the Ligue internationale or Fédération internationale des (ligues des) droits de l’homme (FIDH). Although further human rights leagues had already been established in other countries like Belgium, where the secondoldest league had been founded in 1901, the establishment of an umbrella organisation in 1922 gave this civil society network an enormous boost. A substantial number of additional national sections were subsequently founded or emerged from other associations that changed their names.1 The present contribution aims to provide insight into a research project on the history of the Austrian national 1

See Erich Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert “im Dienst der Menschheit” – Grundlagen und Entwicklung der “Österreichischen Liga für Menschenrechte” (I), in: Das Menschenrecht. Offizielles Organ der Österreichischen Liga für Menschenrechte 31/1976, no. 4, 2–7, 2f. As Gilles Manceron shows in his contribution to this volume, the name of the international umbrella organisation varied in the period before World War II. In the following, my use of the name takes its cue from the respective sources.

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section of the International League conducted at the Department of History at the University of Vienna, with a particular focus on the first phase of the League’s existence from the preparations for its foundation in the early 1920s until its dissolution in 1938.2 Its activities during this period will be contextualised within Austrian and European contemporary history with particular attention to the League’s international relations. It should be emphasised that although the organisation had been formed according to the model of the French mother league, and thus had similarities to it and other sister leagues like the German League, with which it had close ties, it was also a “typically Austrian” organisation due to the particularities of Austria’s civil society and history. These particularities will become apparent in an overview of the development of the League after World War II in the final section of this essay. CURRENT STATE OF RESEARCH AND SOURCES An overall history of the Austrian League for Human Rights is a research desideratum.3 The most comprehensive historical paper on the League’s history so far is a series of articles written by its former secretary general Erich Körner in 1976 and 1977 for its magazine “Das Menschenrecht”. They cover the period from the foundation through the late 1940s.4 Detailed comparison of Körner’s sources, including files from the Austrian State Archives, reveal the apologetic undertones of the articles he wrote on the occasion of the League’s fiftieth anniversary in 1976, however.5 In these texts, he assumed that either the responsible leaders in the past 2

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On the research project, see the introduction to this volume by Wolfgang Schmale and Christopher Treiblmayr. I would like to thank Christa Donnermair, Brita Pohl, Peter Stadlbauer, Stephan Stockinger and Thomas Tretzmüller for their translation and proofreading support. The author is currently working on a monograph on the League’s history. An overview is available in: Wolfgang Schmale / Christopher Treiblmayr, Human Rights Leagues and Civil Society (1898–ca. 1970s), in: Historische Mitteilungen 27/2015, 186–208, 189–199, which also includes more information about other publications on the League by the author. The present contribution integrates parts of these publications. Other studies on individual aspects of the League’s work as well as key personalities will be cited below. Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert I. Idem, Ein halbes Jahrhundert “im Dienst der Menschheit” – Grundlagen und Entwicklung der “Österreichischen Liga für Menschenrechte” (II), in: Das Menschenrecht. Offizielles Organ der Österreichischen Liga für Menschenrechte 32/1977, no. 1, 2–7. Idem, Ein halbes Jahrhundert “im Dienst der Menschheit” – Grundlagen und Entwicklung der “Österreichischen Liga für Menschenrechte” (III), in: Das Menschenrecht. Offizielles Organ der Österreichischen Liga für Menschenrechte 32/1977, no. 2, 3–6. Idem, Ein halbes Jahrhundert “im Dienst der Menschheit” – Grundlagen und Entwicklung der “Österreichischen Liga für Menschenrechte” (IV), in: Das Menschenrecht. Offizielles Organ der Österreichischen Liga für Menschenrechte 32/1977, no. 3, 2–4. Idem, Ein halbes Jahrhundert “im Dienst der Menschheit” – Grundlagen und Entwicklung der “Österreichischen Liga für Menschenrechte” (V), in: Das Menschenrecht. Offizielles Organ der Österreichischen Liga für Menschenrechte 32/1977, no. 4, 2–5. This fundamentally apologetic attitude is even more pronounced in a lecture given by chairman Erwin Kulka on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the League in 1951, which was

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had destroyed the League’s archives in order to protect their members, or that they had been confiscated by the National Socialists and since been lost. In fact, the detailed post-war League archive contains only a very limited amount of material concerning the association’s history in the First Republic6, and no information at all regarding the fate of individual League members following its dissolution in 1938. With the exception of the mentioned series of articles by Körner, there are hardly any further references to the association’s pre-war history in its magazine, which has been published under several different names since 1946. As our research so far has shown, however, the pre-war archives were only partially destroyed in the context of the so-called Anschluss of Austria to the German Reich in 1938. We have been able to ascertain that the “Österreich Auswertungskommando”, a National Socialist evaluation department on Austria, seized the archive and sent it to Berlin, where it was analysed for its ideological positions. Towards the end of World War II, the archives were then confiscated a second time, this time by the Red Army, and taken to a so-called “Special Archive” of the intelligence services in Moscow. While a large part of the material that had been confiscated by the National Socialists remained in this secret archive, which was not even officially recognised until the 1990s, the reports by the Auswertungskommando found their way into the secret National Socialist Archives of the Ministry of State Security in the GDR and eventually, post-1990, into the Federal Archives in Berlin. Although not explicitly mentioned in the inventory, reports on the League and several original documents were contained in the files of the Auswertungskommando. We have also been able to identify substantial material in the so-called “Special Archive” in Moscow, in particular in its Masonic collections. While the author had already reviewed copies of certain files at the Grand Masonic Lodge in Vienna and in Professor Günter K. Kodek’s private archives, the support by the German Historical Institute and the Austrian Embassy7 allowed him to examine previously unknown founding documents in Moscow in 2010, which confirmed a strong Masonic influence in the founding phase of the League. Masonic researcher Bernd Gallob, who made himself availa-

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also printed in the association’s magazine. His affirmative approach may be understandable from the point of view of the immediate post-war years. For academic research, however, the treatise is of limited value. Erwin Kulka, 25 Jahre Österreichische Liga für Menschenrechte, in: Das Menschenrecht. Offizielles Organ der Österreichischen Liga für Menschenrechte / Österreichischer Landesverband, 1951, no. 8/9, 4–7. Due to several relocations and limited spatial capacity, the archive of the League experienced precarious situations several times. In cooperation with the League, an archiving solution was found at QWIEN – Center for gay/lesbian culture and history in 2016. The archive is currently being analysed by the project team. For the pre-1938 period, it contains only the documents Körner had collected as a basis for his series of articles. The author was able to use this material, which was previously not accessible to research, for the present contribution. The quoted archive signatures follow an archive register begun by Thomas Brendel and since continued by the author. Work in Moscow was facilitated by the fact that after lengthy negotiations, some of the Austrian “prize files” were returned to the Austrian State Archive in 2009, where we were able to review them.

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ble to the project and facilitated contact with the Grand Masonic Lodge in Vienna, had already indicated this connection.8 The Masonic aspect was also emphasised more recently in Günter K. Kodek’s encyclopaedia of Austrian Masonic Lodge members9 and Marcus G. Patka’s 2011 study entitled “Freemasonry and Social Reform”.10 Neither was able to draw upon the files from Berlin or those from the Special Archive in Moscow, however. A hitherto unknown part of the League’s association files that was identified at the Austrian State Archive also enabled us to shed further light on the Masonic involvement in the League during the early phase of its existence. This would not have been possible without the Masonic encyclopaedia by Kodek, which allowed us to identify the exact number of Freemasons in the Austrian League’s leadership before 1938. It is as yet the only such analysis for any human rights league. In regard to international contacts before World War II, we were able to review files on the French Ligue des droits de l’homme and the Ligue internationale or Fédération internationale with references to Austria in the collections of the Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine (BDIC) in Paris, as well as to analyse the French League’s magazine – “Les Cahiers des droits de l’homme”. Combined with further documents from Austrian, Swiss and Israeli archives, this source material allows us to present the first comprehensive history of the Austrian League for Human Rights during the first phase of its existence. PREPARATIONS FOR THE FOUNDATION OF THE LEAGUE With the end of World War I in 1918, the nearly 640 years of Habsburg rule in Austria came to an end. The Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy fell apart and the Republic of Austria was proclaimed on 12 November 1918, but many doubted its viability. In February 1919, the first elections were held in a state that, in the wake of the reorganisation of Europe, had no fixed territory. After the elections for a national constitutional convention, Karl Renner (1870–1950), a social democrat and state chancellor from 1918, formed a coalition government with the Christian Social Party. A merger of Austria with Germany, which many wanted at the time of the establishment of the state and in the following years, was prohibited by the peace treaties of Versailles and St. Germain. Until 1926, the domestic political situation remained relatively peaceful despite these political upheavals and serious economic difficulties, although tensions between the Social Democrats and the 8

Bernd Gallob, Die Österreichische Liga für Menschenrechte. Ein Bericht zu ihrer Gründung, in: Margarete Grandner / Wolfgang Schmale / Michael Weinzierl (eds.), Grund- und Menschenrechte. Historische Perspektiven – Aktuelle Problematiken, Vienna / Munich 2002, 350–367. 9 Günter K. Kodek, Unsere Bausteine sind die Menschen. Die Mitglieder der Wiener Freimaurer-Logen 1869–1938, Vienna 2009. Idem, Die Kette der Herzen bleibt geschlossen. Mitglieder der österreichischen Freimaurer-Logen 1945 bis 1985, Vienna 2014. 10 Marcus G. Patka, Freimaurerei und Sozialreform. Der Kampf für Menschenrechte, Pazifismus und Zivilgesellschaft in Österreich, Vienna 2011.

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Christian Social Party gradually increased and would eventually lead to the civil war of 1934 and the demise of democracy.11 The preparations for and the eventual foundation of the Austrian League for Human Rights also took place in this period of change in the aftermath of World War I, starting in the early 1920s. The leading personality for these preparations was the Viennese Jewish sociologist, philosopher, journalist, and sexual reformer Rudolf Goldscheid (1870–1931). An independent scholar, Goldscheid was a board member of the popular education association Wiener Urania, co-founder of the German Society of Sociology and the Austrian League of Monists, and had considerable influence as a publicist at the time.12 Like many members of the League for Human Rights in the First Republic, Goldscheid was a proponent of “Viennese Reformism”, a term designating an inhomogeneous movement mainly based in an enlightened liberal bourgeoisie that saw France as an example of many achievements of social progress. Transforming society on the basis of rational education was one of the goals of these enlightened reformers; legal standards were meant to contribute to a more modern lifestyle, international treaties were to ban war. Values like humanity, peace and pacifism were thus essential, and the reformers regarded them not only as guidelines for everyday life, but wanted them to define national and international policies. Without necessarily being party members, the supporters of this current were influenced by the progressive policies of Social Democracy in the interwar years, which aimed to create a working-class counter-culture in “Red Vienna”. Like Goldscheid, many of these intellectuals maintained close ties with Freemasonry.13 Until his death in 1931, Goldscheid also decisively influenced the League’s international contacts. As early as 4 November 1923, he delivered a salutatory address to the delegates of the annual conference of the International League in Paris. We will set to work in Austria to spread the ideas of the Declaration of Human Rights, we will keep you informed of the development of public opinion in our country, and we will work with all of you to destroy the belief in the creative force of violence.

This was how his address was reported in “Les Cahiers des droits de l’homme”.14 As we know today, his words were slightly premature: it would be another three years before the Austrian League was formally established. Goldscheid not only represented Austria at the conferences of the Ligue internationale or Fédération 11 See Karl Vocelka, Geschichte Österreichs. Kultur – Gesellschaft – Politik, Graz / Vienna / Cologne 2002, 272–278. 12 See Feliks J. Bister, Rudolf Goldscheid und die Österreichische Liga für Menschenrechte, in: Mitchell G. Ash / Christan H. Stifter (eds.), Wissenschaft, Politik und Öffentlichkeit. Von der Wiener Moderne bis zur Gegenwart, Vienna 2002, 321–328. Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert I, 3–6. 13 See Patka, Freimaurerei, 9f. On “Red Vienna”, see Vocelka, Geschichte Österreichs, 279– 285. 14 Le Congrès Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l’Homme. Première Séance (Dimanche, 4 Novembre 1923), in: Les Cahiers des droits de l’homme (CDH), 25 November 1923, 507– 512, 511.

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Figure 1. Rudolf Goldscheid, courtesy of the Picture Archives and Graphics Department of the Austrian National Library, NB 520547-B.

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internationale, but also acted as a liaison to the German League for Human Rights, in whose predecessor organisation he had already been involved. From 1921 to 1924, he served as acting editor of the pacifist monthly “Die Friedenswarte”, founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Alfred H. Fried, and remained a member of its editorial board even after resigning from the editorial department. In 1921, Goldscheid was also elected onto the board of the new German League for Human Rights.15 While not a member of the Grand Lodge of Vienna re-established in 1918 after a period of prohibition, Goldscheid was a member of the Masonic association Zur aufgehenden Sonne (Rising Sun).16 His fellow Masons and “motors” during the founding phase of the League were Heinrich Engländer (1879–1939), Alexander Mintz (1865–1940), Robert Pelzer (b. 1874), Siegfried Norbert Rumpler (b. 1873) and Karl Winter (b. 1882), all of whom had a background in jurisprudence.17 Together with the academic painter, actor, journalist and writer Rudolf Huber-Wiesenthal (1884–1983), publisher Fritz S. Kohn and senior executive Julian M. Lenard (b. 1878), who were likewise Lodge members18, these men formed a proponent committee pursuing the foundation of the League19, which was thus composed exclusively of Freemasons.20 As humanity and “a general love of humankind” are the cornerstones of Masonic ethics, and the 18th-century American and French declarations of human rights developed with the participation of Freemasons were key points of reference in the Masonic worldview, the commitment of Masons to human rights,

15 See Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert I, 4. 16 See Patka, Freimaurerei, 24; Gallob, Österreichische Liga, 354. The “Rising Sun” was an irregular association, i.e. one not recognised by the Grand Lodge. On the organisational structure of Masonry and “irregular” Lodges, see Helmut Reinalter, Die Freimaurer, Munich 2006, in particular 59–68. 17 Engländer was accepted into the Lodge Humanitas in 1924, Mintz into the border Lodge Humanitas in 1907, Pelzer into the border Lodge Goethe in 1909, Rumpler into the border Lodge Humanitas in 1899, and Winter into Sokrates in 1922. See Kodek, Unsere Bausteine, 79, 236, 295, 382. In 1930, Mintz suggested that the commitment to human rights be included into the constitution of the Grand Lodge of Vienna, into which he was elected as honorary member in 1935. See Protocol of the 21 st session of the Grand Lodge of Vienna on 30 November 1935, Masonic Collections, 1412-1-395, “Special Archive”, Moscow. 18 Huber-Wiesenthal was accepted into the Lodge Zukunft in 1921, Kohn was affiliated with the Lodge Pionier and was a high-grade Mason from 1925. Lenard was affiliated with Masonry since his acceptance into the Lodge Lessing Zu den 3 Ringen in 1920; he was the executive director of the Wiener Neustädter Chemische Industrie AG. See Kodek, Unsere Bausteine, 161f., 187, 211. On the high grades, who aimed for a deeper understanding of Masonic teaching, see Reinalter, Die Freimaurer, in particular 7f. 19 See Announcement of the intent of forming the association Oesterreichische Liga für Menschenrechte, Archiv der Republik (AdR), Bundeskanzleramt (BKA), GZ 157 343-9/25, Kart. 3707, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv (ÖStA). 20 Adolf Vetter, the League’s first president, also seems to have been involved in the preparations. See minutes of the constituting general assembly, 16 March 1926, AdR, BKA, GZ 157 343-9/25, Kart. 3707, ÖStA. He was not a Mason as will be discussed below.

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tolerance and peace does not come as a surprise.21 As early as 1922, the Grand Lodge of Vienna had defined the “promotion of internal and external peace” as one of its goals and decided to pursue suitable public activities for its realisation.22 In 1925, the Grand Lodge also proclaimed the promotion of internal and external peace as an annual theme.23 In a similar vein, Engländer announced in the “Wiener Freimaurer-Zeitung” in April of the same year that “the foundation of an Austrian branch of the League for Human Rights [had] already been launched some time ago”.24 In Lodge meetings during the following period, the proponents explained how this foundation after the French example was to function as a tool to realise Masonic public activities.25 In the 102nd session of the “Grand Officer Collegiate of the Grand Lodge of Vienna”, Mintz proposed “the foundation of a profane association, the ‘Austrian League of Human Rights’” on 24 November 1925, arguing that maybe the time has come in Austria, as it is the case now in Germany and France, to propagate Masonic principles in public. However, this should not be done in a heavy-handed manner, the connection to M[asonry] should not be obvious (…). This association opens the door to the external world, through which the latter may enter into it. But no-one should be allowed to become a member who has not been recommended by 2 members of the central committee.26

Several references to the Austrian League in “Les Cahiers des droits de l’homme” testify to the contact with France during this period.27 The index of member leagues of the Ligue internationale dating from September 1925 already lists an Austrian organisation, albeit not naming Goldscheid but Josef Redlich as a contact.28 Redlich, a high-ranking politician and renowned legal scholar, had an international reputation29 and, as a non-Mason, also fit the concept of “covert” public activity described by Mintz. 21 See Reinalter, Die Freimaurer, 40–45. 22 See Statement of accounts for the year 1925, given during the annual meeting on 14 May 1926, Masonic Collections, 1412-1-303, “Special Archive”, Moscow. 23 See Hubert Rainer, Freimaurerei in Österreich 1871 bis 1938, in: Zirkel und Winkelmaß. 200 Jahre Große Landesloge der Freimaurer. Katalog zur 86. Sonderausstellung des Historischen Museums der Stadt Wien, 8. März bis 27. Mai 1984, Vienna 1984, 31–46, 43. 24 Heinrich Engländer, Eine österreichische Liga für Menschenrechte, in: Wiener FreimaurerZeitung 6/1924, no. 4, 27f., 27. 25 For example Heinrich Engländer in February 1926. See Protocol on a work of the 1st degree, 11 February 1926, Masonic Collection, 1412-1-308, “Special Archive”, Moscow. A report by Alexander Mintz can be found in: Protocol on a work of the 1st degree, 12 May 1926, Masonic Collections, 1412-1-308, “Special Archive”, Moscow. 26 Protocol of the 102nd session of the Grand Lodge of Vienna on 24 November 1925, Masonic Collections, 1412-1-388, “Special Archive”, Moscow. 27 In February 1925, for instance, a short notice reports that the Austrian League joined the French League’s protest of the rights violations under the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera. Ligue autrichienne, in: CHD, 10 February 1925, 90. 28 CHD, 5 September 1925, 399. 29 Redlich, born 1869, was a jurist, member of the Reichstag from 1907–1918, and Minister of Finance in the last weeks of the monarchy. He held the same office again for a few months in

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On 22 December 1925, Engländer informed the Federal Chancellery, Department of Internal Affairs of the intent to form an association according to the provisions of the Associations Act.30 The notification of “non-prohibition of the formation of an association” was passed on 29 December 1925.31 Accordingly, Engländer was able to report advanced preparations for the foundation in the “Wiener Freimaurer-Zeitung” in January 1926, and to call upon Lodge members to join the new association. In addition to individual legal aid as a contribution to a “democratic control of justice and administration”, the League would also act “alone or in agreement with its sister leagues against any collective injustice, against any general violation of the fundamental rights it protects”. Even though the number of League members might initially be low, it was confident its long-term activity would, “as with the famous sister league in France, give it the necessary prestige and the corresponding spiritual weight. For the League will and shall only use spiritual arms.”32 The statutes of the League were drafted in the same vein. According to their first paragraph, its activity for the protection and defence of human rights “aims to safeguard the cultural development of the individual and the community”. Its intent was to bring about social justice and international understanding, which was to be accomplished through a non-partisan approach: “The League is not a political association. It addresses all like-minded persons, without difference of their nationality, their religious or political creed.” The association promoted human rights, states paragraph three, “by organising lectures and meetings, by drafting petitions, and by publishing books, magazines and other printed material”.33 Potential candidate members had to confirm in writing that they agreed with the association’s goals and to disclose who had proposed them as members34, establishing the sponsorship system suggested by Mintz and ensuring Masonic influence.

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1931. He began his academic career at the University of Vienna, and from 1926 to 1934 held the chair of comparative constitutional and administrative law at Harvard University. See Felix Czeike, Historisches Lexikon Wien, vol. 5, Vienna 1995, 644, as contained in Biographische Sammlung Josef Redlich, 3.13.A18-R., Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv (WStLA). In literature, his first name is spelled inconsistently, i.e. Josef/Joseph. Announcement of the intent of forming the association Oesterreichische Liga für Menschenrechte. Excerpt and transcript of the file recorded at the Bundespolizeidirektion Wien (Vereinsbüro), effected on 23 August 1976. Notification of 29 December 1925, Ordner 1926–1938, VII/1, Archives of the Austrian League for Human Rights. Erich Körner had this excerpt made when preparing his aforementioned series of articles. Heinrich Engländer, Zur Gründung der “Oesterreichischen Liga für Menschenrechte”, in: Wiener Freimaurer-Zeitung 8/1926, no. 1, 18f., 18 (emphases spaced in the original). Statutes of the association “Österreichische Liga für Menschenrechte”, AdR, BKA, GZ 157 343-9/25, Kart. 3707, ÖStA. Annex to the statutes of the association “Österreichische Liga für Menschenrechte”, AdR, BKA, GZ 157 343-9/25, Kart. 3707, ÖStA.

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The French League and the international umbrella organisation were kept up to date on the preparations in Austria.35 On 2 March 1926, the president of the Hungarian League and board member of the French League, Paul (Pál) Szende, a Freemason, former Hungarian Finance Minister and journalist working in Austria, represented the Austrian League at a meeting of the Conseil of the Ligue internationale in Paris, and informed the council of the imminent official foundation.36 THE PRIME OF THE LEAGUE’S WORK FROM THE FOUNDATION IN 1926 TO THE CIVIL WAR OF 1934 The constituting general assembly took place on 16 March 1926, and the League finally took official form. The strategy of avoiding an obvious connection to Freemasonry was realised by gaining the support of further non-Masonic figureheads for its leadership, first and foremost the first president of the League, Adolf Vetter (1867–1942), who formed the executive committee of the central board of directors with Vice-Presidents Goldscheid and Pelzer. Heinrich Engländer and Karl Winter became secretaries, Hermann Oppenheim and Fritz Kohn were elected treasurer and deputy treasurer. Besides these individuals, the session minutes of the constituting general assembly list the following board members: Max Strauß, Friedrich Hertz, Siegfried Rumpler, Rudolf Huber-Wiesenthal, Karl Habeck, Emanuel Moldauer, Ludwig Brügel, Fritz Kohn, and Lotte Heller. Alexander Hatschek and Max Kassner declared their willingness to act as auditors.37 In addition to those mentioned above, financier Oppenheim, sociologist and author Hertz, regional court justice Habeck, lawyer Moldauer, journalist Brügel, bank director Hatschek and director of the Viennese Bank Corporation Kassner were Freemasons38, and the only members of this first board who were not associated with Freemasonry were therefore President Vetter and Lotte Heller, an interpreter of Russian. Vienna-born jurist Vetter was the director of the Office of Trade Promotion; he was made head of the department in 1919 and acted as president of the Federal Theatres Administration until his retirement in 1922. He was also a

35 See CDH, 15 May 1926, 230. 36 See CDH, 15 May 1926, 232. Szende, a jurist born in 1879, had been Hungarian Finance Minister from November 1918 to January 1919 and later worked as a journalist with the “Arbeiter-Zeitung” from 1919–1920. In 1925, he transferred from the Budapest Lodge Martinovics to the Viennese Lodge Labor. See Kodek, Unsere Bausteine, 351. 37 In the same session, an additional ten persons were nominated for an arbitrating body which was to be consulted in the case of internal association disputes: Richard Schlesinger, Heinrich Glücksmann, Benno Kahane, Siegfried Kelbl, Siegfried Türkl, Norbert Dohan, Wladimir Misař, Oskar Trebitsch, Max Schüller, and Franz Stöhr. Minutes of the constituting general assembly on 16 March 1926, AdR, BKA, GZ 157 343-9/25, Kart. 3707, ÖStA. The statutes of the League actually stipulated an arbitrating body of twelve. It is not clear why only ten people were nominated, nor do we know the composition of this arbitrating body at a later date or whether it was ever appealed to before 1938. 38 See Kodek, Unsere Bausteine, 253, 150f., 135, 237f., 55, 141, 176.

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member of the Social Democratic Party and remained president of the League until the civil war of 1934.39 Over the following period, personnel changes in the League’s leadership were common. According to an election notice dated 21 May 1926, Pelzer left the executive committee on that date but remained on the board of directors. To replace him, Mintz was elected vice-president, which he remained until 1930. Habeck withdrew from the board on the same day.40 Until the League’s dissolution in 1938, the following persons also served as board members:41 Franz Theodor Csokor, Robert Eigenberger, Leo Fleischer, Konrad Fleischner, Josef Hupka, August Maria Kemetter, president of the League from 1934 to 1938, Ernst Lothar (alias Ernst Lothar Sigismund Müller), Rosa Mayreder, Adolf Ortmann, Joseph Redlich, Franz Ronzal, Maximilian Schiff, Hans Schlesinger, Maximilian Schreier, Gustav Schuster, Hans Thirring, Hans Tietze, and Julius Wilhelm. Membership in a Lodge is established for newspaper editor Fleischer, lawyer Fleischner, director of the Theater in der Josefstadt and head of the Reinhardt Seminar Lothar, middle school director Ronzal, academic painter Schiff, lawyer and later grand master of the Grand Lodge of Vienna Schlesinger, journalist Schreier and civil servant Schuster.42 Schuster also served as secretary general to the League from 1931.43 The Freemasons were not as strongly represented in the advisory board of the League, which had an advisory function and was intended to strengthen the public prestige of the League by including well-known personalities. There were however occasions of switching functions between the board and the advisory council. From 1926 to 1930, the following individuals were members of the advisory council: author Wilhelm Börner, jurist Carl Brockhausen, author Franz Theodor Csokor, academic painter Robert Eigenberger, jurist and anthropologist Emil Goldmann, medical doctor Viktor Hammerschlag, Burgtheater actor and film director Albert Heine, jurist Josef Hupka, lawyer Franz Kobler, painter and author Rosa Mayreder, and Romance language scholar Elise Richter. From 1930 to 1934, the elected members of the advisory council were: Franz Theodor Csokor, Robert Eigenberger, Josef Hupka, Rosa Mayreder, and popular educator and author Kurt

39 See Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert II, 2. 40 Excerpt and transcript of the file recorded at the Bundespolizeidirektion Wien (Vereinsbüro), effected on 23 August 1976. Election notice of members of the central board of directors of 17 March 1926 and election notice of 21 May 1926 to the associations authorities, Ordner 1926–1938, VII/1, Archives of the Austrian League for Human Rights. 41 Listed according to Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert II, 2, and idem, Ein halbes Jahrhundert III, 3. 42 See Kodek, Unsere Bausteine, 92f., 219, 289, 304f., 307f., 315f., 318. 43 See Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert II, 2. Schuster, born 1863, was Imperial and Royal comptroller as well as secretary of the Austrian Peace Society. He was accepted into the border Lodge Sokrates in 1914. See Kodek, Unsere Bausteine, 318.

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Reichl.44 Among the ranks of the advisory council only Goldmann, Hammerschlag and Reichl were affiliated with a Lodge.45 The first public event of the newly-established League took place on 10 May 1926. It shows the key importance of the international network of the League in this early phase of its existence: in the Albert Einstein Archives in Jerusalem is a postcard dated 9 May 1926, written at the house of Felix Ehrenhaft and his wife Olga Ehrenhaft-Steindler and sent to Albert Einstein, member of the German League for Human Rights. One day before the event at the Great Banquet Room of the Association of Engineers and Architects in Vienna, it happily states: “We are now founding an Austrian League of Human Rights here.” Besides Goldscheid’s name, it bears the signatures of President Vetter and the president of the French mother league, Paul Langevin, as well as that of the chairman of the German League, Robert Kuczynski.46 The speeches by the latter two are documented in the journal of the German League. Langevin spoke on the subject of “The League for Human Rights and Peace”47, while Kuczynski framed a programmatic commitment to the United States of Europe as the goal of the International Federation of Leagues and its member leagues, “founded on the respect of human rights and aiming to protect the human rights”.48 The following welcome speeches were held by former State Chancellor Karl Renner, the vice-president of the chamber of lawyers Abel, advisory council member Richter, and Richard Schlesinger as the representative of the Grand Lodge of Vienna.49 “What is expressed in the statutes of the League”, the “Wiener Freimaurer-Zeitung” quoted Schlesinger, “could easily be found in the statutes of the Grand Lodge.”50 On the occasion of the presentation of the accountability report for the year 1925 during the general assembly on 14 May 1926, a few days after this first public League event, the Grand Lodge again emphasised that it expressly welcomed the great interest the foundation of the League had been met with among many of its brethren, and strongly recommended joining it. 51 As the “Friedenswarte” reported, the international umbrella organisation at this time 44 See Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert II, 2. 45 See Kodek, Unsere Bausteine, 119, 139, 280. 46 Postcard to Albert Einstein, 9 May 1926, 15-381, Albert Einstein Archives, Jerusalem. I would like to thank Barbara Wolff from the Einstein Archives for pointing out this source. Originally, the plan was for Langevin to come to Vienna for the constituting general assembly nearly two months earlier, which does not seem to have happened, however. See CDH, 15 May 1926, 230. 47 Printed in: Die Menschenrechte. Organ der Deutschen Liga für Menschenrechte 1/1926, no. 5, 1–3. 48 Robert Kuczynski, Die Tätigkeit der Deutschen Liga für Menschenrechte und die internationale Zusammenarbeit der Ligen, in: Die Menschenrechte. Organ der Deutschen Liga für Menschenrechte 1/1926, no. 5, 3–6, 6. 49 See Die Österreichische Liga für Menschenrechte, in: Die Menschenrechte. Organ der Deutschen Liga für Menschenrechte 1/1926, no. 4, 1–3. 50 Liga für Menschenrechte, in: Wiener Freimaurer-Zeitung 8/1926, no. 6, 21f. 51 Accountability report for the year 1925, submitted to the general assembly on 14 May 1926, Masonic Collections, 1412-1-303, “Special Archive”, Moscow.

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already numbered twenty member leagues including the newly-founded Austrian one.52 Redlich, who also served as League secretary from spring to autumn 1926, continued to be the contact for international relations.53 His private residence in the 19th Viennese district (Armbrustergasse 14) doubled as the official address of the League.54 Nevertheless, it was once again Vice-President Goldscheid who travelled to the annual congress of the International League, which took place in Brussels on 26 and 27 June 1926.55 The congress featured the motto “For the United States of Europe!”, and in his presentation, Goldscheid advanced an extensive catalogue of questions that would have to be resolved along the path to a shared Europe. As a first step towards such United States of Europe, he proposed an economic alliance between France, Germany, and England.56 Over the following years, Goldscheid was also cited as the Austrian contact for the Ligue internationale in “Les Cahiers des droits de l’homme”57; at its Paris congress from 15 to 17 July 1927, however, Austria was represented by Szende, as it had been at the Conseil meeting the previous year.58 At the time of this congress, the so-called July revolt of 1927, during which outraged workers set fire to the Palace of Justice in the course of a demonstration against a court decision, occurred in Austria. Police and the army intervened and shot at unarmed demonstrators. This marked the end of the relatively peaceful era in Austria during which the League had been founded. The front lines between the leading parties of the Social Democrats and the Christian Social Party became entrenched, and the organisation of party armies – the Heimwehren on the Christian Social side and the Schutzbund of the Social Democrats – was a certain sign of imminent civil war and the approaching end of democracy. The Heimwehr increasingly came under the influence of Italian Fascism and became more radicalised, and against the backdrop of the global economic crisis, society as a whole became more and more militarised. Beyond this, the National Socialists were likewise on the rise in Austria.59

52 Eine österreichische Liga für Menschenrechte, in: Die Friedens-Warte. Blätter für internationale Verständigung und zwischenstaatliche Organisation 24/1926, no. 7, 227. 53 See Anschriften der dem Internationalen Verbande angehörenden Ligen für Menschenrechte, in: Die Menschenrechte. Organ der Deutschen Liga für Menschenrechte 1/1926, no. 6, 8. CHD, 25 April 1925, 185. 54 See Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert II, 3, who lists all association seats of the League during the First Republic. In most cases, these seem to have been the private residences of functionaries; there is no evidence of a separate League office before 1938. 55 Goldscheid had already participated in a preparatory meeting in Paris on 2 March 1926. See Die Menschenrechte. Organ der Deutschen Liga für Menschenrechte 1/1926, no. 1, 12f. 56 See Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert I, 5. Le Congrès international des ligues des droits de l’homme, in: CDH, 25 September 1926, 411–430. Für die Vereinigten Staaten von Europa!, in: Die Menschenrechte. Organ der Deutschen Liga für Menschenrechte 1/1926, no. 7, 1–9. 57 CDH, 15 May 1927, 264. CDH, 10 May 1928, 283. CDH, 30 May 1929, 860. 58 CDH, 20 November 1927, 531–543. 59 See Vocelka, Geschichte Österreichs, 278, 287ff.

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The League observed these developments with concern, and it tried to counter them: in 1927, the association demanded a non-partisan inquest into the events of the July revolt in a petition to the Federal President, and an amnesty for all those prisoners who had only fallen victim to the “mass psychosis” of the riots and had not committed a crime like murder, robbery or arson, in a separate petition to the Ministry of Justice. It argued that this was the only way to maintain internal peace.60 These appeals by the League admittedly had little success, however. In 1929, on the occasion of a visit to the Czechoslovak League, Victor Basch, president of the French League since 1926, also visited Vienna. He expressed deep concern regarding the internal political situation in Austria and the threat constituted by the Heimwehren, and proposed to redouble support for the Austrian League, which he estimated to be rather weak, in its struggle for the common values.61 In the same year, the League addressed an “Appeal to the People’s Representation and the Federal Government to Avoid the Threat of Civil War”62, demanding the immediate appointment of a parliamentary commission to examine the armament of the different armed units within Austria.63 Together with the Working Group of Austrian Peace Associations and a number of German peace initiatives, a memorandum addressed to the Austrian chancellor Johann Schober and the German Reich chancellor Hermann Müller concerning the maintaining of inner peace in both countries was also drafted in 1929. In 1930, the League subscribed to a pamphlet of this Working Group64, which demanded a ban on unauthorised military parades, the dissolution of the parties’ defence units, a complete interior disarmament, and action promoting a peaceful and objective approach to conflict. Co-signatories were the League’s leading members Brockhausen, Börner, Goldscheid, Hertz, Kemetter, Lothar, and Mayreder.65 Besides Elise Richter and Lotte Heller, Rosa Mayreder was the third woman in the League’s leadership, which indicates a gender-political commitment as another field of activity besides the initiatives for peace and disarmament. To be sure, the League was dominated by males in the First Republic, as well as for long periods in the Second Republic, just like the general field of politics. Nevertheless, the association offered women opportunities of participation in social and political activities from the outset. Richter was a pioneer of female studies in Austria and qualified as a professor in the field of Romance studies in 1905 – the first woman to do so at the University of Vienna. In spite of 60 Activity report of the Austrian League for Human Rights, mid-December 1927, AdR, Fonds 537 Robert Pelzer, “Moskauer Beuteakten”, ÖStA. 61 See Comité, in: CDH, 10 January 1930, 16–19, 16. 62 See Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert II, 5. 63 See letter from the Austrian League for Human Rights to Maximilian Schreier, 1 July 1929, AdR, Fonds 537 Robert Pelzer, “Moskauer Beuteakten”, ÖStA. Die Österreichische Schwesterliga gegen den Bürgerkrieg, in: Die Menschenrechte. Organ der Deutschen Liga für Menschenrechte 4/1929, no. 7/8, 31f. 64 See Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert II, 5. 65 Pamphlet of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft österreichischer Friedensvereine, AdR, Fonds 531 Weltjugendliga, “Moskauer Beuteakten”, ÖStA.

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discrimination against her as a woman and as a Jew, she managed to be appointed associate professor, but was ultimately denied a chair. Politically, she can be classified as a conservative, and she was particularly critical of the left. Despite founding the Association of Academic Women in Austria in 1922, which she chaired for some time, Richter was adamant about not being regarded a “women’s rights activist”, and kept her distance from the political women’s movement of the time.66 In contrast to Richter, theorist and peace activist Mayreder clearly identified as a women’s rights activist. She is considered to belong to the radical wing of the bourgeois women’s movement, and also formed the link between the League for Human Rights and the Austrian branch of the International Women’s League for Peace and Liberty, which had been founded in 1919 and was chaired by Mayreder.67 In order to achieve her goals, Mayreder collaborated among others with the German women’s rights activist, pacifist and sexual reformer Helene Stöcker, who was also a member of the German League for Human Rights. As proved by the cooperation between Mayreder and Stöcker, the European human rights leagues offered women a networking opportunity. Against the backdrop of these networks, it comes as no surprise that the Austrian League for Human Rights launched several activities in the fields of social and sexual reform. Already in its first year of activity, for example, it advocated “the creation of a modern criminal law imbued with the spirit of human rights” and a reform of the legal provisions regarding the “abortion of unborn children”.68 In 1927, it organised an inquiry into marital law reform, the results of which were published as the second volume of a series it edited.69 It also co-ordinated a joint event on this issue in late 1927 together with the Marital Law Reform Association founded in 190570, and addressed the subject a number of times over the following years.71 Alongside these initiatives, the Freemasons continued their attempts to mobilise for the League’s activities. When the Grand Lodge celebrated the tenth anniversary of its foundation in 1928, board member Rumpler dedicated a separate 66 See Petra Stuiber, Elise Richter. “Mein zweites Leben soll nicht gemordet werden”, in: Der Standard Online, 12 June 2015, http://derstandard.at/2000017250740/Elise-Richter-Meinzweites-Leben-soll-nicht-gemordet-werden, consulted 9 September 2016. 67 See Patka, Freimaurerei, 175ff. The links between the League and the Women’s League for Peace and Liberty are documented: AdR, Fonds 523 Frauenliga für Frieden und Freiheit, “Moskauer Beuteakten”, ÖStA. 68 Activity report 1927. 69 Eherechtsreform. Stenographisches Protokoll der von der Österreichischen Liga für Menschenrechte veranstalteten Enquete über die Reform des Eherechts Wien, 29. und 30. April 1927, Vienna 1928. Volume one of the series, which presumably dealt with the history of the League’s formation, is considered lost. 70 See Invitation to the meeting on 16 December 1927, regarding the decision of the constitutional court and martial law reform, Masonic Collections, 1412-1-775, “Special Archive”, Moscow. 71 See Invitation to the meeting on human rights and martial law reform on 9 March 1931, Archives of the Lodge Zukunft, copies from the “Moscow Masonic Collections”, Archive of the Grand Lodge of Austria.

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Figure 2. Rosa Mayreder, courtesy of the Picture Archives and Graphics Department of the Austrian National Library, Pf 7966:C (2 a).

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contribution in the festschrift published on the occasion to the association. According to Rumpler, the League was to “become the cultural conscience of the state”, which was why it was “an eminent duty of any Freemason” to support it.72 In the same year, Pelzer called on all Lodges to join the League for Human Rights in unison. However, his appeal does not seem to have been unanimously heeded.73 On 26 February 1929, the Lodge Humanitas submitted a letter with two proposals to the Grand Officer’s Council of the Grand Lodge: firstly, the Grand Lodge was to emphasise “that not a single Viennese Lodge brother should fail to join the Austrian League for Human Rights as a member”; secondly, it was to order every Lodge to “appoint a permanent officer to inform his Lodge on the ongoing activities of the League and keep it up to date through his reports”.74 The Grand Lodge actively supported this request; Grand Master Schlesinger and Grand Secretary Wladimir Misař, for instance, sent a joint letter to all worshipful masters containing an appeal to the members of the Viennese Lodges to join the League.75 Figure 3 (overleaf) shows one of these letters, the one addressed to the Lodge Kosmos. It proves that the proposal of the Lodge Humanitas was accepted in its entirety. On 5 December 1929, in a session of the Grand Lodge, Grand Master Schlesinger again warmly recommended that Lodge members join the League for Human Rights: “When the brethren look about them in today’s assembly, they will see brothers Dr. Mintz and Dr. Pelzer, who will gladly accept your declarations of accession.”76 The Grand Lodge’s accountability report for the year 1929 states that the “active participation of our members in the association has shown a promising approach in the nomination of special officers for each Lodge”.77 In addition, funds for the League’s work were provided above and beyond the membership fees.78 It would only be possible to establish whether all Viennese Lodge members actually joined the League if we could consult its members list, which is considered lost since 1938; it is doubtful, however, considering the number of calls to join. Even as late as 1937, Erwin Kulka, in his role as worshipful master

72 Siegfried Nobert Rumpler, Freimaurerei und Liga für Menschenrechte, in: Eugen Lennhof (ed.), Die Gegenwartsmaurerei. Gesicht / Geist / Arbeit. Festschrift der Großloge von Wien anlässlich des zehnjährigen Jubiläums am 8. Dezember 1928, Vienna 1928, 36–39, 39. 73 See Patka, Freimaurerei, 152f. 74 Letter from the Lodge Humanitas to the Grand Lodge of Vienna, 26 February 1929, Masonic Collections, 1412-1-784, “Special Archive”, Moscow. 75 See Patka, Freimaurerei, 152f. 76 Protocol of the 152nd session of the officials of the Grand Lodge of Vienna on 5 December 1929, Masonic Collections, 1412-1-862, “Special Archive”, Moscow. 77 Accountability report of the Grand Lodge of Vienna for the year of 1929, submitted to the federal assembly on 15 February 1930. Separate print from the Wiener Freimaurer-Zeitung 12/1930, no. 2, Masonic Collections, 1412-1-312, “Special Archive”, Moscow, fol. 10–13, fol. 12 verso. 78 For example, the minutes of the 9th federal assembly of the Grand Lodge on 22 March 1930 mention that the League had received a donation of 500 Schillings from the culture fund, Masonic Collections, 1412-1-312, “Special Archive”, Moscow.

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Figure 3. Letter from the Grand Lodge of Vienna to the Lodge Kosmos, 17 April 1929. Source: “Special Archive”, Moscow, 1412-821.

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of the Lodge Humanitas, felt it necessary to remind his Lodge brethren of the decision requesting them to join the League, and to call for this decision to be complied with.79 At any rate, the League’s activities were revived following these efforts at mobilisation in 1928/29, as evidenced by extensive lecture activities in the League context; in early 1929, for example, a lecture series on the subject of “The Human Rights of Adolescents” was organised, and on 29 April 1929, former state chancellor Renner opened a lecture series of the League on “The Human Rights” with a lecture on “The Human Rights, Their Historical Role and Their Future Importance”. Victor Basch was likewise among the well-known lecturers of that year, speaking on “the intellectual collaboration of democrats” in Vienna on 28 October 1929.80 At around this time, the League also began its engagement in the so-called Halsmann affair, a case with some similarities to the Dreyfus affair in France that proves the prevalence of anti-Semitism well in advance of the rise of National Socialism. Philipp Halsmann, born to a Jewish family in Riga, was sentenced to ten years of incarceration without proof of his guilt after his father had died under unclear circumstances during a joint mountain hike in the Tyrolean Alps in 1928. The case and its anti-Semitic undertones drew attention across Europe, and Halsmann was eventually pardoned and banned from the country in 1930. Volume three of the League’s publication series documents its commitment in this affair81, and it received much international support for its efforts on behalf of Halsmann and against anti-Semitism in Austria. The German League, which had already informed its members of the affair in a first public event in 1929, offered its full support82 and continued to report on further developments.83 In parallel, the French League also worked on the case; it initially seems to have coordinated its efforts with the German League84, and only organised its actions with the Austrian League as late as mid-1930 at the latter’s explicit request.85 The French League issued several communiqués over the course of 1930 informing its readers of this 79 See Work table on a work of the 1st degree of 17 February 1937, Masonic Collections, 14121-973, “Special Archive”, Moscow. 80 See Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert II, 5. Patka, Freimaurerei, 153. Renner’s lecture was published as well: Die Menschenrechte. Zwei Vorträge, vor und nach der großen Menschheitskatastrophe, gehalten von Dr. Karl Renner, Vienna 1948. Documents and invitations regarding the lectures held in 1929 are to be found in the Archives of the Lodge Zukunft, copies from the “Moscow Masonic Collections”, Archive of the Grand Lodge of Austria. 81 Der Fall Halsmann, Vienna 1931. 82 See Annual report of the “Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte E. V.” for the period of 1 January 1929 to 31 December 1929, in: Die Menschenrechte. Organ der Deutschen Liga für Menschenrechte 5/1930, no. 1/2, 2–13, 10. 83 For example: Die österreichische Liga für Menschenrechte und der Prozeß Halsmann, in: Die Menschenrechte. Organ der Deutschen Liga für Menschenrechte 5/1930, no. 1/2, 22. 84 See letter from the German League for Human Rights to the French League for Human Rights, 19 February 1930, Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/129. 85 See letter from Emanuel Moldauer to the Lige française pour la Défanse [sic!] de l’Homme et du Citoyen, 25 April 1930, Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/129.

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“error of justice”86 and the clemency plea with Austrian Federal President Wilhelm Miklas87, and was finally able to announce Halsmann’s pardon.88 In addition, “Les Cahiers des droits de l’homme” reported extensively on the “Austrian Dreyfus affair”, as Henri Guernut, secretary general of the French League in 1930 and 1931, called it.89 Besides its initiatives for Halsmann, the Austrian League published a statement on the planned “anti-terror act” in 193090 and was prominently involved in another remarkable action. The Austrian State Archives record a petition sent by the Viennese lawyer Otto Ekstein91 to Minster of Justice Hans Schürff on 19 May 1930 explicitly demanding the abolition of § 129 Ib, which penalised samesex sexual contacts. Besides well-known personalities like Arthur Schnitzler, Sigmund Freud, Stefan Zweig or Franz Werfel, Vetter also signed this petition in his function as president of the League. It was also signed by numerous other leading members of the League who were, however, not named as such: Mayreder, Hupka, Lothar, Tietze, and Thirring. It is striking that despite the pronounced Masonic dominance within the League’s leadership, only one Freemason – Lothar – appears on this list. This may be due to the complex relationship with homosexuality of male-only associations like the Freemasons.92 There is no evidence, for instance, that Austrian Freemasonry ever explicitly addressed the issue before 1938. In this context, it remains an open question for research whether other national leagues advocated homosexual rights as well.93

86 La Ligue. Organe périodique d’informations de la ligue des droits de l’homme (La Ligue). Communiqué, 18 January 1930, Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/129. 87 La Ligue. Communiqué, 10 March 1930, Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/129. 88 La Ligue. Communiqué, 30 October 1930, Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/129. 89 Henri Guernut, Une Affaire Dreyfus en Autriche. L’Affaire Halsmann, in: CDH, 30 January 1930, 66. Suzanne Collette, Où en est l’Affaire Halsmann?, in: CDH, 20 September 1930, 537–542. L’affaire Halsmann, in: CDH, 10 May 1931, 306. 90 See Die Österreichische Liga für Menschenrechte zum “Antiterrorgesetz”, in: Die Menschenrechte. Organ der Deutschen Liga für Menschenrechte 5/1930, no. 4, 10. 91 Petition Otto Ekstein to Minister of Justice Hans Schürff, 19 May 1930, AdR, Grundzahl 12.153/30, ÖStA. This petition has already been displayed in the ground-breaking exhibition “Classified:Life. Gays and Lesbians in 20th century Vienna” in 2005/2006, the first large exhibition on the history of homosexuality in Vienna, without however addressing the strong links to the League for Human Rights. See Andreas Brunner et al., geheimsache:leben. schwule und lesben im wien des 20. jahrhunderts. Katalog zur Ausstellung vom 26.10.2005 bis 8.1.2006, Vienna 2005, 31ff. 92 See in more depth and most recent: Christopher Treiblmayr, “… mit dem heutigen Begriffe der Menschenrechte unvereinbar.” Zum Engagement der Österreichischen Liga für Menschenrechte für Homosexuelle, in: Mitteilungen der Magnus-Hirschfeld-Gesellschaft 55– 56/2016, 50–65. 93 There are some indications of such activities for the German League, of which medical doctor and sexual scientist Magnus Hirschfeld was a member. He is considered the “founding father” of the first homosexual movement at the end of the 19 th century. See J. P., Magnus Hirschfeld 60 Jahre, in: Die Menschenrechte. Organ der Deutschen Liga für Menschenrechte 3/1928, no. 4, 15, and on Hirschfeld’s importance for the international homosexual move-

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In 1930 and 1931, the League also informed the public of its activities in the journal “Die Bereitschaft”, with author and philosopher Hans Prager (1887–1940) taking editorial responsibility. Its reports discussed, among others, the problem of the so-called stateless persons94, and in 1932 the League finally issued an appeal to the League of Nations, demanding that the latter place all stateless individuals under its protection.95 At the International Congress of Human Rights Leagues on 24 December 1932, the Austrian delegate, industrial and Freemason Oskar LöwitLadner96 addressed this issue as well97, and volume four of the League’s series (published in 1932) is likewise dedicated to it.98 Beyond this, the demand to create an international court for the prosecution of human rights violations, which had already been voiced in 1927, was reiterated in 193299, and a resolution supporting religious freedom was passed.100 In the latter, the League not only spoke up for the free practice of religion, but simultaneously against any “compulsory religious practice”.101 Regarding the excesses instigated by National Socialist students at the universities time after time, the League also published a memorandum in 1932 that was submitted to the Ministers of Education and Justice as well as being disseminated as a leaflet.102 It called for a depoliticisation of the universities, freeing them from the terror of political groups, to which end the police should receive instructions.103 On 19 and 20 March 1932, President Vetter participated in the annual assembly of the German League and conveyed greetings from the Austrian sister organ-

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ment: Schwules Museum Berlin / Andreas Sternweiler (eds.), Selbstbehauptung und Beharrlichkeit. 200 Jahre Geschichte, Berlin 2004, 41ff., 57ff. Heinrich Engländer, Die Staatenlosen, in: Die Menschenrechte. Organ der Österreichischen Liga für Menschenrechte. Beilage zur Zeitschrift Die Bereitschaft. Zeitschrift für Menschenökonomie, Wohlfahrtspflege und soziale Technik 11/1931, no. 7/9, 55f. See Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert II, 6. Löwit-Ladner was the owner of the cardboard and corrugated cardboard manufacturer Löwit & Co., and worked as an expert assessor. In 1922, he was listed as a seeker in the Lodge Zukunft, and was accepted into the Lodge Fortschritt in 1931. See Kodek, Unsere Bausteine, 220. The spelling of his name varies in different sources. See Gilles Manceron’s contribution in this volume. Löwit-Ladner’s report is reproduced in full in: Le congrès international des ligues des droits de l’homme (Paris, 24 décembre 1932), in: CDH, 20 January 1933, 29–31. Die Staatenlosen. Mit einem Geleitwort von Univ.-Prof. Dr. Hans Kelsen, Vienna 1932. See memorandum of a lecture by Alexander Mintz, 33 degrees, held in Vienna on 5 May 1932 on the occasion of the Masonic session in honour of the Viennese Conference of the International Masonic Association, Masonic Collections, 1412-1-58, “Special Archive”, Moscow. See minutes of the board meeting of the League for Human Rights on 10 May 1932, AdR, Fonds 537 Robert Pelzer, “Moskauer Beuteakten”, ÖStA. Resolution on the freedom of religion and conscience [undated], Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/58. See Patka, Freimaurerei, 155. Memorandum of the Austrian League for Human Rights on the issue of student riots at the universities, 20 December 1932, Archive of the Lodge Zukunft, copies from the “Moscow Masonic Collections”, Archive of the Grand Lodge of Austria.

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isation. The assembly passed a resolution against National Socialist terror and the attitude of Reich Minister of the Interior Karl Eduard Wilhelm Groener, who was called upon to take “a decisive stand against the subversive activities of the National Socialists”, according to the report in the German League journal “Die Menschenrechte”.104 The journal was discontinued in the same year, and with Adolf Hitler’s nomination as Reich chancellor, the fate of the German League was ultimately decided – it was prohibited. President Hellmut von Gerlach was able to flee to Paris, where he founded a German exile league with the support of the French League. After his death in 1935, Otto Lehmann-Rußbüldt assumed leadership of the exile organisation from London.105 Another exile group existed in Strasbourg106, and Kurt Grossmann, secretary general of the German League from 1926 to its dissolution 1933, also continued to work in its name after his flight from Berlin, running a “Prague section”107 in Czechoslovakia before finally emigrating to the United States via France.108 In a first situation report from Prague in early 1933, undated and marked as “not to be used for the press”, he informed (among others) President Basch and Secretary General Émile Kahn of the LDH, the Austrian League and the League for Human Rights in Czechoslovakia of the closing of the German League’s offices in Berlin on 4 March 1933, as well as of his flight to Prague, where the Czechoslovak League had established an aid organisation for refugees from Hitler Germany with his help.109 Assistance to refugees was the order of the day for the various leagues and exile leagues, and they began to collaborate closely. Besides individual legal assistance and help in crossing borders, the leagues tried to improve the refugees’ situation by submitting depositions to the authorities. In January 1934, for instance, the German exile league in Paris turned to the International League, asking for an urgent intervention with the High Commissioner for German Refugees in Lausanne on behalf of the large numbers of escaped German intellectuals. These “highly qualified intellectual workers”, it said, were hard to place in manual professions, and most had already spent their

104 Jahresversammlung der “Deutschen Liga für Menschenrechte”, in: Die Menschenrechte. Organ der Deutschen Liga für Menschenrechte 7/1932, no. 3, 53–56, 54. See also Suzanne Collette, Le congrès de la ligue allemande, in: CDH, 30 April–10 May 1932, 267–271. 105 See Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert II, 7. 106 See Werner Fritsch, Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte (DLfM) 1922–1933, in: Dieter Fricke et al. (eds.), Lexikon zur Parteiengeschichte. Die bürgerlichen und kleinbürgerlichen Parteien und Verbände in Deutschland (1789–1945), vol. 1, Cologne 1983, 749–759, 756. 107 See Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l’homme. Liste des délégués à convoquer pour les réunions du conseil [undated, probably 1933], Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/58. 108 See Lora Wildenthal’s contribution in this volume. 109 Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte E. V., Emigrationssekretariat, situation report no. 1 by Kurt Grossmann [undated, early March 1933] to Prof. E. J. Gumbel, Dr. Oscar Cohn via Gumbel, Prof. Viktor Basch, Monsieur Émile Kahn, Monsieur Jacques Kaiser, Oesterreich. Liga f. M., Liga f. M. i. d. Tschechoslowakei, Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/55.

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savings; many of them therefore found themselves in particularly precarious situations.110 The Austrian League also dedicated itself to the support of German refugees, as the board announced in a letter to its members.111 The political events in Germany had resulted in a flood of refugees, to which the League had reacted by creating a Welfare Office. All manner of support was needed, be it donations in money, clothes, linen and shoes, free lunches or other assistance. Volunteer support from lawyers, doctors and social welfare workers would be particularly appreciated. “Winter is closing in, and the helplessness of these people who suffer seriously from physical as well as mental problems is terrible.”112 The Welfare Office, it emphasised in another letter, worked without regard “to race and confession, political affiliation or class”.113 As the financial report of the League suggests, the expenses for refugees from the German Reich accordingly amounted to the greater part of the 1933 budget: 5,693.50 Schillings out of 7,750.65 Schillings.114 FROM THE CIVIL WAR OF 1934 TO THE DISSOLUTION IN 1938 In February 1934, the situation in Austria took another dramatic turn for the worse. The Christian Social chancellor Engelbert Dollfuß (1892–1934), who had been in office since 1932, had already dissolved the parliament in 1933; using emergency decrees and martial law, he established a fascist state, eliminating his social democratic enemies by force. On 11 February 1934, a brief civil war ensued from which the so-called “Austrofascism” emerged victorious. The Social Democratic Party and all its sub-organisations were banned, and the “Ständestaat”, a clerical-authoritarian corporate state that allowed only a single unified party, the “Fatherland Front”, was established.115 In view of these events, there were heated discussions within the League regarding an appropriate reaction, particularly because a continuation of operations 110 See letter from the German League for Human Rights, Paris section, to the International League for Human Rights, Paris, 10 January 1934, Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/55. 111 See Patka, Freimaurerei, 156. 112 Letter from the board of the Austrian League for Human Rights to its members, October 1933, Archives of the Lodge Zukunft, copies from the “Moscow Masonic Collections”, Archive of the Grand Lodge of Austria. 113 Hans Prager: Die Flüchtlingsvorsorge der Österreichischen Liga für Menschenrechte. Letter from the League of Human Rights [undated, probably October 1933], Archives of the Lodge Zukunft, copies from the “Moscow Masonic Collections”, Archive of the Grand Lodge of Austria. 114 Excerpt and transcript of the file recorded at the Bundespolizeidirektion Wien (Vereinsbüro), effected on 23 August 1976. Financial report 1933, annex to the minutes of the board meeting of 7 March 1934, Ordner 1926–1938, VII/1, Archives of the Austrian League for Human Rights. See also Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert II, 7. 115 See Vocelka, Geschichte Österreichs, in particular 289–294.

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might be interpreted as an endorsement of the new system. In a board meeting on 7 March 1934 in the rooms of lawyer and board member Winter, however, the board unanimously voted against self-dissolution. President Vetter and board members Rumpler, Winter, Engländer and Ronzal stepped down to allow the League to form a new leadership without prominent social democrats, which was considered a precondition for its continued existence. The retiring members were explicitly thanked, and board member Kemetter was appointed interim managing director.116 Following a general assembly on 28 March 1934, the reformed board was registered with the association authorities.117 Newly-elected president August Maria Kemetter seemed to be ideally placed to head the League during this time: he was a Catholic and member of the Christian-Social Party, but sceptical about its authoritarian ambitions, as proved by his long-term commitment to peace policy. After studying history and geography, Kemetter began his professional career as a professor at a grammar school in Mödling. Later, he became the director of the grammar school in Horn, and from 1905, he was the director of the LowerAustrian State Education Institute at the Pädagogium in Vienna. In addition, he had broad political experience, for instance from his activity as a member of the Reichsrat in 1907 and as a member of the Provisional National Assembly in 1918–1919.118 Kemetter was considered a “prominent citizen of the city” who enjoyed “a dignified reputation with all authorities”, as he was referred to in later petitions to the League.119 To prevent the League’s dissolution by the authorities, it resolved not to jeopardise this reputation with the government or the authorities. It therefore de facto ceased all lectures and events, and public criticism of the regime was avoided.120 A circular dating from May 1934 to the members and like-minded friends, for example, urgently adjured them to close ranks around the League, while the civil war only a few weeks in the past was not mentioned at all. The League, said the circular, attended to the needs of stateless persons and emigrants who had taken refuge in Austria, but in doing so it was “a decidedly Austrian organisation that

116 See transcript of the minutes of the board meeting of the League of Human Rights on 7 March 1934, AdR Fonds 537 Robert Pelzer, “Moskauer Beuteakten”, ÖStA. Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert III, 3. 117 Excerpt and transcript of the file recorded at the Bundespolizeidirektion Wien (Vereinsbüro), effected on 23 August 1976. Invitation to the public general assembly on 28 March 1934 and election notice to the associations authorities on 29 March 1934, Ordner 1926–1938, VII/1, Archives of the Austrian League for Human Rights. 118 See Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert II, 4. Idem, Ein halbes Jahrhundert III, 3f. Biographic note on the website of the Parliament of the Republic of Austria: https://www.parlament. gv.at/WWER/PAD_01955/index.shtml, consulted 26 October 2016. 119 Letter from Fritz Scheppe to August Maria Kemetter, 8 October 1937, AdR, Fonds 1342 August Maria Kemetter, “Moskauer Beuteakten”, ÖStA. 120 See Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert, III, 3ff. See also the assessment in Patka, Freimaurerei, 157.

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serves no political interest whatsoever”.121 This insistence on the “Austrian character” of the association was probably largely due to tactical considerations, as it accommodated the government’s efforts to hold its ground in the face of increasing pressure from the German Reich and to distance itself from National Socialism, which despite the official ban of the NSDAP since 1933 still attracted many followers in Austria.122 The League’s dramatically reduced scope of action in its own country resulted in a corresponding increase in the importance of its international network. While the authorities prohibited it from sending official delegates to International League congresses from 1934 on, it was still able to maintain its contacts with other leagues, and in particular with Paris.123 The mother league and several sister leagues as well as the international umbrella organisation now protested against various measures of the Austrian government, thereby quasi speaking for the Austrian League, but always careful to keep it in the background. For example, the central committee of the French League passed a resolution against fascism in Austria on 15 February 1934, i.e. on the last day of armed conflict during the civil war; it did so, however, without referring to its Austrian sister league. 124 On 16 February 1934, the aforementioned Grossmann, now representative of the German exile league in Prague, addressed Basch and proposed the appointment of an international commission of inquiry into the events in Vienna.125 On the same day, the Czechoslovak League for Human Rights sent a manifest to Federal Chancellor Dollfuß through the Austrian ambassador in Prague, demanding an immediate end to bloodshed and the unconstitutional violation of rights.126 At the same time, it appealed to the League of Nations in Geneva to demand the Austrian government stop the fighting127, and called upon the French League to take similar steps.128 Basch went to see for himself. He travelled to Czechoslovakia, where many Austrian Social Democrats had fled to and where a commission of inquiry into the events had been established in Prague under the auspices of the Ligue internationale. From there, he went on to Vienna; on 17 March 1934, he was received by 121 Die Menschenrechte und ihre Betreuung [Human Rights and their Support]. Circular of the Austrian League for Human Rights in May 1934, Archives of the Lodge Zukunft, copies from the “Moscow Masonic Collections”, Archives of the Grand Lodge of Austria. 122 See Vocelka, Geschichte Österreichs, 294. 123 See Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert III, 4. 124 Contre le fascisme en Autriche, in: CDH, 20 February–10 March 1934, 155. 125 Letter from Kurt Grossmann (signed p.p. E. Grossmann) to Victor Basch, 16 February 1934. Exposé. Appointment of an international commission of inquiry for the civil war in Austria, Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/54. 126 See transcript of a letter from the League for Human Rights in Czechoslovakia to Dr. Marek, Ambassador of the Republic of Austria in Prague, 16 February 1934, Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/54. 127 See transcript of a telegram from the League for Human Rights in Czechoslovakia to the League of Nations in Geneva [undated, probably 16 February 1934], Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/54. 128 See letter from the League for Human Rights in Czechoslovakia to the LDH, 16 February 1934, Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/54.

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the Austrian Minister of Justice, Kurt Schuschnigg (1897–1977), who unsurprisingly defended the government’s approach during the civil war.129 Immediately following this meeting, a memorandum was sent to Schuschnigg, calling on him to ensure the freedom of defence would be guaranteed in the imminent trials against Social Democrats. In his answer, dated 24 March 1934, Schuschnigg pledged compliance with the letter of criminal law and promised freedom of defence. Both letters were published in “Les Cahiers des droits de l’homme”.130 It soon became clear, however, that Schuschnigg’s assurances would not hold for long, for instance in the context of the French League’s and the Ligue internationale’s organisation of an office of legal aid for the political prisoners arrested during the fighting in February. Based on an agreement with Schuschnigg, the initial plan was to entrust the Austrian League with the formation of this office.131 Yet Undersecretary Carl Karwinsky reacted by informing President Kemetter and Vice-President Pelzer that the Austrian government was against this plan after all, and that the task should instead be taken on by an Austrian lawyer – whom the Austrian League, however, would be allowed to appoint.132 The League chose the Mason and lawyer Rudolf Skrein, who was considered “apolitical” and thus was acceptable to the government, while most social democrats eyed him with scepticism.133 The French League mandated Skrein to maintain the office of legal aid134, and it also paid for the defence of those accused following the fighting in February.135 This task would be complicated by political events, however: on 25 July 1934, Chancellor Dollfuß was assassinated during a failed National Socialist putsch attempt. Schuschnigg succeeded him and continued his dictatorial regime.136 Besides their efforts to provide legal assistance, the French League and the Ligue internationale appointed an international commission of inquiry, which reported exhaustively on the situation in Austria. An open letter to the president of the League of Nations assembly in Geneva, dated 27 September 1934, stated that the majority of the Austrian population was suffering under the violent dictatorship of Schuschnigg and Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg, his vice-chancellor; workers, intellectuals and officials of workers’ organisations were held in prisons and “concentration camps”. It demanded their immediate release and an amnes129 See Victor Basch, En Tchécoslovaquie et en Autriche, in: CDH, 30 March 1934, 211–214. 130 Pour la défense des “rouges” de Vienne, in: CDH, 30 March 1934, 214f. 131 See transcript of a letter from the International League for Human Rights to Minister of Justice Schuschnigg, 20 April 1934, Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/55. 132 See letter from Bohuslav Ečer to Victor Basch, 28 April 1934 and letter from Richard Freund to Viktor Basch, 30 April 1934, both Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/55. 133 See letter from Richard Freund to Victor Basch, 30 April 1934, Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/55. On Skrein’s Masonic affiliations, see Kodek, Unsere Bausteine, 330. 134 See mandate from the Ligue française des droits de l’homme for Rudolf Skrein, 23 May 1934, Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/55. 135 See letter from Victor Basch to Dr Rudolf Skrein, 8 June [193]4, Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/9 bis. 136 See Vocelka, Geschichte Österreichs, 294.

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ty.137 The demand for a general amnesty for all those convicted after the fighting in February 1934 was reiterated in a resolution by the Ligue internationale in December 1935138, which likewise did not effect the desired result. At least the leagues succeeded in obtaining the participation of trial observers in some cases. For the “Schutzbund trial” in 1935, the former president of the Swiss parliament, Johannes Huber, the Brussels-based lawyer Marc Sommerhausen and the Brno lawyer Richard Freund travelled to Vienna to observe the hearing of the case.139 In 1936, however, Freund and Jeanne-Emile Vandervelde from the Belgian League were refused when they wanted to attend the sensational “Vienna Socialists trial” in March. Basch immediately lodged his protest with Chancellor Schuschnigg.140 The choice of Skrein as the coordinator of the legal aid office also shows the continued engagement of Freemasons in the League after the civil war. Although the Grand Lodge had likewise experienced serious difficulties due to the political situation and suffered from a loss of members141, it supported the League’s activities of legal and social aid to the best of its ability, as evidenced by the accountability reports of the Grand Lodge for the years of 1936 and 1937.142 Even as late as 2 February 1938, in a session of the Lodge Humanitas, founding member Mintz demanded that the work for human rights again be stepped up143; on 16 February 1938, possible activities for the League were discussed in the Grand

137 Open letter from the Commission d’enquête internationale sur les événements d’Autriche to Minister Sandler, president of the League of Nations assembly in Geneva, 27 September 1934, Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/9 bis. 138 See Pour l’amnistie, in: CDH, 20 December 1935, 803f. 139 See Les poursuites contre les Schutzbundler, in: CDH, 10 April 1935, 248. On the Schutzbund trials, see Wolfgang Neugebauer, Repressionsapparat und -maßnahmen 1933–1938, in: Emmerich Tálos / Wolfgang Neugebauer (eds.), Austrofaschismus. Politik – Ökonomie – Kultur 1934–1938, Vienna 2014, 298–319, 304. 140 See Suzanne Collette-Kahn, Fédération Internationale des Droits de l’Homme [short historical outline, typescript in French, 1966, and German translation care of the Austrian League, 1967, signed by LM. [sic!] Neuwalder, 30 pp.], 18, Ordner FIDH I, XX/1, Archives of the Austrian League for Human Rights. See also Gilles Manceron’s contribution in this volume. Basch’s protest note was published in: Pour le respect de la justice en Autriche, in: CDH, 20 March 1936. On the Socialists’ trial, see Neugebauer, Repressionsapparat, 307, and, in more detail, Manfred Marschalek, Der Wiener Sozialistenprozess 1936, in: Karl R. Stadler (ed.), Sozialistenprozesse. Politische Justiz in Österreich 1870–1936, Vienna 1986, 429–490. 141 See Patka, Freimaurerei, 40. 142 Accountability report by Grand Secretary Br Dr. Wladimir Misař at the union assembly on 27 March 1936, in: Wiener Freimaurer-Zeitung 18/1936, no. 1, 1–12, 10. Accountability report by Grand Secretary Br Dr. Wladimir Misař at the union assembly on 12 March 1937, in: Wiener Freimaurer-Zeitung 19/1937, no. 1, 1–14, 10. See also minutes of the 255th session of the Grand Official’s Council on 1 April 1937, Masonic Collections, 1412-1-863, “Special Archive”, Moscow. 143 See Working table on a work of the 1st degree, 2 February 1938, Masonic Collections, 14121-973, “Special Archive”, Moscow.

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Lodge one last time.144 The imminent global political events prevented any of these plans from being realised, however. In March 1938, Schuschnigg made one last attempt to maintain Austria’s independence by announcing a referendum, but he was forced to give in to a National-Socialist ultimatum and resign, surrendering his office to Arthur Seyß-Inquart, an Austrian National Socialist. The invasion of German troops on 12 March 1938 was met with no military resistance and welcomed enthusiastically by large parts of the population, and the Anschluss of Austria to the German Reich was confirmed. Austria had ceased to exist as an independent state.145 The French League reacted promptly and addressed an appeal to the French parliament and its parties on 12 March 1938, exhorting them to “awaken to these solemn times” and “to protect peace and the inviolability of contracts and the independence of nations” (see Figure 4).146 There is no trace of an official reaction to the Anschluss by the Austrian League. In light of the experiences from the dissolution of the German League after Hitler’s rise to power, its leadership probably judged that a continuation of the League’s activities would no longer be possible.147 On 16 March 1938, President Kemetter and Vice-President Pelzer informed the association authorities of the League’s self-dissolution.148 This was followed by house searches in the residences of Kemetter, Pelzer and Secretary General Schuster. At the latter’s home in particular, the National Socialists were able to seize those parts of the material that had not yet been destroyed. Together with other documents, this would become the basis for the assessments of the “Österreich Auswertungskommando” mentioned above.149 One key report submitted by this evaluation group stated that the League had around 300 members, noting that they were “mostly nonAryan”.150 The importance of this report lies in the fact that it provides the first indication of the size of the League’s membership for the period before 1938. The Kommando thought that the relationships of the League with other pacifists and “enemy” organisations (as considered by the National Socialists), such as the League of Nations, the Harand Movement, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, were particularly worth mentioning. In addition, the report alludes to the League’s extensive commitment to stateless persons and lists

144 See minutes on the work of the 1st degree of 16 February 1938, Masonic Collections, 1412-1396, “Special Archive”, Moscow. 145 See Vocelka, Geschichte Österreichs, 296f. 146 Appel de la Ligue des Droits de l’Homme (12 Mars 1938), in: CDH, 15 March1938. 147 See Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert III, 5. 148 See excerpt and transcript of the file recorded at the Bundespolizeidirektion Wien (Vereinsbüro), effected on 23 August 1976. Letter from Polzer [sic!] and Kemetter to the Bundespolizeidirektion Wien (as associations authority) dated 16 March 1938, Ordner 1926–1938, VII/1, Archives of the Austrian League for Human Rights. 149 See Report on the Austrian League for Human Rights. Sicherheitshauptamt, Sonderkommando II 122, April 4, 1938, Sicherheitsdienst des RFSS, SD-Hauptamt, R 58/6264b, Bundesarchiv, Berlin. 150 Report on the Austrian League for Human Rights.

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Figure 4. Appeal by the French League in “Les Cahiers des droits de l’homme” on 15 March 1938. Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.

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individual legal assistance in cases of human rights abuse as well as the wideranging lecturing activities of leading League members such as Goldscheid, Pelzer and Vetter as main fields of activity. Although the Kommando attributed only “little importance” to the League itself, it was still seen as a dangerous enemy because of its Masonic origins.151 The dissolution Pelzer and Kemetter had applied for was thus in the interest of the National Socialists. On 24 November 1938, it was confirmed by the Liquidation Commissioner (Stillhaltekommissar) for Associations, Organisations and Unions; its assets amounting to 248.38 Reichsmark were confiscated, and the removal of the association from the association registry was ordered. This was the official end of the first phase of the League’s existence.152 The National Socialist takeover had a variety of effects on the lives of former leading League members. While Kemetter had to endure house searches and interrogations by the Gestapo, he otherwise remained relatively unaffected and eventually died in Innsbruck in 1945.153 Pelzer was taken into “protective custody” and interrogated on 25 March 1938, but was able to flee to England via Prague after paying his “Reich flight tax”.154 Engländer155, Fleischer156, Goldmann157 and Hertz158 were also able to emigrate to England. Mintz had already travelled to Switzerland a few days before the Anschluss159, and Huber-Wiesenthal fled there as well.160 Rumpler can be traced to Buenos Aires via Bolivia161, Tietze to New York.162 Very few of those who had been persecuted for “racial” or political reasons returned to Austria after 1945; one of them was Csokor, who became presi-

151 Report on the Austrian League for Human Rights. 152 Decision of the Ministry for the Interior and Culture. Section III. Security Police, 24 November 1938, AdR, Stillhaltekommissar, Kart. 480 IVAc 25-23, ÖStA. 153 See Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert III, 4. 154 See notification of assets Dr. Robert Pelzer 23560, AdR, ÖStA. Letter from Herbert Hagen to II 1 Stbf, Erich Ehrlinger, regarding the interrogation of protective prisoners, 15 July 1938, MA 557, 4039, Archiv des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte, Munich. The date of his arrest is specified in: Kodek, Unsere Bausteine, 259. 155 See historical registration records, WStLA, registry information Dr. Heinrich Engländer, 19 January 2010. 156 See historical registration records, WStLA, registry information Dr. Leopold Fleischer, 19 January 2010. 157 See Kodek, Unsere Bausteine, 119. Notification of assets Dr. Emil Goldmann 18286, AdR, ÖStA. 158 His estate (signature 28) is located at the Archiv für die Geschichte der Soziologie in Österreich, Graz. 159 See historical registration records, WStLA, registry information Dr. Alexander Mintz, 8 March 2010. 160 See Heinrich E. Huber, Lebenslauf Rudolf Huber-Wiesenthal 1884–1983, in December 1986, G 00.01.03.05/07–08, 1940–1996, Stadtarchiv Schaffhausen. 161 See historical registration records, WStLA, registry information Dr. Siegfried Norbert Rumpler, 1 June 2010. Kodek, Unsere Bausteine, 295. 162 See Hannah Caplan / Belinda Rosenblatt (eds.), International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Émigrés 1933–1945, vol. 2, Munich 1999, 1165.

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dent of the Austrian P.E.N. Club in 1947.163 Others suffered a worse fate – for example Elise Richter, who died at the Theresienstadt ghetto in 1943.164 Brügel (1942)165, Hupka (1944)166 and Hammerschlag (deportation 1942)167 were also murdered in Theresienstadt. The story of Maximilian Schreier is similarly tragic; he was interned at the Buchenwald concentration camp from his arrest on 13 March 1938 until June 1939. Following further arrests, he committed suicide in Vienna in 1942 so as to escape a further deportation.168 Felix Oppenheimer had taken this drastic step even earlier: he killed himself on 15 November 1938.169 It must be emphasised that the League was targeted as an “ideological enemy” by National Socialist persecution, and many of its leading members were victims of the Nazi regime to varying degrees. However, the notion that no leading member “defected” to National Socialism170, long held by the League’s historians, has been proved less than correct during our research project. We have been able to show the involvement of several former League members in the Nazi regime, among them its last secretary general, Schuster, who became the head of the office for the surveillance of the foreign mail service in Vienna.171 In the case of board member Kobler, on the other hand, there is proof that the French League and the Ligue internationale helped him to prepare his emigration to France starting in July 1938.172 These plans do not seem to have been put into practice, however: Kobler first emigrated to Switzerland and later lived in England.173 He is nevertheless an example of the intense assistance the French League and the umbrella organisation provided for emigrants from Austria after the Anschluss.174 The French League tried to obtain visas for Austrian refugees175 and issued confirmations of political persecution in collaboration with the Central Association of Austrian Emigrants.176 In 1940/1941, the French League and the umbrella organisation had to cease their activities due to the war: National Social163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176

See Caplan / Rosenblatt (eds.), International Biographical Dictionary, vol. 2, 197f. See Stuiber, Elise Richter. See Kodek, Unsere Bausteine, 55. See historical registration records, WStLA, registry information Dr. Josef Hupka, 17 February 2010. See deportation index at the Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes, Vienna (DÖW), ID 7091. See Maximilian Schreier collection, DÖW, no. 20501. See biographic collection Felix Oppenheimer, 3.13.A15-O, WStLA. See Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert III, 5. See Gauakt Gustav Schuster, born August 5, 1879, AdR, no. 93.102, ÖStA. See materials on Franz Kobler, Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/274–276. See Evelyn Adunka, Franz Kobler (1882–1965): Rechtsanwalt und Historiker, in: Menora. Jahrbuch für deutsch-jüdische Geschichte 5/1994, 97–121. See Bruno Frei, Autriche 1938, in: CDH, 15 May 1938, 275–282. Victor Basch, Pour les victimes de l’antisemitisme: à l’aide!, in: CDH, 15 June–1 July 1938, 341f. See for example a letter from the Ministère des Affaires Etrangères to Victor Basch, 20 July 1938, Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/273. See for example the certificates for Rahel Wachs (10 May 1938) and Otto Vecsler (28 October 1938), both Archives of the LDH, BDIC, F delta res 798/273.

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ism had brought the activities of the European human rights leagues to a nearcomplete standstill. CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK In summing up the above remarks, we may say that the Austrian League existing until 1938 was a relatively small organisation whose activities were limited by the political situation in Austria. While the French mother league had roughly 180,000 members in the early 1930s and is widely considered to be the most influential human rights organisation of the first half of the 20th century177, its Austrian daughter league seems to have consisted of no more than a few hundred members. Nor did it achieve an international status comparable to its prestigious German sister league.178 Against the background of a generally weakly developed civil society in Austria179, the League had a relatively short prime during the period between 1926 and 1934 before coming under serious pressure under the “Ständestaat” dictatorship until 1938 and finally being dissolved after the Anschluss of Austria to the German Reich. Nevertheless, it undertook a number of significant actions that were noted beyond the borders of Austria, and was part of an early European civil society. The dominance of Freemasons in the League before 1938, with their traditionally strong international networks, favoured this cosmopolitan orientation. Its initiatives for peace as well as social and sexual reform, its charitable engagement, its stand against anti-Semitism and for international understanding, and its struggle for a constitutional framework in the national and international context were important contributions to the creation of the ideological bases on which a democratic Austria could successfully build after World War II. In keeping with this, the first initiatives for a re-establishment of the League took place immediately after the unconditional surrender of the German Wehrmacht in May 1945 and explicitly referred to the tradition of the pre-war period. The reestablishment of the League was intended as a contribution to the re-establishment of democracy.180 As early as April 1945, former State Chancellor Renner had formed a provisional government including representatives of the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ), the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and the Communist Party (KPÖ). This government was forced to function under extremely difficult circumstances, as it had to cope not only with economic hardship and large numbers of refugees, but also with the occupation of Austria by allied troops – besides initially only being recognised by the Soviet Union. The first free 177 See William D. Irvine’s contribution in this volume. 178 On the prestige of the German pre-war League, see the contributions of Emmanuel Naquet and Lora Wildenthal in this volume. 179 See Emil Brix, Zivilgesellschaft in Österreich. Diskussionen und Perspektiven, in: Martin Schaurhofer et al. (eds.), Räume der Civil Society in Österreich, Vienna 2000, 157–165. 180 See Liga für Menschenrechte, in: Neues Österreich. Organ der demokratischen Einigung 1/1945, no. 64, 2. Newspaper cutting, Ordner Wiederbegründung 1945, VII/2, Archives of the Austrian League for Human Rights.

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elections on 25 November 1945 resulted in a concentration government with antifascist overtones. Later, the KPÖ became less important, and a “grand coalition” between SPÖ and ÖVP established itself as the dominant form of government in post-war politics. The two dominant parties were now no longer implacable enemies as they had been in the pre-war period, instead dividing up the political spheres of influence in the country between themselves. The “reconstruction period” brought increasing economic prosperity and, after Austria had positioned itself as a neutral country, also the end of occupation.181 The post-1945 alignment of the League reflects these developments. In the immediate post-war years, it was also regarded as an “instrument of denazification”. New members were required to prove that they had not been involved in National Socialism before they were permitted to join.182 A closer look at this period shows that there were considerable irregularities in the plausibility of the evidence, and this was why the newly-formed proponent committee had to meet several times before the League was able to commence its work.183 On 24 March 1946, however, it was formally re-established in the main lecture hall at the University of Vienna.184 This time, there was a stronger communist influence (in particular in the person of Ernst Fischer, then Minister of Education), although it was increasingly suppressed in keeping with the political developments in Austria at the time. Following the repression of communist influence and under renewed Masonic influence185, the organisation sought to intensify its contacts with the dominant political parties ÖVP and SPÖ. The League had always rejected fighting on the streets as a strategy, and endeavoured to forge close links to the Austrian political elites in order to facilitate its lobbying activity for human rights issues. Consequently, the party-political balance within the directorate was carefully considered. The League offered a platform for informal communication beyond party lines and showed clear characteristics of a “concordance democratic” or consociational corporation. The League’s international relations were likewise quickly resumed after World War II. The French League had resumed its activities in 1944/45.186 After informal talks, Secretary General Kahn officially congratulated the Austrian League on the occasion of its “rebirth” and announced that he would convene a meeting of all re-established leagues as soon as possible in order to re-establish the International League as well.187 These efforts gathered speed from 1948, the year when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was passed by the United 181 See Vocelka, Geschichte Österreichs, 316–329. 182 See letter from Secretary General Paul Werthner to Leonard Jenni of the Swiss League for Human Rights, 3 December 1946, Ordner Schweizer Liga für Menschenrechte, XXIV/1, Archives of the Austrian League for Human Rights. 183 See Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert IV. 184 See Liga-Korrespondenz, 1946, no. 1, 2–6. 185 See Gallob, Österreichische Liga. 186 See Paul Langevin, La ligue continue …, in: CDH 1945, no. 1, 1f. 187 Transcript of a letter from Secretary General Émile Kahn to the Austrian League, 21 February 1946, Ordner Ligue française I, IXXX/1, Archives of the Austrian League for Human Rights.

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Nations, which now became a guiding document for the activities of the human rights leagues. The Austrian League was one of the founding members of the reestablished FIDH.188 At the same time, it was affiliated with the second umbrella league, the International League for Human Rights in New York.189 European refugees had founded this league together with U.S. civil rights activist Roger N. Baldwin in 1941 to continue the work of the inactive FIDH in the U.S.A.190 The fact that this umbrella organisation continued its activities despite the reestablishment of the FIDH led to serious tensions between the two organisations.191 By affiliating itself with both associations, the Austrian League took a neutral stand in these conflicts, in line with the new state doctrine. On 13 September 1951, the League held a festive meeting on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of its foundation at the main lecture hall of the University of Vienna, where, among others, Federal President Theodor Körner gave a speech. In addition, many international well-wishers were present, including Secretary General Kahn, the president of the Spanish exile league in Paris, José BallesterGozalvo, and the vice-president of the FIDH, Suzanne Collette-Kahn.192 This event demonstrates that the leagues were quickly able to re-establish their network under the patronage of the FIDH, and it also marks the conclusion of a difficult but ultimately successful process to re-establish of the Austrian League following the atrocities of World War II.

188 See letter from Émile Kahn to the Austrian League for Human Rights, 3 November 1948, Ordner FIDH I, XX/1, Archives of the Austrian League for Human Rights. 189 The Austrian League had a permanent representative accredited with the New York organisation since 1947: its former member Dr. Otto Strauß, who had fled to the U.S.A. in 1938. See Körner, Ein halbes Jahrhundert V, 4. Letter from Secretary General Paul Werthner to Otto Strauss, 1 August 1947, Ordner I.L.H.R. (New York) I, XXI/1, Archives of the Austrian League for Human Rights. 190 See Jan Eckel, The International League for the Rights of Man, Amnesty International, and the Changing Fate of Human Rights Activism from the 1940s through the 1970s, in: Humanity. An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 2/2013, no. 3, 183–214, 184ff. 191 See the introduction to this volume by Wolfgang Schmale and Christopher Treiblmayr. 192 See Bericht über die Festtagung der Österreichischen Liga für Menschenrechte, in: Das Menschenrecht. Offizielles Organ der Österreichischen Liga für Menschenrechte / Österreichischer Landesverband, 1951, no. 10/11, 1–4.

THE HISTORY OF 20th-CENTURY HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENTS IN TURKEY Osman İşçi INTRODUCTION Human rights organisations do not have a long history in Turkey, although there was an active civil society movement particularly during the 1960s and 1970s. This study aims to explore the history of human rights movements in Turkey during the 20th century with a special focus on the second half of the century. It discusses external and internal factors leading to the absence of an independent human rights organisation until İnsan Hakları Derneği (İHD), or Human Rights Association1 in English, was established in 1986. While there are several other human rights organisations in Turkey today2, there is a special focus on İHD for several reasons: a) it is the oldest and largest civilian human rights organisation, b) it is a grassroots organisation, c) it is a general human rights organisation, d) its executive committee members and activists are subjected to various violations, and e) it is part of the international human rights movement through its affiliation with EuroMed Rights3, the Fédération Euro-méditerranéenne contre les Disparitions Forcées (FEMED)4 and the Fédération internationale des ligues des droits

1

2

3

4

Unlike other European countries, we apply the term association rather than league to human rights organisations in Turkey. Since the term “league” is used to refer to unions in general in Turkey, its use here could lead to confusion among Turkish readers. Without any claim to comprehensiveness, some of the Turkish organisations that have members or “a certain degree of membership”, a grassroots background and affiliations with international human rights organisations can be listed as follows: İnsan Hakları ve Mazlumlar İçin Dayanışma Derneği (Association for Human Rights and Solidarity for the Oppressed, Mazlumder), Türkiye İnsan Hakları Vakfı (Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, HRFT), Helsinki Yurttaşlar Derneği (Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly, HYD), Amnesty International Turkey, Human Rights Watch Turkey, and LGBTI organisations such as Kaos GL and Lambda İstanbul. A network of more than 80 human rights organisations, institutions and individuals based in 30 countries across the Euro-Mediterranean region. Created in 1997 in response to the Barcelona Declaration and the establishment of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. For more information, see http://euromedrights.org/, consulted 18 November 2016. The Euro-Mediterranean Federation against Enforced Disappearances (FEMED) was established on 27 May 2007. The main objective of FEMED is to contribute to ending enforced disappearances in the Euro-Mediterranean region. For more information, see http://www. disparitions-euromed.org/index.php, consulted 18 November 2016.

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de l’homme (FIDH).5 İHD thus takes its place in the tradition of the human rights leagues founded after the first league in France in 1898, and it is a “classic” civil society organisation according to most standard definitions, i.e. it is independent from the state and political parties. It has a certain degree of organisational structure, inter- and transnational contacts, and defined values. Throughout its history, the Association has been struggling for human rights guided by the universal principles of human rights, a fact that distinguishes İHD from other civil society organisations that fought for human rights before 1986. The first part of this article will examine the history of İHD during the late 20th century and early 21st century period, while the second part is centred around the question why no human rights organisation existed in Turkey until 1986.6 In order to answer this key question, external and internal factors working against the establishment of an independent and distinct human rights movement in Turkey will be considered. As will be shown, these factors include the attitude of the civil society towards human rights struggles as well as official policies and attitudes in relation to human rights principles. These internal factors merit attention since they have persistently influenced the scope and methods of struggles for human rights goals. Activists’ understanding of the struggle for democracy and

5 6

On the FIDH, see Gilles Manceron’s contribution in this volume. There are several academic publications (such as MA and PhD theses) as well as nonacademic publications about İnsan Hakları Derneği in Turkey. İHD itself published two books on its history on the occasions of its 15th and 20th anniversary respectively. These books are: İnsan Hakları Derneği, Kuruluşundan Bugüne İHD, Ankara 2001. Emir Ali Türkmen / Nejat Taştan / Yüksel Mutlu (eds.), Uzun İnce Bir Yoldayız. İHD 20 Yaşında, Ankara 2006. Both are publicly accessible at http://www.ihd.org.tr/category/c81-d-yayr/c24-kitaplar/, consulted 18 November 2016. There are academic publications that analyse the policies of İHD and refer to the history within the scope of this article. Some of these academic publications are: Recep Aslan, Türkiye’de İnsan Haklarının Gelişim Süreci ve İnsan Hakları Alanında Faaliyet Gösteren Sivil Toplum Kuruluşları. İnsan Hakları Derneği ve Mazlumder Üzerine Bir İnceleme, M.A. diss., Cumhuriyet Üniversitesi, Sivas 2004. Aslıhan Çoban, An Examination of Two Turkish NGOs from a Pluralist Perspective. Human Rights Association (İHD) and Women for Women’s Human Rights – New Ways (KİH-YÇV), M.A. diss., Middle East Technical University, Ankara 2006. Ruhat Sena Danışman, Türkiye’de İnsan Hakları Örgütlerinde Cinsiyetçi Bakış, M.A. diss., İstanbul Üniversitesi, İstanbul 2010. Suavi Selim Akan, The Human Rights Perspectives of Two Human Rights Organizations in Turkey. Mazlumder and İHD, M.A. diss., Boğaziçi Üniversitesi, İstanbul 2010. Başak Duduhacıoğlu, Discourse on Human Rights. Representation of the Idea in Turkish Human Rights Conference Texts, M.A. diss., Middle East Technical University, Ankara 2012. Gerçek Gövercin, İnsan Hakları ve Demokrasi alanında çalışan Sivil Toplum Kuruluşlarının İnsan Hakları ve Demokrasi Eğitimine Katkısı, M.A. diss., Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi, İzmir 2013. Berna Öztekin, Human Rights in Turkey. A Comparative Study of İHD and Mazlum-Der, M.A. diss., Sabancı Üniversitesi, İstanbul 2009. These publications can be accessed at libraries in Turkey as well as via the thesis database of the Council of Higher Education in Turkey at https://tez.yok.gov.tr/UlusalTezMerkezi/, consulted 18 November 2016. This chapter can be considered one of the first, if not the first, comprehensive publication on the history of İHD.

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political power was shaped by these factors, and there thus existed various types of civil society concepts rather than a single predetermined notion. Accordingly, the structure of the first part of this article will begin at today and go back into the past. This approach aims to raise questions about the previous lack of a distinct human rights movement as well as to provide a brief idea about the basis for analysis in the second part. İNSAN HAKLARI DERNEĞİ (İHD): A HISTORY OF STRUGGLE AGAINST VIOLATIONS IN TURKEY İHD was founded by civil society activists and political dissidents who had a different understanding of human rights principles (resulting from the dominant civil society mentality in the 1960s and 70s) and broadened – and continue to broaden – their understanding through their struggle as İHD activists. Relatives of prisoners detained after the coup d’état in 1980 took the lead in this initiative. The coup was staged on 12 September 1980, and its military leader, Chief of General Staff Kenan Evren, claimed to be securing public order in the country. There were many social and political movements in Turkey during the 1970s, and Evren justified the coup d’état with political incidents in the 1970s. After the coup, activists decided to find a way to maintain their struggle and address the new problems they were facing. Hüsnü Öndül, one of the founders and a prominent human rights defender, says: While we were discussing the name of our organisation, at the beginning there was no idea to have an association called İnsan Hakları Derneği. The relatives of detainees and victims were concerned about finding a solution to their relatives’ problems in prisons rather than creating a human rights organisation. However, our discussions led us to human rights concepts. In other words, our discussions evolved into this point. Our association was established by people from a leftist tradition. We started to find solutions to the problems of detainees and convicts, yet our association evolved into a general human rights organisation over the course of this period.7

This statement points to the main concerns of the majority of the founders and is indicative of the political atmosphere in which İHD was established only six years after the coup d’état of 1980. Those who were interested in founding an association organised numerous meetings to discuss appropriate objectives, values and principles, and there were intense discussions about these issues from 1985 onwards. The preparatory meetings were held primarily in Ankara and spanned a period of around one year, and 98 people – including intellectuals, writers, journalists, doctors, lawyers, architects and engineers – eventually signed and submitted the founding document for İHD to the Ministry of Interior Affairs on 17 July

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Author’s interview with Hüsnü Öndül, Ankara, 16 March 2016. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from Turkish into English are by the author.

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1986.8 This date is therefore accepted and celebrated as the official founding date of İHD. When the Association’s statutes were rejected on 8 September 1986 with the argument that its objective was too broad and political9, however, the founders revised the objective as follows: “The sole and explicit purpose of İHD is to conduct activities for human rights and freedoms.”10 Emir Ali Türkmen, author and human rights defender, states that İHD was founded in the dark period of the coup d’état11, which entailed a great many violations against fundamental human rights and freedoms. It resulted in a ban on legislation regulating freedom of association as well as in the abolishment of the constitution, and led to severe human rights abuses. For example, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey was closed, members of parliament were detained, and the permissible period of arrest was extended to ninety days. Torture of persons in police custody and prisons intensified and deaths were increasingly common; political parties, associations and trade unions were banned and their executives incarcerated. Basic rights such as freedom of thought and expression or freedom of association and assembly were rescinded. According to İHD reports in the wake of the coup, about 650,000 people were arrested and subjected to torture and mistreatment during their 90day arrest period. There were 230,000 people in 210,000 court cases before military courts. Prosecutors demanded the death penalty for 7,000 people, and 517 of those people were sentenced to death. 49 of them were executed. 14,000 people were deprived of citizenship. 171 people lost their lives due to torture and mistreatment. Thousands of people were either executed, killed or lost their lives for unknown reasons [emphasis added] such as suicide. In addition to political parties and trade unions, 23,677 associations were banned by the military regime. 30,000 people had to leave the country and applied for asylum in other countries. 12

8

The first statutes of İHD adopted by the founders in 1986, located in the archives of İnsan Hakları Derneği, Ankara. The file number is 01-1-86 and date is 17 July 1986. İHD still keeps these statutes in its archive, which contains at least one copy of all materials produced by the Association. There are numerous official documents, books, reports, posters and booklets in the archive. İHD has collected these materials since its beginnings because the Association pays special attention to having a complete archive. Researchers can access all these materials in the headquarters located in Ankara. 9 The decision states “the Association’s objectives are too broad and might have political content, and an objective cannot be formulated so broadly. Accordingly, it was decided to reject the statutes.” A copy of the Ministry of Interior Affair’s negative decision can be found in the İHD archives in Ankara. The file number is 06-30-055, and the date is 8 September 1986. 10 The full text of Article 2 is as follows: “Article 2 – Objective and Principles a) Objective The sole objective of the Association is to conduct ‘human rights and freedoms’ activities.” İnsan Hakları Derneği, Statutes of the Human Rights Association (İHD Statutes), http://en. ihd.org.tr/index.php/2016/08/04/constitution-of-human-rights-association/, consulted 28 August 2016. 11 Türkmen / Taştan / Mutlu (eds.), Uzun İnce Bir Yoldayız, 9. 12 Hüsnü Öndül, Türkiye’de İnsan Haklarının Durumu, in: idem, İnsan Hakları Yazıları, Ankara 1997, 115.

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People were executed and killed in clashes. Those who were not killed were sent to prison and subjected to torture and ill-treatment. Given these circumstances, it can be said that there are similarities between the period after the coup d’état in Turkey that influenced the conditions and objectives of İHD and the horrors of First World War that led to the foundation of human rights leagues in many European countries as well as the international umbrella organisation FIDH (respectively Ligue internationale) in 1922. The Association adopted principles determining its stance on torture, freedom of expression, freedom of conscience and religion, war and militarism as well as on political, economic, social and cultural rights etc. In order to stand up for the rights and freedoms of all persons, İHD took an unequivocal position emphasising that there are “no humans without rights” and that it “upholds the principle that the human rights are universal in nature and indivisible.”13 This understanding of human rights as universal once again underlines the similarities to the human rights leagues founded earlier. Accordingly, İHD defends human rights for everyone irrespective of ethnic or religious origin, sexual orientation, political views etc. The Association has become a credible organisation because it documents human rights violations on a daily basis and informs the public about them; it publishes quarterly, biannual and annual reports as well as special reports regarding specific cases; within its means, it provides free legal and medical assistance to those in need; it raises awareness of human rights issues; it organises various events such as conferences, panels, and symposiums; it conducts fact-finding missions to address human rights violations; and it advocates and lobbies with national and international actors from governments and NGOs. Besides the universality of human rights, two of the other fundamental principles adopted by the founding members of İHD are that it is “a non-governmental and voluntary organisation” and “not a body of any States, Governments and political parties”.14 Neither governments nor political parties can have any authority over the Association, and this principle has contributed greatly to its credibility. For example, Öztürk Türkdoğan, İHD president since 2008, was one of the persons selected in 2013 when the government created a committee of “wise people” to inform the general public about the peace process and to report back to the Government with regard to their findings. [On 4 April 2013] Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç announced the list of “wise people”, several weeks after the government first announced plans to set up such a commission made up of intellectuals and well-liked public figures.15

İHD’s position is determined by two other principles, the first of which underlines that the organisation 13 İnsan Hakları Derneği, Principles of the Human Rights Association (İHD Principles), http:// en.ihd.org.tr/index.php/2008/03/13/principles-of-human-rights-association-ihd/, consulted 1 September 2016. 14 İHD Principles. 15 Solution Process, http://self.gutenberg.org/article/WHEBN0039173673/Solution%20process, consulted 12 March 2016.

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This principle clearly indicates that if there are oppressed people from ethnic minority groups, e.g. Kurds, Arabs, or Caucasians, İHD stands with these people. If women’s rights are violated, İHD activists stand shoulder to shoulder with women. Similarly, if LGBTI people face problems, then the Association struggles for LGBTI rights. In other words, İHD takes the side of any group facing violence or harassment. The Association has been awarded several prizes for its contribution to human rights principles. Nevzat Helvacı, one of the founders and first president of İHD from 1986 to 1992, notes the following concerning the Bruno Kreisky Prize for Human Rights awarded to İHD in 1991: “One of the special and important awards comes from Austria. It is The Bruno Kreisky Prize for Human Rights. Dr. Bruno Kreisky is one of the legendary Prime Ministers in Austria.”17 Secondly, activists adopted another important principle regarding the death penalty. It states that İHD “is against the death penalty regardless of geographical location and circumstances”.18 The Association is emphatic about this principle for two main reasons: fundamental human rights philosophy on the one hand, and the fact that the death penalty was in force in Turkey until 2002, with hundreds of people sentenced to death. Adopting this principle was therefore also a sign of the Association’s courage, and İHD conducted two campaigns against the death penalty: one in 1987 during the dark period of the coup d’état, when hundreds of people were threatened by the death penalty in Turkey, and one in 1999, when there were discussions about the execution of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan. Thanks to its activists’ huge efforts, İHD collected about 150,000 signatures in 1987 and submitted them to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. During the second campaign, İHD undertook various activities like organising panels, publishing news bulletins (see Figure 1), and asking people to sign against the death penalty. 539,000 signatures were collected.19 The death penalty was abolished in Turkey in August 2002 as a result of both these campaigns and the E.U. accession process.20 The Association struggles not only for human rights issues related to fundamental problems in Turkey, but also for issues that directly affect every citizen in the country. The drafting of the Declaration of Pedestrian Rights (see Figure 2, overleaf) is a perfect example of this type of activity, and the activists Tanıl Bora and Akın Atauz were prominently involved in its development.21

16 17 18 19

İHD Principles. Nevzat Helvacı, Karanlıkta Yol Aramak, Ankara 2013, 160. İHD Principles. İnsan Hakları Derneği, Ölüm Cezası Kampanyası Özel Sayısı – 1999, http://www.ihd.org.tr/ olum-cezasi-kampanyasi-ozel-sayisi-1999/, consulted 15 December 2015. 20 BBC, Europe welcomes Turkish reforms, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2170331.stm, consulted 15 December 2015. 21 Tanıl Bora, İnsan Hakları Bildirgesini Hatırlarken, İHD ve ‘Küçük Meseleler’, in Türkmen / Taştan / Mutlu (eds.), Uzun İnce Bir Yoldayız, 115–119.

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Figure 1. News bulletin published by İHD for its campaign against the death penalty in 1999, entitled “No to the Death Penalty!” Source: İHD Archives.

As of July 2016, İHD has branches in 34 provinces, representative offices in six provinces, and a total of about 10,000 members and activists in Turkey. All branches act autonomously and have the capacity to conduct various human rights activities in line with the needs of the local population. There is coordination among the branches as well as between the branches and the main office in Ankara. All branches conduct the four primary human rights activities (documenting human rights violations, providing free legal and medical assistance, preparing reports and sharing them with the public, and raising awareness about human rights principles). The branches and their representatives are entirely free in regard to the methods applied, e.g. organising press conferences, panels, public gatherings, or closed meetings with relevant actors. İHD’s campaigns are implemented after careful examination since there are so many human rights issues and violations in Turkey. Before any campaign decision is made, there is usually a request from a local branch (or branches) to the main office. The Executive Committee composed of 35 people then makes a decision and informs the local branches about its action plan. Similarly, the İHD headquarters itself also follows political and social events on the ground and can develop working programmes and action plans according to these needs.

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Figure 2. Declaration of Pedestrian Rights, 1990. Source: İHD Website.

Long-term human rights policies and plans are determined by the general assembly, which convenes every two years and is the highest organ of the Association.22 As the largest and most influential human rights organisation in Turkey, İHD maintains close relations with other national and international human rights organ22 İHD Statutes.

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isations as well as relevant institutions and public bodies, providing information to and receiving information from them. These relations enable İHD to protect and promote human rights values in Turkey and, where possible, in other parts of the world. İHD not only works with other human rights organisations, but has also launched initiatives to establish several further human rights organisations in Turkey. As mentioned earlier, İHD focused on legal assistance for persons imprisoned and/or subjected to torture and abuse in the wake of the coup d’état during the first period of its existence. A further need arose, however, when these people were gradually released from prison in the late 1980s: a need for medical assistance and rehabilitation of torture survivors. The İHD executive committee decided to establish the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (HRFT) on 30 December 1990. It was established by 32 founders, with İHD the only institution among them.23 HRFT is a unique organisation for İHD not only because it is its sister organisation, but also because it has proved itself in the field of torture victim rehabilitation services. In addition to the founding of HRFT, İHD has participated in the establishment of several human rights platforms and coalitions in Turkey: Human Rights Joint Platform (IHOP), the International Criminal Court Turkey Coalition, and Refugee Rights Coordination are only a few of these platforms.24 At the international level, İHD’s membership in the FIDH, EuroMed Rights and FEMED have already been mentioned. Besides these organisations, the Association cooperates with several other international institutions including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Frontline Defenders, the U.N., the E.U., and the Council of Europe. As of June 2016, Yusuf Alataş serves as one of the FIDH vice-presidents and Osman İşçi serves as EuroMed Rights Executive Committee member and political referent of the Freedom of Association, Assembly and Movement working group. There have been permanent strong relations with international human rights organisations, particularly the FIDH and EuroMed Rights, since the 1990s. Those who had to leave the country due to its repressive atmosphere following the military coup provided first contacts with international organisations for İHD in 1988. Akın Birdal, one of the İHD founders and honorary president of the Association, notes: 23 The Settlement Deed (founding charter) of the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (HRFT) is the founding and core document for the HRFT since substantial decisions are made in accordance with this charter, 30 December 1990. It can be found in the archives of the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey in Ankara. Article 1 states: “Article 1) A foundation has been established under the title ‘Human Rights Foundation of Turkey’ based on Paragraph 3, Article 3 of the Charter of the Human Rights Association.” The founding charter has no file number since it is the founding document. A copy of the founding charter can be accessed at the HRFT head office in Ankara as well as at http://en.tihv.org.tr/vakif-senedi/, consulted 18 November 2016. 24 Article 3/7 of the İHD statutes authorises the executive committee to establish platforms and coalitions, or to join such platforms if they are already established. Article 3/7 states: “Cooperating with local and international organisations with the same objectives and opening international branches or representative offices based on general meeting resolutions.” The various platforms and coalitions were established in different years, and as a result have different file numbers that can be accessed in the İHD archives.

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Osman İşçi Turkey-Germany Human Rights Association (Menschenrechtsverein Türkei/Deutschland e.V.), which was founded in Germany in 1988, provided first relations to human rights organisations as well as political organisations for İHD in Germany, France and the Netherlands. 25

There are two main aspects of these relations with international human rights movements: a) defending a universal perspective of human rights, and b) building strong networks for solidarity needed in Turkey as well as other parts of the world. In this context, FIDH delegates have frequently visited Turkey to monitor court cases against NGO representatives, including İHD leaders, political actors, lawyers and media staff. Akın Birdal provides the following information on how FIDH and İHD relations began: “FIDH asked İHD questions about its position regarding minorities [Armenians, Christians, Kurds, Arabs etc.] in 1992. FIDH then asked İHD to submit its membership application.”26 Since then there have been strong relations and cooperation between the two organisations. Similarly, İHD has been part of EuroMed Rights since 1997. The two organisations cooperate to address human rights violations especially in the fields of freedom of association, assembly and movement, as well as refugee rights and gender issues. İHD informs the international community about the human rights situation in Turkey and its own activities, including its continuous monitoring of violations related to prisons and other detention centres, through these international human rights organisations. According to figures provided by the General Directorate of Prisons and Detention Houses, there were “187,647 people, convicts and detainees, in prison” in March 2016.27 The General Directorate of Prisons and Detention Houses updates its figures on a regular basis. On the other hand, the number of people imprisoned has dramatically increased in the wake of the failed coup attempt on 15 July 2016. Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag states that “32,000 were formally arrested since the July 15 coup attempt”.28 Torture and mistreatment, isolation, violation of communication rights, and restrictions and/or bans on access to medical services are among the common human rights issues in this context. İHD always strives to ensure that humane and dignified conditions are maintained within prisons in Turkey. Given the number of nearly 200,000 detainees and convicts in these facilities, it is likely that the issue of prisons will remain an İHD priority in the future, along with torture and abuse as other long-established human rights problems in Turkey. In the 1980s, people were usually subjected to torture and ill-treatment in detention centres and prisons. During the 1990s, however, torture and ill-treatment became common practice in the south-eastern region of Turkey. Kurdish people, who live primarily in the southeast, applied to HRFT to obtain medical assistance for problems and violations. Consequently, HRFT provides medical assistance for torture survivors while İHD offers legal 25 Author’s interview with Akın Birdal, İstanbul, 20 March 2016. 26 Author’s interview with Akın Birdal. 27 Republic of Turkey – Ministry of Justice – General Directorate of Prisons and Detention Houses, İstatistik, http://www.cte.adalet.gov.tr/, consulted 22 March 2016. 28 Minister: 32,000 people arrested since failed coup in Turkey, http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ 6a94ce279ed14b2c9c4cf1b237778ff4/minister-32000-people-arrested-failed-coup-turkey, consulted 18 November 2016.

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assistance. The Association monitors human rights violations resulting from armed conflict in the context of the “Kurdish Question” in the south-eastern region. İHD makes no difference whether these violations are committed by Turkish army officers or members of the illegal Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). Some of the most common human rights problems in this regard are: murders by unknown perpetrators, evacuations of villages and extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, mass graves, and internally displaced people.29 In addition to these problems, fundamental human rights like freedom of expression and of the media as well as freedom of association and assembly are permanently monitored by İHD. As there are numerous human rights violations related to the “Kurdish Question”, İHD monitors all developments and events in this context. The Republic of Turkey, and in fact the Deep State30, considers the “Kurdish Question” a sensitive one or even a red line in itself, and as a result any individual or organisation interested in the issue is quickly accused of being a terrorist or supporting terrorist activities. Such individuals and organisations therefore often face serious pressure and human rights violations. Physical and lethal attacks İHD and its activists have frequently been subject to pressure and criminal acts during the course of the Association’s struggle. The following 23 İHD activists and executives were killed by “unknown” perpetrators in the 1990s:31 1. Vedat Aydın (founding member of 10. Muhsin Melik (founding member the Diyarbakır branch) of the Urfa branch) 2. Sıddık Tan (board member of the 11. İkram Mihyas (member of the Batman branch) İzmir branch) 3. İdris Özçelik (board member of the 12. Didar Şensoy (member of the Urfa branch) İstanbul branch) 4. Kemal Kılıç (board member of the 13. Tacettin Aşçı Urfa branch) 14. Abuzer Öner 5. Orhan Karaağar (board member of 15. Ahmet Aydın the Van branch) 16. M. Şirin Polat 6. Cemal Akar (board member of the 17. Medeni Göktepe Erzincan branch) 18. Şükrü Fırat 7. Şevket Epözdemir (board member 19. Yahya Orhan of the Tatvan branch) 20. Eyüp Gökoğlu

29 Hüsnü Öndül, Zorla Kaybedilme, http://www.ihd.org.tr/zorla-kaybedilme/, consulted 22 August 2016. 30 The term “Deep State” refers to groups that conduct illegal activities on behalf of the state. These groups are usually protected and not brought to justice. 31 İnsan Hakları Derneği, History of Human Rights Association (IHD), http://en.ihd.org.tr/ index.php/2008/12/08/history-of-human-rights-association-ihd/, consulted 22 August 2016. This list was compiled in the 1990s and published in several documents and reports.

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8. Metin Can (chairman of the Elazığ 21. Cengiz Altun branch) 22. Habib Kılıç 9. Hasan Kaya (member of the Elazığ 23. Mehmet Sincar branch) These 23 persons lost their lives for the human rights cause, and İHD and the global human rights movement commemorate them with great respect and will never forget their contributions. But the harassment of Association members is not limited to these murders; there have been further assassination attempts and physical attacks. For example, as Hüsnü Öndül writes, “guns were fired at our delegation during the fact-finding mission in Diyarbakır on 23 April 1993”.32 Fortunately, none of the members lost their lives in this attack. Similarly, Akın Birdal, president of İHD from 1992 to 1999, was attacked with firearms at the İHD headquarters in Ankara on 12 May 1998. Figure 3 shows the eight bullet holes in the door of Birdal’s office resulting from this incident. Two ultranationalist attackers came to the headquarters and asked to see the president. When an İHD secretary directed the men to his office, they pulled out their guns and Birdal tried to close the door. The attackers fired eight times through the door, then five more times after opening it. They were able to enter the premises without a problem for two reasons: a) the İHD office is open to everyone and there are no special security measures, and b) the authorities had not taken steps to protect Birdal even though he had been receiving threats for his human rights activities. Fortunately, he survived and is still contributing to the human rights and democracy struggle in Turkey today. Another attack took place on 25 November 1999, when a group of nationalists entered the İHD headquarters and beat President Hüsnü Öndül as well as other executive committee members.33 As evidenced by these incidents, İHD is under constant pressure from “unknown” perpetrators or nationalist groups. The word “unknown” should not be taken to mean that the identities of the perpetrators are not known to İnsan Hakları Derneği. Rather, it means that those responsible for these attacks and those who encourage them are never taken to court because there are no effective investigations into the attacks; there is a policy of impunity with regard to violence against human rights defenders in Turkey. Judicial harassment Not only the abovementioned physical attacks, but judicial harassment as well is used against İHD: About 1,000 court cases have been initiated against the İHD headquarters and its branches.34 There have also been hundreds of investigations 32 Öndül, İnsan Hakları Yazıları, 64. 33 Derneği, Kuruluşundan Bugüne İHD, 40. 34 There are numerous reports on judicial harassment of İHD activists. Some of the relevant reports are: Ozturk Türkdogan, Current Situation of Human Rights Defenders in Turkey, http:// en.ihd.org.tr/index.php/2011/02/07/current-situation-of-human-rights-defenders-in-turkey/,

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Figure 3. The door of the İHD president’s office in Ankara in 1998. A total of 13 bullets were fired at President Akın Birdal, six of which hit him. Picture taken by the author.

consulted 25 August 2016. Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network, Observation of the trial of Osman İşçi, human rights defender and trade-unionist, http://euromedrights.org/ wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Observation-of-the-trial-of-Osman---------11.pdf, consulted 25 August 2016. Human Rights Joint Platform, Report on the Diyarbakir KCK Case, http:// www.ihop.org.tr/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/20110414_KCK_ENG.pdf, consulted 25 August 2016. Osman İşçi, The State’s Current Policy towards Human Rights Defenders: Criminalisation of Human Rights Defenders, http://www.ihd.org.tr/devletin-son-donem-insanhaklari-savunuculari-politikasi-insan-haklari-savunucularinin-kriminalize-edilmesi/, consulted 25 August 2016.

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and court cases against executives and members. Some İHD branches, mostly in the south-eastern region, have been closed down by court rulings.35 Dozens of İHD activists have been tried and imprisoned. İHD conducts its human rights activities through its members. When they are tried and incarcerated, and criminalised as a result, it is not only the activists themselves but also the Association that suffers. In her report entitled “Promotion and Protection of Human Rights: Human Rights Defenders”, Hina Jilani notes: Human rights defenders who denounced the dramatic effects of conflict on the situation of human rights in the southeast and questioned State policies were frequently perceived as a threat to the State and as PKK supporters. As a result, representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), lawyers, doctors, journalists and many others suffered from serious human rights abuses, including arbitrary detention, ill-treatment and torture, threats, but also disappearances and extrajudicial killings.36

Despite these difficult conditions and pressures, solidarity has always been displayed by the international human rights organisations. FIDH and EuroMed Rights as well as other organisations have sent several delegations to Turkey to demonstrate solidarity with human rights defenders under pressure and at risk. These delegations receive information directly from activists, monitor court cases against them, visit them in prison and make their cases known at the international level. The following list includes some of the solidarity actions undertaken between 2011 and 2013 and the resulting publications: – Turkey: Continuing judicial harassment against members of İHD (Observatory37), 2011. – Turkey: Arbitrary detention of Mr. Ragip Zarakolu and Ms. Büsra Ersanli (Observatory), 2011. – Turkey: Human Rights Defenders, Guilty Until Proven Innocent (Observatory Report), 2012. – Olympic Dreams Campaign for 15 Human Rights Defenders [including Osman İşçi] (Frontline Defenders), 2012. – Observation of the trial of Osman İşçi and other human rights defenders and trade unionists (EuroMed Rights), 2013.

35 There are numerous reports on judicial harassment and closure of İHD branches. Some of the relevant reports are: Hüsnü Öndül, İHD Van Şubesi de Kapatıldı, http://www.ihd.org.tr/dvan-besi-de-kapat/, consulted 25 August 2016. İnsan Hakları Derneği, İHD Diyarbakır Şubesi 28.12.1994 Tarihinde Valilikçe Kapatıldı, http://www.ihd.org.tr/ihd-diyarbakir-subesi28121994-tarihinde-valilikce-kapatildi/, consulted 25 August 2016. İnsan Hakları Derneği, İHD Elazığ Şubesi Valilikçe Kapatıldı, http://www.ihd.org.tr/ihd-elazig-subesi-valilikcekapatildi/, consulted 25 August 2016. 36 Hina Jilani, Promotion and Protection of Human Rights: Human Rights Defenders, https:// documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G05/111/16/PDF/G0511116.pdf, consulted 1 September 2016, 4f. 37 The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT).

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In addition to the cases of pressure against human rights defenders, İHD also collaborates with international organisations regarding other human rights violations in Turkey. For example, EuroMed Rights sent an international fact-finding mission in 2011 to assess the situation of Syrian refugees in Turkey. Both FIDH and EuroMed Rights sent international delegations on fact-finding missions during the Gezi protests in 2013 and compiled a special report on the situation. They also sent a joint delegation to monitor human rights violations resulting from curfew regulations in the south-east of Turkey in January 2016.38 Over the past years, the two organisations have issued numerous press statements and reports on the human rights situation in the country. Both organisations have contributed immensely to supporting freedom of assembly in Turkey with their invaluable efforts in this regard. In addition, FIDH held its 38th congress in İstanbul in May 2013. So far, the history of human rights movement in Turkey has been examined from the perspective of İnsan Hakları Derneği. The following section, however, will deal with the developments before 1986. HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANISATIONS IN TURKEY BEFORE 1986 The efforts by İHD described above have contributed to the protection and promotion of human rights in Turkey since 1986. But the question remains why there was no human rights organisation before 1986, however. Had there been a human rights organisation, the human rights situation might have been different even before the coup d’état. The following section explores this question. In his book “Karanlıkta Yol Aramak [Exploring the Path in the Dark]”, Nevzat Helvacı elaborates on the history of human rights movements in Turkey. Referring to academic initiatives in the field of human rights during the post-World War II period, he states: The first human rights organisation initiative in Turkey was led by Prof. Dr. Ali Fuat Başgil after the Second World War. Prof. Başgil established the “Human Rights Centre” at the Law Faculty of İstanbul [University]. This centre was not an association but an organ of the university. In fact, it did not last long and merely published a human rights leaflet. 39

Established in 1945, this centre was the first initiative to stand up for human rights principles through an organisation. It was soon closed under unclear circumstances, however. During the post-war period in Turkey, civil society was still struggling to understand what was going on. Established in 1923, Turkey was a young republic and was trying to determine its future direction of development. Civil society was in a similar situation and was seeking a meaningful path to follow. In fact, Turkey was not significantly different from many other countries in regard to

38 Turkey: Human Rights Under Threat, https://www.fidh.org/en/region/europe-central-asia/ turkey/turkey-human-rights-under-threat, consulted 28 August 2016. 39 Helvacı, Karanlıkta Yol Aramak, 149.

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supporting human rights initiatives: The U.N. Economic and Social Council only established the “Human Rights Commission” in 1946. As Helvacı points out, the United Nations General Assembly called on member states to encourage nongovernmental human rights organisations and support existing organisations. Following this appeal, the first human rights organisation was established in Turkey. Army general Fevzi Çakmak became its president and Tevfik Rüştü Aras, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, became its general secretary. Some of the other founders were Zekeriya Sertel, Cami Baykurt and other retired ambassadors.40

The profile of founders indicates that this organisation was established in 1946 by high-ranking Turkish officials and authorities. The initiative was supported by the state even though it was an NGO. Due to the profile of its founders and leaders, it can be argued that this institution conducted its activities from an official rather than an independent and civilian perspective. It survived for only three months until its president resigned and the organisation dissolved. According to Helvacı, there were some reports that “communists manipulated the General of the Army” because Tevfik Rüştü Aras was a socialist. The General of the Army resigned from the association. In fact, the association survived for only three months. 41

This initiative is a perfect example of the need for independent and civilian-led human rights organisations, since any type of support from the state is fragile and can be revoked at any time. While there was lack of independent human rights organisations, civil society in Turkey was strong during the 1960s and 1970s. Looking at other civil society movements like trade unions or women’s rights organisations may help to shed light on certain factors leading to the absence of an independent human rights organisation in Turkey during these decades. Hüseyin Aykol, a journalist and researcher specialising in the history of political movements, describes the civil society atmosphere in the 1960s and 1970s, referring to a relatively free climate that the constitution of 1960 had created. Numerous political organisations, including political parties and student clubs/unions at universities, were established as a result of the fact that the constitution encouraged and even required people to join the civil society. The 1960 constitution allowed and even mandated political parties to establish women’s and youth wings of their parties. Furthermore, there were student clubs at universities in the late 1950s, but these clubs became more visible and active in the 1960s. In the late 1960s, however, these clubs became so big that they transcended TİP [Turkish Workers’ Party], which is their origin, and became the source of new socialist-revolutionary organisations.42

In addition to women’s and youth organisations, trade unions were successful in organising workers and public officers during these decades. Lami Özgen, cochair of Kamu Emekçileri Sendikaları Konfederasyonu (Confederation of Public Sector Trade Unions), commonly known as KESK, analyses this period as the

40 Helvacı, Karanlıkta Yol Aramak, 149f. 41 Helvacı, Karanlıkta Yol Aramak, 150. 42 Author’s interview with Hüseyin Aykol, Ankara, 11 May 2016.

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time of a shift from a trade union movement under state control to a leftist labour movement. When we think about the labour struggle in our country, it was under the control of the state after the 1950s. Before that there were not many trade unions in Turkey. Türk-İş [Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions] undertook its activities in line with state policy and did not conduct a genuine struggle for workers’ rights. As a result of legislative changes in the 1960s, the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey or DİSK, which was and still is an active confederation of trade unions in Turkey since the 1960s, emerged from Türk-İş and vigorously pursued a leftist line and the labour-capital conflict.43

This change in the trade union movement resulted from the political atmosphere created by the new constitution mentioned above, which allowed the independent civil society movement in general and the leftist labour movement in particular to become more visible and reach more people. Kani Beko, president of DİSK, emphasises the strength of the labour movement during this period and provides some figures: There were 40 million people in our country in the 1970s. We had 2.5 million members and negotiated collective bargaining agreements for these members. We conducted our struggle with this human rights perspective during that period. We had 2.5 members out of every 40 people in the population, and it was an important gain in terms of freedom of association. We became a huge democratic force. Workers and our members had the chance to solve most of their problems through trade unions.44

DİSK organised millions of workers throughout the country and led the civil society in Turkey to a stronger position. This strong confederation was also reflected in other sectors of working life. For example, labour unions representing public officers – in particular teachers – became strong as well. In his book “Töb-Der Tarihi”, İsmail Aydın agrees that the labour union movement was strong in Turkey during the mentioned decades, and makes special mention of “TÖB-DER [All Teachers’ Unification and Solidarity Association], one of the most influential civil society organisations of the 1970s, established on 3 September 1971.”45 Its significance resulted from its union activities and success in organising most of the teachers in the country: “TÖB-DER had 220,000 members out of the 360,000 teachers across the country.”46 Both the union movement and other movements such as youth and women’s organisations are important for civil society in Turkey in general. These movements address fundamental rights and freedoms and consciously or unconsciously contribute to their protection and promotion. With regard to union attitudes towards human rights and freedoms, Kani Beko mentions that the DİSK statutes have always defended universal rights and freedoms, and adds: DİSK is an independent confederation and has been struggling for union rights as well as peace, democracy, equality and freedom. These principles are important for our confedera43 44 45 46

Author’s interview with Lami Özgen, Ankara, 9 June 2016. Author’s interview with Kani Beko, Ankara, 22 June 2016. İsmail Aydın, Töb-Der Tarihi, Ankara 2016, 10. Aydın, Töb-Der Tarihi, 13.

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In fact, DİSK is no exception in terms of labour movements, as TÖB-DER likewise defends the economic, social and cultural rights of its members, and Article 3 of its statutes explicitly refers to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: The Union’s purpose is to protect and promote the entirety of its members’ economic, social, cultural and professional rights that are in line with national, democratic, secular and social aspects of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey (…).48

In this regard, TÖB-DER can be considered a human rights organisation. Egitim Sen, founded in 1995 and one of the current trade unions of teachers and academics in Turkey, is the successor to TÖB-DER, which was dissolved under martial law in 1979. Egitim Sen states that “TÖB-DER (…) gained a significant place in the history of labour struggles in Turkey despite economic and political conditions as well as pressure against class struggle and revolutionary youth movements.”49 The labour movement was not alone, however, in its role as an active civil society organisation. There were also the aforementioned youth and women’s organisations, which exercised their freedom of association and organised many young people and women. Hüseyin Aykol states that organisations of these types grew during the 1970s as well, and describes their situation as follows: In the 1970s, the youth movement improved and as a result there were some large youth associations such as Dev-Genç [Revolutionary Youth Association] and İGD [Progressive Youth Association], yet it was impossible to distinguish these associations from their umbrella political organisation or party. Women’s rights organisations did attempt to follow a different path from the youth associations and tried to be independent NGOs. Accordingly, some political parties likewise established women’s organisations – even though they did not have enough female members.50

This quotation reflects the general situation of the civil society movement in Turkey, which was under leftist ideological influence during these decades. Particularly interesting is the statement “yet it was impossible to distinguish these associations from their umbrella political organisation or party”. It implies the internal factors resulting in the absence of an independent human rights organisation in Turkey in the 1960s and 1970s. Before exploring these internal factors, however, it is necessary to discuss the external factors – in other words, the attitude of Turkish officials towards civil society organisations in general and human rights organisations in particular. This attitude becomes manifest in legislative restrictions and problems related to the implementation of those regulations. Öndül discusses the problem of the lack of 47 48 49 50

Author’s interview with Kani Beko. Aydın, Töb-Der Tarihi, 35. Aydın, Töb-Der Tarihi, 35. Author’s interview with Hüseyin Aykol.

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an independent human rights organisation during the 1960s and 70s from the historical perspective of democratic culture: Generally, Turkey has a weak culture and practice in regard to creating and joining associations. There were problems in creating and joining civil society organisations also during the 1950s and 1960s. These problems had two aspects: a) legal restrictions applying to associations and b) a lack of democratic culture.51

Öndül underlines that the level of freedom of association was not satisfactory in the 1960s and 70s even though political organisations, especially leftist ones, were strong at the time. Nor did the strong labour movement or the women’s and youth organisations dramatically change this situation during the second half of the 20th century. Legislative restrictions were applied to organisations that do not fit the state’s policy of civil society organisations. Authorities allowed only workers, but not public officers52 to join trade unions for unknown reasons. TÖB-DER, for example, faced problems in creating a trade union due to having the word “union” in its statutes, and was subsequently established as an association. İsmail Aydın writes: Ankara Governorate refused to approve TÖB-DER’s statutes, responding that the word “Union” in the name of the association connoted and was evocative of trade unions. As a result, the founders decided to hold its general assembly in another city, Afyon, where there was no martial law, and changed the name to TÖB-DER (Association of All Teachers’ Union and Solidarity).53

Lami Özgen also draws attention to the fact that public officers were banned from joining trade unions and states that KESK, founded in 1995, is the successor to the public officers’ trade union movement of the 1960s and 70s. Providing an example of a banned trade union in the early 1970s, he points out: We as KESK are part of a long labour movement tradition and philosophy in Turkey. We are the successor to teachers’ and medical workers’ associations of the 1960s and 70s. TÖS [Trade Union of Teachers in Turkey] was banned after the military coup in 1971, and we maintained our struggle through associations. 54

Not only public officers’ trade unions, but other civil society organisations as well suffer from these obstacles created by authorities. For example, the military regime disallowed DİSK in 1980 because authorities were dissatisfied with its activities. After twelve years of being banned, the organisation was re-established in 1992. Limiting legislative provisions (and restrictive interpretation of these provisions), in fact, were applied to all civil society organisations in Turkey during the post-coup period. Neither İHD nor HRFT were safe from this restrictive mentality, and as mentioned above their statutes were declined by the authorities. While 51 Author’s interview with Hüsnü Öndül. 52 Workers and public officers have different statuses in Turkey. Legislation classifies these two groups into different categories, and their professional rights are different. 53 Aydın, Töb-Der Tarihi, 34. 54 Author’s interview with Lami Özgen.

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the İHD statutes were declined under the pretext that they were too broad, the HRFT statutes were declined because authorities denied the evidence of torture and mistreatment in Turkey. While these two cases occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s, they nevertheless demonstrate quite clearly that the restrictive attitude was still present. As for the mentioned internal factors, we may recall Hüseyin Aykol’s statement about the attitude of the dominant ideology – that is, a leftist political view – as well as of most of the civil society activists and leaders towards human rights movements in general. DİSK president Kani Beko compares the situation of the civil society movement in the 1970s and now: In the 1970s, there was a more active civil society. It was in a better situation in terms of quality and quantity. However, the main purpose of the CSOs was revolution and socialism during this period. These CSOs became powerful in the 1970s, and for them revolution and working class rule were the mission, while political parties, associations and trade unions were only means to accomplish this mission. Moreover, social conditions created a society without a need for human rights organisations. For example, there were cooperatives to meet the needs for housing and purchasing, and people applied to these cooperatives. People trusted in cooperatives, trade unions and NGOs that were common before 1980.55

This idea of civil society organisations as revolutionary tools rather than independent organisations is a problematic approach to human rights concepts and organisations, and results from misunderstanding or even prejudice. Asked about the relationship between leftist ideology, struggle and human rights concepts especially in the 1960s and 70s, Lami Özgen, co-chair of KESK, says: The answer to your question is related to the political parties’ perspective on struggle in Turkey. It is about their approach to revolutionary struggle. It is about how political parties and organisations approach the capitalist organs [institutions] in the world. Even though these organs [human rights organisations] have an opposing stance regarding existing problems in the capitalist world system, the political parties’ approach did not change its perspective and prejudice.56

This leftist perspective is a result of the lack of theoretical discussion to eliminate any form of prejudice against human rights concepts, which were considered products of capitalism by trade unionists of the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to this prejudice phenomenon, Özgen draws attention to another fact: Leftist and labour organisations have two aspects: democracy and revolution. These organisations did not pay regard to the human rights associations. There was a political struggle against human rights violations in the 1960s and 70s. However, there were no independent human rights organisations.57

These political organisations struggled for a better society, including higher human rights standards. It was a kind of motto of the political, labour and other forms of struggle in the 1970s. The organisations were sceptical about the existing human rights institutions and their organs, however, and therefore neither political 55 Author’s interview with Kani Beko. 56 Author’s interview with Lami Özgen. 57 Author’s interview with Lami Özgen.

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organisations nor labour movements attempted to build strong relations with human rights institutions at the international level. This policy was justified with the role of the capitalist system in creating and supporting these human rights institutions. The dominant mentality of social struggle in Turkey during this period perceived human rights issues as a sub-branch of the main campaign, which was centred around revolutionary ideas. This approach can be observed not only in the case of the labour movement. Political organisations adopted almost the same position and policies on human rights institutions that prevented the creation of an independent human rights organisation until 1986. Hüseyin Aykol summarises the dominant mentality thus: “In the 1960s and 70s, we as leftists had the notion that there would be the Revolution and everything would be solved.”58 This was the common approach to all social issues including human rights concepts. Leading leftist political organisations followed this path and argued that there was no need to organise people under different institutions, be they human rights organisations or minority organisations. Aykol also adds: “Any problem related to youth, women, ethnic minorities or other nations would be immediately solved with the revolution.” 59 The idea of such an “all-healing” revolution became problematic for two reasons: a) negligence of human rights problems, b) independence issues even if there was a concern about human rights. In 1962, there was a further attempt to create a distinct human rights organisation outside of the labour movement and political organisations, as Nevzat Helvacı points out: “The second human rights organisation was established by Mehmet Ali Aybar [a leading leftist politician] and his friends in 1962.”60 This association would likewise not survive long, and was closed down in the same year. In addition to this second attempt to establish an independent human rights organisation, there were some other initiatives at the institutional level and as individual efforts. Before the military coup on 12 September 1980, there were two human rights centres at Ankara University and the Public Administration Institute for Turkey and the Middle East (TODAİE). Prof. Bahri Savcı founded the “Human Rights Centre” at Ankara University, and TODAİE had the “Human Rights Research and Collection Centre”. These centres issued important human rights publications.61

The two centres operated under the auspices of universities and produced important publications, yet they lacked some essential aspects of true human rights movements, like documentation of human rights violations and provision of legal and medical assistance. There were also some individual human rights defenders in the 1960s and 1970s who contributed to the struggle for fundamental rights and freedoms. Hüsnü Öndül draws attention to such individual initiatives in the field of human rights and says:

58 59 60 61

Author’s interview with Hüseyin Aykol. Author’s interview with Hüseyin Aykol. Helvacı, Karanlıkta Yol Aramak, 150. Helvacı, Karanlıkta Yol Aramak, 150.

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Osman İşçi Of course, having no human rights organisations does not mean that there were no human rights activists. For example, Ass. Prof. Bahri Savcı was a very active human rights defender in this period. Similarly, Mümtaz Soysal served as the Amnesty International Turkey Section representative.62

Nevzat Helvacı also recognises the importance of these individual human rights defenders, likewise referring to the founders of Amnesty International Turkey Section, created in 1974 and banned after the coup d’état. Helvacı states: “In addition to these centres, Prof. Dr. Mümtaz Soysal, Prof. Dr. Rona Aybay, Prof. Dr. Münci Kapani and their friends established Amnesty International Turkey Section.”63 Another noteworthy organisation was Barış Derneği [Peace Association], established in 1977 and shut down in the course of the coup d’état 1980. Erol Anar, author of “İnsan Hakları Tarihi [Human Rights History]”, also provides information about Barış Derneği, noting that it was established “by 39 people including authors, lawyers and artists in İstanbul. The objective was defined as ‘accomplishment of world peace’.”64 Although Barış Derneği had functions that could be expected of a human rights organisation at the time, there were some doubts about its independence from the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP). Hüsnü Öndül raises this point in his analysis of the relationships between civil society organisations and political organisations. During this period [the 1960s and 1970s], civil society organisations were generally created in parallel with political organisations. Barış Derneği conducted its activities in parallel with the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP), in other words with Soviet Union policies during that period. In fact, TKP – organised abroad – was under the Soviet Union’s policies. 65

In the 1980s, particularly after the coup d’état, the understanding of human rights concepts among leftists changed. In his article entitled “İnsan hakları kavramının evrimi ve Marksizm [Evolution of Human Rights Concept and Marxism]”, Taner Akçam sheds light on the understanding of human rights concepts among leftists, explaining how the concept entered into and gained importance within political life in Turkey. He notes: The concept of human rights entered into political life in Turkey particularly after 1980. It cannot be argued that we think about this concept as a result of the practical need to fight against explicit torture and pressure methods by the 12th of September regime.66

This argument reflects the dominant mentality in the 1980s, as evidenced by the fact that İHD as the first civilian human rights organisation was founded by prisoners’ relatives, intellectuals, lawyers etc. These people, who had no alternative organisation to maintain their struggle against the regime at the time, established İHD to contend against the dark period resulting from the coup d’état in 1980. 62 63 64 65 66

Author’s interview with Hüsnü Öndül. Helvacı, Karanlıkta Yol Aramak, 150. Erol Anar, İnsan Hakları Tarihi, İstanbul 1996, 170. Author’s interview with Hüsnü Öndül. Taner Akçam, İnsan Hakları Kavramının Evrimi ve Marksizm, in: Birikim 19/1990, 9.

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Akçam elaborates his argument about many socialists’ approach to human rights concepts and underlines: For many socialists approached the issue with the notion that it was nothing short of inevitable. In their final analysis, human rights were a bourgeois concept and could not be idolised. Therefore, a human-rights-based struggle against a military regime was, in its essence, a bourgeois opposition movement. However, socialists were channelled into this human-rightsbased opposition movement due to practical challenges and developments. Therefore, there was a pragmatic rather than a theoretical/philosophical approach to the human rights concept.67

This pragmatic approach meant that human rights organisations did not attract attention despite a strong civil society movement and political organisations in Turkey during the 1960s and 1970s. The problem is also related to a civil society culture that internalises democracy and other universal human rights principles. Hüsnü Öndül comments on the issue of democratic culture and notes: Since Turkey is not a democratic country, democratic culture has not developed within the civil society movement, either. The fundamental essence of democratic culture is diversity. There was no chance to recognise this diversity, no atmosphere to express these differences. Therefore, even civil society analysed events from the perspective of sub-organisations [of larger political organisations] – in other words, from the perspective of power. There was an idea that NGOs are sub-organisations of political organisations and that they cannot survive under any other conditions. 68

Democratic culture issues and the aforementioned pragmatic approach are two serious problems that prevented the establishment of an independent human rights organisation in Turkey during the 20th century. Had there been a culture of democracy and a genuine approach to human rights values, an independent human rights organisation might have been founded earlier than 1986. CONCLUSION In summary, Turkey has a strong tradition of civil society movements, particularly of labour rights, youth and women’s organisations as well as political organisations, during the second half of the 20th century. Compared to this strong civil society movement, the human rights movement was not particularly strong until the late 20th century. İnsan Hakları Derneği, the first independent human rights organisation in Turkey, succeeds in struggling against human rights violations in Turkey and maintaining relations with the international human rights movement. İHD was established as a reaction to the 1980 coup d’état and fought for the protection and promotion of human rights during the period of military rule in Turkey. Although there are numerous independent human rights organisations and a strong human rights movement in Turkey today, this was not the case before İHD was established in 1986. The reasons for this absence of independent human 67 Akçam, İnsan Hakları Kavramının Evrimi ve Marksizm, 9. 68 Author’s interview with Hüsnü Öndül.

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rights organisations can be categorised under external and internal factors, with both significantly impeding the establishment of a human rights movement in Turkey. Anar, for example, refers to the militarist mentality that the Republic of Turkey was built on, a mentality that prioritises the state over citizens, with the latter not considered the centre of society. This fact has blocked the development of a free and active civil society movement. Taner Akçam states that there is a lack of discussion about human rights concepts in Turkey, but believes any discussion in this regard is important because if we struggle for a society based on equality and freedom, and dream about a society without any form of exploitation (human to human, human to nature) and any authoritarian relationships, human rights can play a crucial role in the accomplishment of such a society. 69

Akçam proposes a solution to this problem: “Human rights should be approached as a political project, and its content should be revised and improved. It is what should be done.”70 There is a danger of taking an all too pragmatic approach to human rights despite the history of the human rights movement in Turkey. Hüsnü Öndül says: “Why there was no well-established, independent human rights organisation is clear for me: lack of democratic culture.”71 No human rights movement can survive if there is no strong civil society movement. Undoubtedly, this civil society movement should internalise democratic culture and view fundamental rights and freedoms as an objective rather than a tool.

69 Akçam, İnsan Hakları Kavramının Evrimi ve Marksizm, 9. 70 Akçam, İnsan Hakları Kavramının Evrimi ve Marksizm, 10. 71 Author’s interview with Hüsnü Öndül.

FORUM

THE BELGIAN LEAGUE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS A First Outline for Future Research David Morelli 1901–1940: THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE ORGANISATION The Belgian Human Rights League – in French Ligue des droits de l’homme – was the second league to be created after the French League for Human Rights. The former was established in 1901 shortly after the latter, created in 1898 in response to the Dreyfus affair. After being dissolved once during the First World War, the league was rebuilt in 1923 under the brand name Ligue Belge pour la défense des droits de l’homme et du citoyen – Belgian League for the Defence of Citizens and Human Rights. We will call it “Belgian League” in the following.1 The Belgian League was mainly composed of prominent citizens at the time, including lawyers, legal experts and former or future Secretaries of State, and reached its zenith in the 1930s. Internationally speaking, the actions of the Belgian League during this period consisted mainly of manifestations against the rise of Nazism and of dealing with political refugees’ applications. More specifically, it assisted Italians refugees trying to escape Mussolini’s fascist regime by intervening with Belgian authorities to support their applications for asylum. The League also organised supporting actions for asylum seekers from Eastern Europe and collaborated with the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) to increase the impact of its interventions. Its representatives also attended the FIDH’s congresses, for example in 1923 in Paris, where Emile Vandervelde, Louis Piérard and Mrs. KoopmanLorand were present. In 1926, the FIDH congress was even held in Brussels.2 From the very few documents about the pre-war League still available today, we can determine that Emile Vandervelde, president of the Belgian League between 1933 and 1937, regularly met the secretaries of the Italian Human Rights League as well as members of the International Federation. However, one of the few traces we have regarding agreement between the Belgian League and a 1

2

Where no other sources are specifically indicated, this paper is primarily based on the thesis paper “Histoire de la Ligue belge pour la défense des droits de l’homme entre 1954 et 1983: positions et actions internationales” written by Fabrice Delooz in 2001 and presented to the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Source references can be found therein. I would like to thank Fabrice Delooz for his permission to quote from his text. See Gilles Manceron’s contribution in this volume.

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foreign one is a handwritten document about asylum rights, signed in 1935 by the secretary of the Italian League, which by then had settled in Paris.3 The history of the pre-war Belgian League has yet to be written.4 The only documents witnessing this period are a few records, newspaper articles and letters. Apart from these reports and the few references to the Belgian League in Emile Vandervelde’s private letters5, barely any records of the pre-war Belgian League remain. A few traces of epistolary exchanges also exist in the archives of the French League and its journal, but to the best of our knowledge these documents have not yet been studied by historians interested in the topic.6 Further material may well be located in the archives of other leagues, including the Austrian one. In summary, there is as yet no academic paper or extensive scientific written report covering this period of the history of the Belgian League.7 The primary reason for this gap in the memory and literature about the Belgian League is the fact that during the 1930s, the league was often considered and presented as a partisan organisation by the media. This was probably due to the political orientation of its president at the time, Emile Vandervelde, one of the great actors of Belgian socialism before the Second World War who was elected State Minister several times.8 With such a pedigree, it is not surprising that the Germans prohibited the activities of the League and seized their archives when they invaded Belgium in 1940. Since this confiscation, nobody had access to these precious documents. Due to hitherto unknown circumstances, most of the archives were eventually transferred to the Soviet Union, and apparently remain in Moscow to this day.

3 4

5 6 7 8

On the history of the Italian League, see Eric Vial’s contribution in this volume. Delooz cites the somewhat incomprehensive research by Marc D’Hoore and an article by Anne-Marie Dieu as the current state of research on the Belgian League. After a short introduction placing the creation of the interwar Belgian League in the 1920s and its dissolution at the moment of the Nazi occupation, Anne-Marie Dieu focuses primarily on the activity of the Belgian League in the second half of the 20th century, however. Marc D’Hoore, Note relative à l’histoire de la Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, Bruxelles 1992. Anne-Marie Dieu, Valeurs et associations. Entre changement et continuité, Paris 1992, chapter 2 “La Ligue des Droits de l’Homme”, 169–188. Archives of the Institut Emile Vandervelde, Brussels. Archives of the LDH, Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine, Université Paris-Ouest-Nanterre. Future research efforts at the Department of History, University of Vienna aim to include the Belgian League as well. See the website of the Belgian League, http://www.liguedh.be/lhistoire-de-la-ligue-des-droitsde-lhomme/46-1901-1954, consulted 29 November 2016.

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THE POST-WAR HISTORY: TWO EXAMPLES Luckily, the second part of the history of the Belgian League is better documented, even though the lack of a proper archiving policy and the bad storage conditions make it difficult to access many of the files. An eventual thorough historical study of the post-war period is certainly warranted. In the following, I will discuss two examples of international actions by the post-war Belgian League. These examples come from the aforementioned work of a student in history at Brussels Free University who wrote his thesis paper in the context of the League’s 100th birthday in 2001. As his main sources, Delooz used records of the League’s central committee and joint reports as well as the newsletter, which served as the organisation’s only information and communication tool for many years. In 1954, nine years after World War II and the loss of its archives, the “Belgian League for the Defence of Human Rights” was established again. This new League consisted of previous members of the pre-war League as well as new human rights defenders. Two main factors prompted the reconstruction of the organisation: Firstly, the infringement of the rights of the defence during the trial of the Nazi regime collaborators. Secondly, the shock caused by the sentencing of the spouses Rosenberg to death for spying. The activities of the new League were dedicated, besides its educational function, to reacting to problems like police violence, infringement of prisoners’ rights, anti-Semitism, and censorship of artists and intellectuals. But the international vocation of the work of the reconstructed League became apparent during its inauguration ceremony in March 1954. At this occasion, the new president Henri Botson stated that the League was re-established in order to struggle against the decline of international morality between the two world wars and against the manifest apathy towards the countless injustices committed by the totalitarian regimes and towards some abuses of rights carried out in democratic regimes.

This commitment to international questions can also be explained by the good economic and social situation in Belgium during the immediate post-war period. In this positive context, the League focused mainly on international problems and, more specifically, on the topics of decolonisation, struggle against dictatorships and respect for human rights in democratic regimes. The steady and close relationship between the International Federation and the Belgian League since its reorganisation may also explain this leaning towards international affairs. In regard to this relationship, it is also worth noting that Jeanne Vandervelde, Emile Vandervelde’s second wife, had been appointed vicepresident of the International Federation. She held this position from 1954, the year of the re-establishment of the Belgian League, until her death in 1963.

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The Belgian League for Human Rights

Figure 1. Newsletter No. 1 of the Belgian League after its re-establishment in 1954. Source: Archives of the Austrian League for Human Rights.

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During the aforementioned inauguration ceremony, lecturer Henri Rolin emphasised the positive and important impact of the Convention of Human Rights, which had been signed by the members of the Council of Europe four years earlier in Rome, on the colonial issue. I will now discuss the relations between the Belgian League and the other national leagues by way of two examples connected to decolonisation issues. From 1954 onwards, the League focused on two decolonisation processes in particular: the Algerian and Congolese ones. Starting in 1957, it also published a newsletter (see Figure 1) informing about these and other activities. The Algerian Case The efforts of the Belgian League pertaining to Algeria are particularly interesting since they represent an excellent example of encroachment by one league upon the range of actions of another one – in this case, the French League for Human Rights. The Algerian War that took place from 1954 to 1962 was a war of liberation and of decolonisation, pitting France against Algerian nationalists mostly united under the national liberation front. But it was also a twofold civil war: between the communities on the one hand and within the communities on the other hand. The Belgian League took an interest in the Algerian problem for the first time in 1955, almost a year after the beginning of the conflict. In October 1955, a resolution was passed by the League blaming terrorists for acts committed in Algeria as well as the deportation and internment of civilians. The destruction of villages conducted by French authorities was also condemned in the resolution. The Belgian League contacted the French League to find out what it planned to do regarding the issue, but the French League did not receive this enquiry warmly. Indeed, it was surprised by the late concern of the Belgian League regarding the conflict. In December 1955, the Belgian League sent a letter to the French League expressing its gratitude for the latter’s protest actions related to the issues with Algerians. The letter also stated, however, that the French League “must not claim to have the monopoly of criticism when human rights breaches occur on the territory of the French Union”. It might seem that the Belgian League’s interest in a range of action closely related to France represented a source of tension between the two leagues. But as Delooz points out, the Belgian League was very careful not to adopt a partisan position on the Algerian independence issue. Its intervention was aimed exclusively at ensuring respect for human rights in this long and bloody decolonisation conflict. During the war, the Belgian League kept a close watch on the official reports between Belgium and France, focusing particularly on police collaboration and the exchange of Algerian prisoners between the two countries. In December 1957, the League was informed about an Algerian person living in Belgium being displaced to France. This situation raised the question of the observance of human rights. Indeed, Algerian activists and partisans of the National Liberal Front or other nationalist organisations were likely to face capital punishment if they were deported to France. Due to various worrisome adminis-

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trative measures taken in Belgium, one could assume that people from Algeria who seemed to be in contact with nationalist groups were considered unwelcome there. Also, the expulsions to France of Algerian immigrants living in Belgium appeared to be disguised extraditions. For instance, a royal decree was promulgated in 1958 with the goal of facilitating the expulsion of foreigners who were considered unwelcome during the Brussels Universal Exhibition. The Belgian League suspected that the intent of this decree was to expel Algerian immigrants living in Belgium. Moreover, Algerian students also had to cope with administrative difficulties if they wanted to study in Belgium. As a result, the Belgian League closely monitored expulsions of Algerians between 1957 and 1960 and intervened with the competent minister every time irregularities were observed. Somewhat later, another event would further aggravate the tensions between the Belgian and French Leagues: In June 1960, new decrees were issued by the French government to decrease the rights of defence at a time when many Algerians were being driven back to Belgian borders. One of these decrees directly targeted the lawyers of accused Algerians, and this decree was condemned in a resolution drawn up by the Belgian League on 12 October 1960. The resolution was sent to French authorities and the French League for Human Rights although the transmission was not met with unanimity among the members of the central committee. Some members, including President Jeanne Vandervelde, thought that the Belgian League should act in accord with the French League, while other members maintained that the French League could not act efficiently as long as the controversial act of legislation was in force in France. The French League reacted vehemently to the resolution by the Belgian League, and the record of its central committee session of 18 November 1960 sums up its position as follows: “The French League especially rises up against the Belgian League’s threatening tone. Also, we deplore the intervention of the Belgian League regarding issues which fall in the competences of the French League.” Following this incident, a delegation of the Belgian League went to Paris to meet with French League staff and to try to smooth out the disagreement in question. As mentioned earlier, the Belgian League at no time took sides in the Algerian independence issue. In terms of the dispute between the two leagues provoked by the Belgian League’s stance, one may consider its careful behaviour to be the sensible reaction, at least in regard to the future of the relationship with its French counterpart. Indeed, a more drastic attitude would have probably lead to serious problems with the French League or even to loss of contact, and this was the worst-case scenario the Belgian League tried to avoid by sending a delegation to Paris to handle the situation. Despite trying to work out the tensions with the French League, however, the Belgian League still assumed a vigilant and even wary position towards its French colleagues and even towards the International Federation. A good example is the Belgian League’s perplexity regarding the capacity of the International Federation to manage, in a neutral and appropriate way, human rights issues that were consequences of a conflict occurring in a French colony. In the course of the Algerian conflict, the persons in charge of the Belgian League were particularly upset by the belligerents’ serious actions and weighty words. In 1958, for instance,

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members of the National Liberal Front (NLF) executed three French soldiers, and Colonel Bigeard, one of the principal actors of the French army general staff, urged his troops to “break the Fellagha”, referring to Algerian combatants struggling for the independence of their country. In this explosive atmosphere, the Belgian League decided to be initiative and tried to organise a meeting between both sides of the conflict. Indeed, the League hoped that both France and the Algerian freedom fighters would respect the Geneva Conventions concerning the protection of prisoners of war as well the humanitarian rules. It therefore suggested a conference between the French government and the NLF under the eyes of the Red Cross International Committee. Most members of the central committee warmly welcomed the suggestion during their meeting on 14 May 1958, but some others believed the International Federation should take this initiative instead. Jules Wolf, president of the Belgian League’s legal commission at the time, was strongly opposed to this idea, warning that the French League’s dominating role within the International Federation was a real issue in this case. Moreover, he stated that this kind of event should be organised in a small and neutral country like Belgium. This statement was supported by the president of the League, Georges Aronstein, who likewise pointed out the close ties – presumably too close in his opinion – between the International Federation and the French League, claiming that the International Federation was “almost a manifestation of the French League”. This suspicious point of view would eventually prevail, and the League thus made discreet contact with both sides of the conflict and addressed a call for collaboration to the Red Cross International Committee, leaving the International Federation uninformed. The initiative was ultimately unsuccessful due to the lack of concrete results of the Red Cross actions. Even though the Algerian conflict caused tensions between the Belgian and French Leagues, the Belgian League has always made sure to maintain regular contact. It does so by regularly sending its resolution texts to the French League and requesting complementary information about the situation in France. It is also important to note that in 1959, the Belgian League organised a conference on Human Rights in France and appointed Daniel Mayer, president of the French League, as the speaker for the event. This first step undoubtedly helped the two leagues establish a cordial relationship despite the strained context. Many other initiatives were undertaken to improve the situation between the leagues, but traces of the tensions resulting from the Algerian conflict nevertheless remained for a long time. Indeed, once the conflict in Algeria had ended, the Belgian League at least partly ignored the human rights situation in France: For almost 20 years, between 1963 and 1983, the Belgian central committee barely intervened on subjects relating to France. In 1963, the Belgian League had concerned itself with the expulsion of a Belgian journalist at the French border, an expulsion that later turned out to have resulted from an error. The journalist had been blacklisted by mistake because of his previous comments during the Algerian conflict. This last case in relation with the Algerian conflict did not further damage the relationship between the two leagues, however. The second conflict that shall briefly be discussed is also connected to the decolonisation period, specifically the independence of Belgian Congo. In the

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context of this conflict, I aim to show an attempt by the Belgian League to establish a league “on the spot”. The Belgian League and Belgian Colonialism After the end of World War II, emancipation and independence movements grew continually in Congo. The violent events that occurred in Leopoldville on 4 January 1959 marked a new high in the rise of these movements. In 1955, the Belgian League founded a colonial commission aiming to keep under surveillance the observation of human rights in the colonies, especially in regard to racial discrimination. At the time, no Congolese League for Human Rights existed, and the Belgian League received a large number of requests to join the association from people who were still being called “indigenous”. In June 1955, a group of people from Ruanda-Urundi who described themselves as “moralists” expressed their interest in joining the Belgian League. President Georges Aronstein was afraid of this group’s highly politicised notion of human rights, and wished to be more closely informed about the way they approached the concept of the defence of human rights before accepting their membership. In June 1957, several students from Ruanda-Urundi eventually became members of the Belgian League. In November 1958, the League received a letter with a surprising letterhead from an inhabitant of Kisengi in the Lower Congo province: It was addressed by the “Belgian League for the Defence of Human Rights, local committee of Kisengi”. The secretary general of the Belgian League replied to the signatory asking him to “refrain from acting on behalf of one of the Belgian League local committees” and pointing out the fact that “the question posed in this letter deals not with the work of a League for Human Rights”. Indeed, the content of the letter concerned excessive medical fees. Before the independence of the Congo, the colonial commission of the League received several offers by Congolese people to create a Congolese League, and it tried to give a concrete shape to this idea in June 1960, a few weeks before the independence. Unfortunately, the Congolese people who had shown interest in the project were never heard from again, and the initiative did not succeed. In June 1961, when the Congo had been independent for one year, the Belgian League again tried to create a Congolese league. It began to set up the Congolese league with the help of a leading Congolese figure whose identity was kept secret by the League. The realisation of the project, for which we have no details, was pursued for a certain time but ultimately failed. In May 1962, the Belgian League was informed by a previous Congolese member that he was planning to form a Congolese league, but once again, this intent did not come to fruition. In June 1967, a certain Londole contacted the president of the League to announce that he was the head of a Congolese human rights league he had created. As a sign of their support, the Belgian League gave a typewriter to this newly founded league, which had been established without Belgian help. It is unknown what happened with the Congolese League after this symbolic support, however.

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Delooz provides no any information about its work in the independent Congo, nor about any collaboration between the Belgian and the Congolese League. The Congolese organisation seems no longer to exist today. As had already been the case during the Algerian war, the Belgian League was careful not to take sides in the question of independence. The League acted on all Congo-related issues only in terms of supporting basic human rights. For example, it was only in February 1960 that the term “independence” appeared in a Congolese document, while the Belgian government had already declared the transition towards independence of the Congo a month before. In both the Algerian and Congolese conflicts, it is clear that the Belgian League was not at the leading edge of the struggle for human rights regarding the populations in conflict. However, one should not overlook the Belgian League’s efforts: Not only did it struggle to find a diplomatic solution to the Algerian conflict, but it also raised awareness among Belgian authorities in respect to the differences of treatment between black and white people in the Congo. CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK To conclude this paper, I would like to take a 50-year leap forward. Obviously, the current Belgian League is thoroughly different than the one established in the 1950s. Firstly, the League is now divided into two regional entities; and secondly, legal experts and public figures are no longer its only members. It is now open to the general public and is highly professionalised. Last but not least, although the international aspect of the League was the main motivation for rebuilding it in 1954, it now focuses almost entirely on observation and promotion of human rights in Belgium. Nevertheless, the Belgian League has the opportunity to stay informed as well as to collaborate with and support the International Federation’s initiatives and battles for human rights issues abroad. Globalisation and the extension of the European Union have led to a decentralisation of decision centres. The decision-making process is therefore likely to occur regardless of national borders, and national legislation often consists of decisions made in decentralised organs. Many of these decisions relate to privacy or social, economic and cultural challenges, and thus have a great impact on human rights principles. In the future, the Belgian League will naturally keep fighting to promote all kinds of human wellbeing. Our organisation is aware that this fight will be more efficient if global challenges and even some local challenges are addressed with a more global and international approach. Accordingly, collaborations between the national leagues and between the leagues and the International Federation have never been as crucial as they are today in regard to spreading information and developing European and international strategies and actions to guarantee human rights and human dignity all over the world.

THE LUXEMBOURGISH LEAGUE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS Paul Fonck La Ligue des Droits de l’Homme est restée au fond toujours une société quelque peu secrète et connue seulement aux initiés.1 Julien Mersch

A history – even a brief one – of the original Luxembourgish League for Human Rights has not been written until now, and it seems a difficult task to undertake. This is an attempt to bring light into the nearly forgotten past of the Ligue pour la défense des droits de l’homme et du citoyen. The difficulty here is twofold: Firstly, the current Ligue des Droits de l’Homme – Action Luxembourg Ouvert et Solidaire (LDH-ALOS)2 was created in 2008 and has no direct ties to the first Luxembourgish League, which probably ceased all activity in the 1980s. 3 Secondly, a complete archive of the old League is nowhere to be found. We are therefore turning every stone to recover the past of one of the oldest human rights leagues in Europe, presumably founded in 1923. Only one file containing information on the League exists in the Archives Nationales de Luxembourg, and it primarily contains the League’s “Bulletin d’information de la Ligue luxembourgeoise pour la Défense des Droits de l’Homme” published from 1956 to 1960. It cannot be confirmed that all issues are present, however, as there is no complete listing of them. Alongside the “Bulletins” are documents illustrating the fight for war reparations as well as the struggle against the “Maulkorbgesetz [gagging law]”, which will be discussed in detail below.4

1

2 3

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Bulletin d’information de la Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, March 1983, Bibliothèque nationale du Luxembourg (BNL), LV 916, 1. “The Human Rights League always remained a secret society, only familiar to the initiated.” The citations in this article were translated by the author. Further information about the current League can be found under http://www.ldh.lu, consulted 24 November 2016. Although there are no direct ties, the author wishes to thank Mr. Claude Weber, president of the current League, for his help and efforts to recover the past of the first Luxembourgish League. Archives nationales du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg (ANLux), Fonds des associations, des parties politiques et des communautés religieuses, FD-235-16 Ligue des droits de l’homme (1956–1960).

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Figure 1. “Bulletin” documenting the League’s general assembly in 1959. ANLux, FD-235 Ligue des droits de l’homme, 1956–1960, Bulletin September/October 1959.

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Another source is the Bibliothèque nationale de Luxembourg. This institution has in its collections two further “Bulletins” from 19835 and 19846, which provide a very basic overview of the last years of the League’s existence and of the topics its members addressed. The library also contains an enormous wealth of newspapers that may represent useful sources for research; most of these newspapers have been digitised and can be accessed online.7 According to Henri Koch-Kent, the biggest Luxembourgish newspaper, the “Luxemburger Wort”, opposed the Luxembourgish League for Human Rights during the 1930s, possibly because the paper caters to a predominantly right-wing audience while the League’s orientation was more left-wing. The “Wort” launched a smear campaign against the League during the “gagging law” struggle8, and the articles archived at the Bibliothèque nationale might help to better understand this 1937 campaign and the League in general. Another Luxembourgish institution that presumably possesses some information about the members of the League is the Service de renseignement de l’État luxembourgeois (SREL) – the Luxembourgish intelligence service, which may have compiled personal files on some of the League’s former members. The SREL provides no information on whether they even have any such documents, however, and would not grant access to them if they did. The Bibliothèque de documentation internationale contemporaine, where the archives of the French League are kept, also contains several files on the Luxembourgish League for Human Rights that can be consulted on site in Paris-Nanterre. Emmanuel Naquet seems to have had access to them while writing his dissertation on the French League.9 An important tool enabling the Luxembourgish League to remain in touch with the leagues existing in other countries was the exchange of their respective “Bulletins” and “Cahiers”. No such newsletter from another league has been found in a Luxembourgish archive, but according to the Luxembourgish League, bulletins were exchanged with the leagues in France, Germany and Austria, and talks initiated with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in 1958.10 Two years later, newsletters were apparently being exchanged with the ACLU and the Belgian League for Human Rights as well as with the German, French and Aus-

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Bulletin, 1983, BNL, LV 916. Bulletin, November 1984, BNL, LV 916. The web site “eluxemburgensia” is a project by the Bibliothèque nationale de Luxembourg and can be accessed online under http://www.eluxemburgensia.lu/R/RN=450951625&local_ base=SERIALS, consulted 24 November 2016. 8 Henri Koch-Kent, Ils ont dit NON au fascisme. Rejet de la loi muselière par le référendum de 1937, Luxembourg 1982, 41. 9 Emmanuel Naquet, La Ligue des Droits de l’Homme: une association en politique (1898– 1940), PhD diss., Institut d’études politiques de Paris 2005. 10 Bulletin, June 1958, ANLux, FD-235-16. The contributions in this volume provide an overview of the human rights leagues in various countries.

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trian Leagues.11 Even though the respective bulletins themselves have not been found in Luxembourg, proof of these exchanges may exist in other archives. Despite the unsatisfactory archival situation, some general milestones of the original League’s history can be recovered. First traces of its past can be found in an article in “Der arme Teufel”, a Luxembourgish newspaper claiming (although no founding document exists) that the League was founded in the 1920s and originated from the Luxembourgish Freethought Movement.12 The rough dating seems to be correct, as Emmanuel Naquet indicates the year 1923 for the League’s foundation.13 It became a member of the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues in Paris in the same year. An internal report places it among the oldest leagues, but an exact date is nowhere to be found.14 At the time, the Luxembourgish League also had a special relationship with its French counterpart, and there is in fact a statement by the former that the latter – and Émile Kahn in particular – assisted considerably in its founding.15 No proof of actions taken during the 1920s has been found, unless we take into consideration attendance and organisation of international conferences. In 1925, for example, the Luxembourgish League hosted an international conference in Luxembourg to discuss children’s rights.16 This would change, however, when the right-wing government under Prime Minister Joseph Bech attempted to introduce a law for the conservation of political and social order in 1935, the previously mentioned “Maulkorbgesetz” or gagging law. The League heavily opposed this law, as it considered it to be designed to discriminate against any political organisation opposed to the current government – especially the Communist Party, which at the time was under heavy attack by its clerical rivals. Undertaken in cooperation with other local organisations, it was the first well-documented action by the League and resulted in a public referendum in 1937. The referendum was won by the supporters of the League’s view by a narrow margin of 0.67 per cent, and the controversial law was never adopted.17 In fact, many League members left their own political parties because they were opposed to the law. 18 But this was not the League’s only activity during this time. According to Emmanuel Naquet, it became involved in helping refugees from German territories after 193319, not

11 Bulletin, September/October 1959, ANLux, FD-235-16. 12 Henri Koch-Kent, Nachruf Jean Metzdorff, in: d’Letzeburger Land, 6 December 1968, 6. The Luxembourgish Freethought Movement was created in 1906 to disseminate rational ideas and counter-clerical attacks and establish deeper links between its members. There are numerous documents that link this movement to the Luxembourgish League for Human Rights, especially when it comes to their respective ideas and members. Both Paul Flesch and René Blum served as president of both associations. 13 Naquet, Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, 435. 14 Bulletin N° 2, August/September/October 1956, ANLux, FD-235-16. 15 Bulletin N° 3, May 1957, ANLux, FD-235-16. 16 Bulletin, 1957, ANLux, FD-235-16. 17 Bulletin, Special edition 6 June 1957, ANLux, FD-235-16. 18 Koch-Kent, NON au fascisme, 16. 19 Naguet, Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, 716.

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only by helping those who arrived on Luxembourgish soil, but also by trying to integrate them into Luxembourgish society and prevent their deportation.20 Thereafter, the League displayed limited activity until the 1950s. Whereas the Austrian League dissolved during the Second World War to avoid persecution21, nothing is known about the Luxembourgish League in the occupied Grand Duchy – except for its inactivity during these years. In the 1950s, its members were involved in the discussions about war reparations between the Luxembourgish and West German governments. The League argued that not every war invalid was being sufficiently compensated. It was a sensitive topic in Luxembourg and the League was directly involved, writing to and meeting with the responsible minister22, assembling various organisations with a common interest23 and introducing the topic to the public domain.24 Despite its efforts, however, the goal of equal payments was not achieved. While this was its main undertaking at the time, the League was likewise involved in several smaller projects. According to a 1958 “Bulletin”, it also dealt with topics such as the abolition of the death penalty, the reform of the national army, the returning of the Grand Duchy to its neutral status25, new laws to expel people from the country and reforms in the educational system.26 In a second “Bulletin” in 1958, the League attempted to convince the state to abandon all discussion about nuclear development within Luxembourg, as well as to appoint a national committee for human rights, which was partly successful.27 Shortly after the case of the war reparations had been settled, the first legal document regarding the Luxembourgish League was drafted: On 29 August 1969, the League was officially founded after having existed informally for nearly 50 years.28 When it had first been established, there had been no law requiring the registration of a newly created organisation; corresponding legislation was only enacted in 1928.29 However, there is nothing in the legal files to explain the date in 1969, nor a specific reason for the late foundation.

20 21 22 23

24 25

26 27 28 29

Lokalneuigkeiten, in: Tageblatt, 7 December 1928, 2. See Christopher Treiblmayr’s contribution in this volume. Copies of letters from 26 June and 12 July 1957, ANLux, FD-235-16. Procès verbal de la Réunion interfédérale convoquée par la Ligue Luxembourgeoise des Droits de l’Homme pour discuter sur la question des réparations allemandes au siège de la L-D-H, ANLux, FD-235-16. Bulletin, 1958, ANLux, FD-235-16. In order to remain an independent state, Luxembourg had to declare its neutral status in London on 11 May 1867. Although this status was violated in both World Wars, it was not officially abolished until 1948, when the government made changes to the constitution so as to be able to join NATO in 1949. Bulletin, September/October 1958, ANLux, FD-235-16. Bulletin, 1958, ANLux, FD-235-16. Mémorial C, 1969, 6940–6942. http://www.mj.public.lu/legislation/asbl_fondations/2009_Loi_21_avril_1928.pdf, consulted 2 September 2016.

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Figure 2. Appeal to the Luxembourgish nation concerning the reform of the constitution. ANLux, FD-235 Ligue des droits de l’homme, 1956–1960, Aufruf an das Luxemburger Volk.

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In the early 1980s, the League was quite active and seems to have had more members, since there were enough of them to establish various committees responsible for a diverse range of topics. Among these topics were human rights and education, health issues, foreigners and the legislation on asylum, and preparation and distribution of the “Bulletins”.30 Together with various local organisations, the League also demonstrated against the Apartheid regime in South Africa.31 The last major event during which the League appeared in public was the dispute about whether the government should be allowed to spy on the population by tapping telephones in the 1980s.32 This campaign, however, was not as successful as the one in the 1930s. The League, again with the help of other organisations, sued the Luxembourgish government at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, but lost the case.33 As mentioned before, the Luxembourgish League for Human Rights did not restrict its activity to Luxembourgish soil, and was in fact quite active when it came to communicating with various leagues in other countries. Since its foundation, it strove to be involved on an international level, and as a member of the International Federation for Human Rights it participated in conferences outside Luxembourg at various occasions, with its members not merely attending but actively taking part as speakers and debaters.34 Information regarding these events can be found in the preserved “Bulletins”, in which the topics and results of the conferences – such as Nice in 195635, Brussels in 195936, and Paris in 198437 – were published. Despite the sparseness of material, there are some names that appear frequently in different documents. Paul Flesch was the first president of the League and of the Libre pensée movement in Luxembourg.38 During his lifetime, he was forced to flee his home country twice and become a refugee in France due to the World Wars. During World War I he became acquainted with the Libre pensée movement and founded the Comité franco-luxembourgeois, a committee designed to support Luxembourgers willing to fight on the French side. Through the relations established in this manner, especially between the wars, Flesch remained in touch with French League officials39; it is therefore no surprise that the two organisa-

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Bulletin, 1983, BNL, LV 916. Am Rande, in: d’Letzeburger Land, 28 December 1985, 4. Erika Lindauer, Menschenrechte, in: d’Letzeburger Land, 10 December 1982, 4. Bulletin, 1983, BNL, LV 916. See the contribution of Gilles Manceron in this volume. Bulletin, 1956, ANLux, FD-235-16. Bulletin, 1958, ANLux, FD-235-16. Bulletin, 1984, BNL, LV 916. Roberto Spigarelli, La LIDU (Ligue italienne des droits de l’homme), organisation d’émigrés antifascistes italiens à Luxembourg (1929–1940), bachelor thesis, University of Luxembourg 2011, 29. Bulletin, 1983, BNL, LV 916. 39 Spigarelli, LIDU, 31f.

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tions co-operated very closely. Flesch was also a well-known Freemason.40 This may be an indication of a connection between the Luxembourgish League and the Freemason movement similar to those of other leagues, but further research would be required to substantiate this notion. Flesch, however, was not the only president of the League involved with Libre pensée. The later president René Blum also had ties to the movement. Blum served the League for several years as president, vice-president or honorary president (though precise dates cannot be determined from the available sources).41 During this time he worked as a jurist and diplomat, e.g. as ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1955, and as a politician. He was a member of the Chambre des Députés from 1918 to 1937, and even briefly served as its president. From 1937 to 1940, he served as Luxembourgish Minister of Justice42, and in 1962 as vice-president of the International Federation for Human Rights.43 Blum was not the only League member to become a minister. According to its own “Bulletins”, Victor Bodson (1940–1947)44, Robert Krieps (1974–1979 and 1984–1989)45 and Robert Goebbels (1989–1999)46 all served as ministers during their political careers.47 It is surprising that such a small league with no political affiliation according to its published statutes should have at least four members who also served as Ministers of Justice (Blum, Bodson and Krieps) or Economics (Goebbels) in their national government. Yet another name that appears regularly is Julien Mersch. He is on the list of founding members submitted to the state in 196948 and on another one from 1983.49 As there are no official titles provided in these lists, it is nearly impossible to say who held which position. According to the signature on a “Bulletin”, however, we know that Julien Mersch was president of the League in 1983 50, and according to Claude Weber, president of the current League, he was the last acting president before the new League was officially established in 2008.51 Research into the history of the Luxembourgish League for Human Rights is still in its beginnings. The investigations conducted thus far have been able to determine the basics of the League’s history, several important persons and some 40 Théodore Pescatore, Répertoire des Francs-Maçons luxembourgeois et étrangers – Grande Loge de Luxembourg – Début du XXe siècle (1900–1938), in: Association Luxembourgeoise de Généalogie et d’Héraldique, Annuaire 1999, Luxembourg 1999, 237. 41 Bulletin, 1983, BNL, LV 916. Procès, ANLux, FD-235-16. 42 Guy Thewes, Les gouvernements du grand-Duché de Luxembourg depuis 1848, Luxembourg 2003, 105. 43 Discours de René Blum, in: Journal des instituteurs 53/1962. 44 Thewes, Gouvernements, 110, 115, 122. 45 Thewes, Gouvernements, 183, 205. 46 Thewes, Gouvernements, 211, 223. 47 Bulletin, 1983, BNL, LV 916. Bulletin, 1984, BNL, LV 916. 48 Mémorial C, 1969, 6940. 49 Mémorial C, 1983, 7017. 50 Bulletin, 1983, BNL, LV 916. 51 There is no document evidencing the dissolution of the initial League. However, no activity has been recorded since the late 1980s as mentioned above.

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topics for further research. It seems that during the years of its existence, the League gradually became known to a broader public and its number of members increased. This empowered it to work more effectively and on a wider set of topics. It also gave the League the opportunity to co-operate with various different associations on topics related to Luxembourgish society. Although the League was involved in a variety of issues, most of these have not yet been studied, and the efforts and amount of work it contributed to these cases is hitherto unknown. A number of research questions can therefore be derived from this essay.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SWISS LEAGUE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS Doris Leuenberger / Patrick Herzig INTRODUCTION The Swiss League for Human Rights (LSDH) is an association under Articles 60 et seq. of the Swiss civil code. It is a member of the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l’homme, FIDH). The Swiss League under the name of Ligue suisse des droits de l’homme et du citoyen (Swiss League for Human and Citizen Rights) was founded in 1928, but according to Suzanne Collette-Kahn, former secretary general of the International Federation, Switzerland was already represented at the first convention of the International League taking place in Paris on 28 May 1922. 1 It seems reasonable to assume that some preparatory work occurred before the foundation in 1928, but no evidence of such preparations has been found as yet. Further research might shed some light on this matter. ABOUT THE ARCHIVES OF THE SWISS LEAGUE At this point in our research, we have not been able to find any previous academic work about the history of the Swiss League. Following the information available to us at the time of writing, archive material could be found in the National Archives in Bern, at the Geneva Library, and in the League’s own archives. The latter consist of documents transferred to the League after the death of M. Robert Emery, former president of the Geneva section, as well as other documents of hitherto unknown sources. This body of archives has not yet undergone proper filing due to the resource requirements involved, but it is certainly a project that the League will attempt to pursue in the future. The documents found at the Geneva Library were rapidly examined, but revealed very little regarding the period between the League’s foundation in 1928 and the election of M. Henri Bartholdi as president in 1933. Nothing has been found so far about any preliminary work prior to 1928. After M. Bartholdi’s election, the existing documents mainly pertain to the years 1933–1939 and the period 1

Wolfgang Schmale / Christopher Treiblmayr, Human Rights Leagues and Civil Society (1898–ca. 1970s), in: Historische Mitteilungen 27/2015, 186–208, 204.

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starting in 1947. The body of files is comprised of letters regarding individual cases that the League became involved in, various articles published in the press, and several letters written to authorities in Switzerland and abroad on subjects of general interest.2 The sorting and recording of this material likewise represents an important endeavour for the future. Lastly, the documents found in the National Archives partly refer to Henri Bartholdi and other members of the League or people close to the cause. Other documents concern the League itself but have not yet been examined due to the limited time and resources at our disposition. The materials we have been able to examine, albeit merely superficially so far, consist mainly of police and secret service reports about the activities of some of the League’s members and supporters. Once confidential, these documents were declassified following the “secret files scandal” of the 1980s. They reveal that certain League members were considered to be of interest to national security because of their activities as antimilitarists or anarchists.3 For the period starting after World War II, the amount of available material is greater and following the activity of the Swiss League becomes easier, although details remain somewhat scarce. Throughout the years, various bulletins were published by different sections of the Swiss League.4 There was not a single continuous publication, however, but rather a series of attempts made by the Swiss League as a whole and by some of its sections. It is important to note that the rather loose organisation of the League and the persistent difficulty of securing long-term involvement in its activities created a situation where sections would emerge in places where people decided to act on behalf of human rights and last only as long as those people could maintain the activity themselves. Many of these initiatives were short-lived and apparently did not leave behind much documentation. It is possible, however, that further research will bring new sources to light. MAIN ACTIONS OF THE SWISS LEAGUE SINCE ITS CREATION IN 1928 According to the archives at our disposition concerning the years preceding the Second World War, the Swiss League was mainly concerned with providing help and counsel to people seeking authorisation to take up residence in Switzerland as well as helping refugees from all countries flee the insecurity and repression imposed on them by the general rise of totalitarianism in Europe and find countries 2 3 4

Papiers Henri Bartholdi, Bibliothèque de Genève, Catalogue des manuscrits, ref.: CH BGE Non catalogué (1972/3). Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv, Bern, ref.: CH-BAR#E4320B#1978-121#72. Within the body of archives inspected so far, different prints of the same publication entitled “La Lettre” and dated between 1987 and 1995 were found. “The Letter” was published primarily by the Vaud section and once by the Swiss Italian section. It is likely, however, that other bulletins were published by other sections.

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of asylum, as Switzerland was rarely ready to do so. On the national front, the League also participated in the debates and actions which would eventually lead to the introduction of retirement and unemployment laws in Switzerland. From the early 1930s onward, the League concerned itself with the situation of Jews and other people threatened by the rise of totalitarianism in Italy, Spain and Germany. In 1933, it organised a public gathering in Geneva of more than six hundred people during which a resolution against Hitler and the German regime was adopted and publicised.5 It was in this context that Henri Bartholdi, then president of the League, wrote an official letter to the President and Chancellor of the Reich, Adolf Hitler, on 11 August 1934 in which the League, with reference to the international mistrust towards the so-called amnesty declared by Hitler on 7 August 19346, unequivocally asked for this amnesty to be fully implemented, notably by liberating all political prisoners. The letter also called for the immediate closing of all concentration camps and the termination of all inhuman treatment of prisoners regardless of the reasons for their imprisonment. A translation of this letter follows, with the German original reproduced in Figure 1, overleaf. Geneva, 11 August 1934 OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT-CHANCELLOR OF GERMANY To Reich President-Chancellor Adolf Hitler, Berlin Mister Reich President-Chancellor, global public opinion absolutely distrusts your amnesty of August 7th, which excludes cases of treason and thus upholds the German justice’s practice of considering as treason all tendencies friendly to social progress, freedom, peace and disarmament. We therefore demand a true amnesty for all political prisoners, including, among others, Ossietzky, Küster and Thälmann, as well as the liberation of all administrative detainees, Torgler and Dr. Sack amongst others. We also demand all concentration camps to be abolished altogether, and all inhuman treatment of prisoners to cease, whoever they are. The Swiss League for Human and Citizen Rights, The Central President H. Bartholdi

5

6

Papiers Henri Bartholdi, Annex to a letter in 1959 from H. Bartholdi to P. Lavastre, president of the French League, 3rd volume of documents, Papiers Henri Bartholdi, Bibliothèque de Genève, Catalogue des manuscrits, ref.: CH BGE Non catalogué (1972/3). Papiers Henri Bartholdi, 1st volume of documents, Papiers Henri Bartholdi, Bibliothèque de Genève, Catalogue des manuscrits, ref.: CH BGE Non catalogué (1972/3). N.B.: The mentioned amnesty freed thousands of common law criminals, but excluded communists and prisoners convicted of treason, violence and terrorism. See Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Hitler Amnesty Frees 10,000 Foes of Nazis, http://www.jta.org/1934/08/10/archive/hitler-amnestyfrees-10000-foes-of-nazis, consulted 8 September 2016; see also Stanislav Zámečník, C’était ça, Dachau. 1933–1945, Paris 2003.

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Figure 1. Letter to Adolf Hitler. Source: Geneva Library, Papers Henri Bartholdi (1972/3), file 1 (33 to 59–60).

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It is interesting to note that direct reference is made in this letter to concentration camps and inhuman treatments, while knowledge of the existence of such camps and treatments was later downplayed or denied by parts of the international community7 and the Swiss government.8 During the war, the League fought against the asylum policy of the Swiss government which, following the slogan “The boat is full”, allowed thousands of Jews to be sent back to Germany and die in concentration camps.9 After 1945, the League resumed its efforts begun before the war in favour of the adoption of a retirement law which, after having been rejected in 1931, was finally voted for by the people in 1947 and introduced on 1 January 1948. The struggle for the unemployment law took longer, with the League active until the final outcome in 1982, when compulsory membership of all employees in the unemployment insurance system was introduced.10 Another important subject which occupied the League on a long-term basis was the question of political equality for women and men. While the first parliamentary action dated back to 1919, it was not before 1929 that a first petition was presented to the government. Despite having collected 249,237 signatures, the petition was ignored. The crisis of the 1930s and World War II put a temporary stop to the movement, which was later reactivated through a series of actions during the 1950s. The 1960s brought fresh impulses to the debate, and Swiss women finally achieved full suffrage in 1971 – although on the cantonal level, the struggle continued until 1991.11 The League was also involved in the lengthy and unfinished business of the introduction of a civilian service as an alternative to the compulsory military service still in force in Switzerland today. Much of the influence resulting in the establishment of a civilian service accepted by public vote in 1992 and introduced in 1996 came by way of claim of the right to conscientious objection advocated since the 1900s, which the League supported and fought for with determination. Another struggle undertaken by the Swiss League was that for the abolition of the status of seasonal workers applied to foreigners immigrating to Switzerland to find work since 1934. After a protracted process and much debate and conflict, this discriminatory status was finally abolished in 2002 when the free circulation

7 8

On this subject, see among others Yannick Haenel, Jan Karski, Paris 2009. See also Independent Commission of Experts Switzerland – Second World War, Switzerland, National Socialism and the Second World War. Final Report, https://www.uek.ch/en/ schlussbericht/synthesis/ueke.pdf, 119, consulted 8 September 2016. 9 See flyer of the Ligue suisse des droits de l’Homme, section vaudoise (date and year of publication unknown). 10 Charlotte Pellaz / Véronique Pipoz / Thomas Lufkin, Révision de la loi sur l’assurance chômage, http://www.hec.unil.ch/jlambelet/chomage.pdf, 8, consulted 8 September 2016. 11 Confédération suisse, Pourquoi les femmes n’ont-elles eu le droit de vote et d’éligibilité qu’à partir de 1971?, https://www.ch.ch/fr/elections2015/50e-edition-retrospective/droit-de-votefemmes/, consulted 8 September 2016.

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agreement between Switzerland and the European Union came into effect.12 Unfortunately, as is the case with the compulsory military service, the story of this policy change is far from over. As a result of the current migrant crisis and the fact that right-wing ideas on the subject currently seem to represent the majority opinion in the country, the possibility of reintroducing the status of seasonal workers has been expressed and there is a real risk that this struggle may have to be fought again.13 In addition, the League was and still is actively engaged in opposing the national and cantonal policies of administrative and psychiatric internment, notably in relation to the asylum policy to which the League likewise still objects to this day. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Swiss League participated actively in many campaigns against the remaining dictatorships in Europe: the regime of General Franco in Spain, the dictatorship of the colonels in Greece, and the discriminatory measures applied to political refugees from the Eastern Bloc, like Hungarians. It was also active in the defence of political refugees from South America (Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Bolivia), and concerned with helping the victims of oppression in South Africa, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Poland, Morocco and Czechoslovakia. In addition, the League supported the Armenian people, Gypsies, Indians, Kurds, Palestinians and the Sahraoui people in their struggles to obtain equal rights, fair treatment, freedom and the rights to independence and self-determination. During this period, the League was also active in the international movement to stop the Vietnam War. In Switzerland in 1989–1990, the League joined the outcry following the uncovering of what has become known as the “secret files scandal”, a secret system of spying and collecting data on supposedly leftist Swiss citizens suspected of communist political activities by the authorities and subjected to unlawful scrutiny by the secret service agencies. Throughout the years, the Swiss League, through its sections, has been involved in defending human rights in relation to the conditions of both penal and administrative detention in Switzerland. One of the key activities consisted (and still consists) in visiting prisoners and taking steps to protect their rights as well as maintaining close contact with the authorities to promote respect for human rights in all aspects of penitential policy. The Swiss League is also engaged in the promotion of the rights recognised by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights adopted by the United Nations on 16 December 1966 and put into force on 23 March 1976. Last but not least, since the beginning of the 21st century the Swiss League has been involved in various international missions of observation related to polit-

12 Silvia Arlettaz, Saisonniers, in: Dictionnaire historique de la Suisse, http://www.hls-dhsdss.ch/textes/f/F25738.php, consulted 8 September 2016. 13 http://www.unia.ch/uploads/tx_news/Events_20141107-Saisonnierausstellung.pdf, consulted 8 September 2016.

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ical trials in Morocco (2007), Tunisia (2001–2002), Cameroon (2005), Western Sahara (2005–2008), and the Colonna case in France (2007).14 THE ORGANISATION OF THE SWISS LEAGUE: AN OVERVIEW OF MAJOR EVENTS SINCE 1964 The Swiss League is organised in sections under a national bureau called the central committee. All sections have the right to be represented in this committee proportionally to the number of their members. The committee holds an annual meeting during which the governing body is elected and votes are held on issues concerning the national policy of the League.15 Between 1964 and 1995, the various sections of the Swiss League participated in 28 national conventions, and the central committee met 34 times. This activity shows a vivid interest in the situation of human rights in the country as well as in the actions undertaken by the League and its sections, both nationally and internationally. The number of cantonal sections varied during this period: In 1964, following a meeting with Henri Bartholdi, author of the letter to Hitler in 1934, a “Militant Assembly” was organised in Bienne (canton of Bern) that was attended by militants from five cantons: Geneva, Vaud, St. Gallen, Basel and Chaux-de-Fonds (Neuchâtel). Henri Bartholdi was elected president of the Swiss League, and Geneva was chosen as the association’s seat. The seat later moved to Basel in 1967 before returning to Geneva in 1968. In the following years, national conventions were organised on an irregular basis with varying attendance by sections from cantons or sometimes even cities (Bienne, Chaux-de-Fonds, Winterthur). As mentioned above, these conventions were generally represented occasions to organise public conferences and debates on important topics of the time. Such topics included the issue of torture in Brazil and the Vietnam War in 1970, the relations between Israel and Iraq and the situation resulting from the counterproductive involvement of one member of the Swiss League in the RAF/Schleyer affair in 1977, or the situation of refugees in 1984. Later that same year, an extraordinary convention was organised to discuss the question of “data processing and liberties” in relation to the consulting procedure preceding the introduction of a new law on “the protection of personal data”; in 1986, the convention was followed by a demonstration against the conditions of detention in Swiss prisons; in 1990, the topic was the “secret files scandal” mentioned above; in 1991, the creation of a fund for the victims of torture was discussed; and in 1995, a further debate was organised on the situation in Swiss prisons. 14 See the mission reports on the LSDH website, http://www.lsdh.ch/index.php/ligue-suisse/ commissions/commissions-observation-etranger, consulted 8 September 2016. 15 Statuts de la Ligue suisse des droits de l’Homme, Archives of the Swiss League for Human Rights.

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In 1989, the Swiss League participated in an event organised by the FIDH in Paris focusing on the general state of human rights in the world. Unfortunately, since 1995 many sections have dispersed and disappeared, with the notable exception of the Geneva section which, for the following years until 2008, bore the sole responsibility of maintaining the existence of the League for Human Rights in Switzerland. In 2008, thanks to the initiative of two students from the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Lausanne, a section was re-established in the canton of Vaud, allowing for a new central committee to be formed and providing new energy to the action of the League. CONCLUSION Despite the fact that the Swiss League for Human Rights is a small organisation in comparison to some others, it has existed continually since its creation in 1928 and has had a significant influence on key human rights issues both in Switzerland and at the international level. It is fair to say that its reputation as a financially independent, non-political and non-religious organisation has benefitted the actions taken by the League and granted an aura of respectability to the views expressed that has been favourable to the causes the League chose to defend. As the complexity of the world increases with the passage of time, the Swiss League’s mission to scrutinise and become involved in human rights issues will remain of importance, and it will continue to be pursued thanks to the personal commitment of its members.

CONTRIBUTORS Paul Aubert is Professor of Literature and Contemporary Spanish Civilisation at the Aix-Marseille Université. He is a graduate of political science, Docteur d’Etat-ès-Lettres and HDR in history. He was Director of Studies at the Casa de Velázquez and manages a research program in the UMR Telemme (CNRS 7303), focused on political culture and cultural transfers in Southern Europe. He is director of the Bulletin d’Histoire Contemporaine de l’Espagne and author of numerous publications on the cultural history of Spain. He dedicated his Thèse d’État to the Spanish Intellectuals and Politics in Spain (1898–1939). His latest books are La Frustration de l’intellectuel libéral. Espagne (1898–1939) (2010), and Nidos de espías. España, Francia y la Primera Guerra mundial. 1914–1919 (ed., with Eduardo González Calleja, 2014). Stilyan Deyanov is a university assistant at the Department of History at the University of Vienna, and is currently preparing a PhD on the history of the interwar Romanian and Bulgarian Leagues for Human Rights. He studied philosophy at the University of Sofia as well as History and Civilization at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris. He has worked as a journalist for the Bulgarian section of Radio Deutsche Welle, acting as correspondent in Paris (2001–2005) and Bucharest (2006–2011). He is the author of “The Bulgarian League for Human Rights”, in: Retour de Moscou. Les archives de la Ligue des droits de l’homme 1898–1940 (2004). He has translated a number of literary and scientific works including Le visible et l’invisible by Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2000) and Istorie și mit în conștiința românească [History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness] by Lucian Boia (2010). Paul Fonck was born in Luxembourg in 1991. He studied history and political science in Erlangen and Luxembourg (including one semester abroad in New Caledonia) from 2011 to 2015. He is currently a graduate student in contemporary European history at the University of Luxembourg. His research is mainly focused on the period from the 1930s to the 1950s in Luxembourg. He has been working as a student assistant to Professor Benoît Majerus for four years and has been awarded the European Charlemagne Youth Prize (2015) as part of the @RealTimeWW1 team. In 2015, he co-founded Historic.UL to help promote history in Luxembourg and facilitate the link between students and professors. Patrick Herzig, member of the Central Committee of the LSDH, was born in Geneva in 1955 and has been working in the television and film industries for twenty years. He began studying at the University of Geneva School of Law in 1997 and graduated in 2003, then joined the LSDH and became president of the

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Contributors

Vaud section in 2009 and member of the National Committee. He has served as international judicial observer at various trials in Western Sahara and Cameroon, and represented Switzerland at the FIDH international conventions in Istanbul (2013) and Johannesburg (2016). William D. Irvine completed his BA at the University of British Columbia and his PhD at Princeton. He is Professor Emeritus at the Department of History, York University, and his major publications include French Conservatism in Crisis (1979); The Boulanger Affair Reconsidered (1989); Between Justice and Politics. The Ligue des droits de l’homme, 1898–1945 (2007). Osman İşçi is a research assistant at the English Language and Literature Department of Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey. He is currently writing his PhD dissertation on the troubles in Northern Ireland, entitled “The Troubles of Northern Ireland: Representation of Violence in Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley’s Poems”. He is the International Affairs Secretary of the Human Rights Association and member of the Executive Committee of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EuroMed Rights). His recent publications include The State’s Current Policy towards Human Rights Defenders: Criminalisation of Human Rights Defenders (2013) and Mission Report on the Protest Movement in Turkey and Its Repression (2014). Doris Leuenberger, President of the Central Committee of the LSDH, was born in Geneva in 1954. After studying law at the University of Geneva, she became a lawyer in 1982 and joined the LSDH. She is president of the Geneva section and President of the National Committee of the League. She has represented Switzerland at the FIDH convention in Casablanca (2001), acted as judicial observer in Tunisia and Western Sahara, and attended the Colonna trial in Paris for the FIDH (2007). Gilles Manceron, French League of Human Rights, is a historian. His major publications include La conquête mondiale des droits de l’Homme (1998); Droits de l’Homme. Combats du siècle (2004); Être dreyfusard hier et aujourd’hui (2009). He curated the exhibition “Droits de l’Homme. Combats du Siècle [Human Rights. Struggles of the Century]” at the Museum of Contemporary History, Hôtel des Invalides, Paris 2003. Michalis Moraitidis has a doctorate in contemporary history from the Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology, University of Thessaly (Volos) on the topic of “The Politicization of the Greek Post-civil-war Student Movement (1950–1964)” (supervisor: Prof. Polymeris Voglis). Since 2012, he has been a member of a research group dealing with the history of the Hellenic League for Human Rights. His published works include “The Conflict over the School Textbook of Professor Kostas Kalokairinos and the Reaction of the Greek Student Movement in the Late 1960s”, Etaireia Meletis tis Istorias tis Aristeris

Contributors

313

Neolaias, EMIAN [Society for the Examination of the History of the Left-wing Youth], and “The Emergence of ‘Youth’ in the Post-war Period. The Long Sixties”, in: Loudovikos Kotsonopoulos / Despoina Papadimitriou / Zisimos Sinodinos (eds.), Youth Movements and Economic Crisis in Greece 1929 and 2008, Gutenberg Editions, Athens 2016. David Morelli graduated in journalism and holds a BA in philosophy from the Catholic University of Louvain. He has been the Communication Officer of the French-speaking Belgian League for Human Rights (FBLHR) for eleven years. He is the chief editor and a regular writer in “La Chronique”, the magazine of the FBLHR, and the coordinator of the New Technologies Commission of the organisation. Izabela Mrzygłód, PhD candidate at the Institute of History at the University of Warsaw, staff member at the Museum of Polish History, editor of the book review section of the Internet weekly “Kultura Liberalna”. She studied history from 2005–2010 at the University of Warsaw; her master’s thesis on everyday life in the period of hyperinflation in 1923 won a Stanisław Herbst Award. In the academic year 2011/12 she was a research assistant at the Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, and in 2014 she was a junior visiting fellow at the Institute for Eastern European History at the University of Vienna. She is currently working on a PhD thesis on the political radicalisation of students at the University of Warsaw and the University of Vienna in the 1930s. Emmanuel Naquet, Doctor of History, is a teacher in preparatory classes for the Grandes Écoles as well as a researcher at the Centre of History at Sciences Po Paris and a member of the editorial committees of Histoire@Politique. Politique, culture, société and Matériaux pour l’histoire de notre temps. His areas of research are political culture, the republican model, pacifism, and forms of engagement in the 20th century. Together with Gilles Manceron, Emmanuel Naquet co-directed Être dreyfusard, hier et aujourd’hui (2009). He is currently editing a critical anthology of texts by Dreyfus supporter Victor Basch, which will be published in 2017. His PhD thesis (La Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, une association en politique, 1898–1940, 5 vols., 2005) was published in 2014 (Pour l’Humanité. La Ligue des droits de l’homme de l’affaire Dreyfus à la défaite de 1940, preface by Pierre Joxe, postface by Serge Berstein, Rennes 2014). Wolfgang Schmale is Professor for Modern and Contemporary History at the Department of History, University of Vienna. The history of human and civil rights is one of his main research fields. He has served as expert for the Council of Europe in the CDCC-project Democracy, Human Rights, Minorities: Educational and Cultural Aspects – Anthology on the development of the idea of human rights. He is co-author of L’An I des droits de l’homme with Antoine de Baecque and Michel Vovelle (1988) and editor of the volume Human Rights and Cultural Diversity. Europe, Arabic-Islamic World, Africa, China (1993) as well as a further

314

Contributors

volume on the history of human rights (together with Margarete Grandner and Michael Weinzierl), Grund- und Menschenrechte. Historische Perspektiven – Aktuelle Problematiken [Fundamental and Human Rights. Historical Perspectives and Problems in the Present Time] (2002). Archäologie der Grund- und Menschenrechte [Archaeology of Fundamental and Human Rights in the Early Modern Period] is a seminal work on the social and mentality history of human rights (1997). In 2014, he published Privacy in the Digital Age with Marie-Theres Tinnefeld as co-author from the field of jurisprudence. Wolfgang Schmale is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. He has been a guest professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2006, 2010), at Université Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne (2007), at Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Paris (2010, 2016) and at Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia (2015). Christopher Treiblmayr has a doctorate in history from the University of Vienna. He is a lecturer at the Department of History, University of Vienna and a member of the research staff at QWIEN – Center for gay/lesbian culture and history. He studied history, German language and literature, media studies, philosophy, psychology, and educational science at the Universities of Vienna and Salzburg, the Technical University of Berlin, Birkbeck College, University of London, and at University of California, Berkeley. His fields of research and teaching include gender studies, the history of National Socialism, human rights and civil society. He is working on a habilitation treatise on the history of the Austrian League for Human Rights. His publications include a book on Masculinities and Male Homosexualities in German Cinema, 1990–2000 (2015). Eric Vial is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of CergyPontoise, France. Since his PhD at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) on the Italian League for Human Rights from 1922 to 1934, supervised by Professor Madeleine Rebérioux, who later served as president of the French League for Human Rights, he has worked in the field of Italian and French political history based on the antifascist exile of the interwar period, but also on the links between history and science fiction through uchronia and counterfactual history. His latest publication is “Émigration antifasciste italienne en France et héritage garibaldien entre fronts populaires et Seconde Guerre mondiale”, in: Jean-Paul Pelligrinetti (ed.), La Méditerranée en passion – Mélanges d’histoire contemporaine offerts à Ralph Schor (2016). Lora Wildenthal is Professor of History and Associate Dean of Humanities at Rice University in Houston, Texas. She received her PhD at the University of Michigan under the guidance of Kathleen Canning and Geoff Eley, and taught at Pitzer College, MIT, and Texas A&M University before coming to Rice. She is the author of German Women for Empire, 1884–1945 (Duke University Press, 2001) and The Language of Human Rights in West Germany (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). Currently, she is co-editing with Jean Quataert a volume of essays to be entitled The Routledge History of Human Rights.

INDEX OF NAMES Preliminary remark: “Alfred Dreyfus” does not figure in the index. All contributions refer to him because the human rights league movement had its origins in the Dreyfus affair. The spelling of various names differs between sources. The versions of names listed in the index correspond to the versions chosen by the respective authors in their contributions. Human rights activists who lived in exile in France are listed under the Frenchified versions of their names that they often used themselves. We decided to follow the use in the primary sources. These sources sometimes do not include first names, and in some cases it was impossible to ascertain the correct first name. Abdul Hamid II (Sultan, Ottoman Empire) 47 Abou-Bakr Ratib, El Sayed 27 Adenauer, Konrad 115, 118 Aguiló, Ramón 126 Aharonian (Armenian League) 58 Ahmed, Hocine Aït 73 Akar, Cemal 267 Akçam, Taner 279, 280 Akritas, Loukis 151 Albornoz, Alvaro de 130 Albornoz, Sánchez 123 Alfonso XIII (King, Spain) 123 Altun, Cengiz 268 Amalrik, Andrei 74 Amendola, Giorgio 186 Anar, Erol 278 Ancel, Jacques 63 Angeloni, Mario 58 Apostolidis, Petros 142 Araquistáin, Luis 123, 130 Aras, Tevfik Rüştü 272 Aravantinos, Panagiotis 141 Arco, Georg Graf von 80 Arınç, Bülent 261 Aronstein, Georges 73, 290, 291 Aşçı, Tacettin 267 Asensi, Botella 131 Asúa, Jiménez de 130 Athanasiadis-Novas, Georgios 152 Aulard, Alphonse 52, 55, 57, 62, 87 Auriol, Vincent 177 Averof, Evangelos 154 Averof, Georgios Michail 141

Avxentieff, Nicolai 30, 55, 56, 58, 61 Aybar, Mehmet Ali 277 Aybay, Rona 278 Aydın, Ahmet 267 Aydın, İsmail 273, 275 Aydın, Vedat 267 Aykol, Hüseyin 272, 276, 277 Azaña, Manuel 123, 130, 131 Aznar, Manuel 123 Bach, Otto 108 Badinter, Robert 12 Bakayev, Ivan 62 Baldwin, Roger N. 18, 256 Ballester y Gonzalvo, José 69, 70, 71, 256 Balogh, Alexandre 28 Bano, Joseph 56, 57 Barbusse, Henri 60, 215, 218 Barcia, Augusto 50, 128, 131, 132, 135 Barcikowski, Wacław 160, 161 Bartholdi, Henri 303, 304, 305, 309 Basch, Victor 22, 29, 48, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 62, 64, 81, 83, 86, 87, 89, 91, 236, 241, 244, 247, 249 Başgil, Ali Fuat 271 Baudouin, Patrick 76 Bauer, Riccardo 190, 192 Bayet, Albert 93 Baykurt, Cami 272 Bech, Joseph 296 Beko, Kani 273, 276 Belhassen, Souhayr 76 Belkacem, Krim 74 Bellegarde, W. 28

316

Index of Names

Ben Barka, Mehdi 73 Ben Bella, Ahmed (President, Algeria) 73 Benenson, Peter 149 Benlliure Tuero, Mariano 128, 133 Bérard, Victor 47 Bergamo, Mario 56 Bergery, Gaston 40 Gallob, Bernd 7, 225 Berneri, Camillo 186 Bernstein, Eduard 80 Besteiro, Julián 123, 133 Bethell, E. 27, 55 Bigeard (Colonel) 290 Birdal, Akın 265, 268, 269 Bissolati, Leonida 175 Blasco Ibañez, Vicente 123, 127 Blum, Léon 37, 42 Blum, Michel 73, 74, 75 Blum, René 300 Blum, Thérèse Pereyra 184 Bocar Marega, Fode Amara 13 Bodson, Victor 300 Boguslavsky, Mikhail 62 Boissarie, André 72, 73, 74 Bonnet, Georges 188 Borloz (Swiss League) 58 Börner, Wilhelm 233, 236 Bosso, Ferdinando 188 Bóta, Ernest 28, 58, 63 Botson, Henri 285 Boubli, K. 27 Bouglé, Célestin 55, 86, 87 Bouloukos, Aris 151 Bozdag, Bekir 266 Brătianu, Ion I. C. (Prime Minister, Romania) 201, 221 Bravo, Mario 25 Breitscheid, Rudolf 63, 81, 91 Brentano, Lujo 81, 119 Brentano, Margherita von 116, 118 Briand, Aristide 56 Brigord, H. 28 Brockhausen, Carl 233, 236 Brügel, Ludwig 232, 253 Bruller, Jean see Vercors Buen, Demófilo de 130 Buen, Odón de 127 Buisson, Ferdinand 47, 48, 54, 142, 157 Bütefisch, Heinrich 118 Caballero, Justo 128, 133, 134 Cabrera Tova, Antonio 135

Çakmak, Fevzi 272 Campoamor, Clara 127 Campolonghi, Luigi 21, 54, 56, 58, 63, 174, 176, 179, 182, 185, 187, 188, 190 Campolonghi, Ernesta or CassolaCampolonghi, Ernesta 21, 70, 175, 184, 189, 190 Can, Metin 268 Casanovas (Spanish League) 55 Cassals, Pablo 123 Cassin, René 60, 65, 66 Castells Ballespí, Rosendo 127 Castro, Américo 123, 130 Castrovido, Roberto 135 Cauer, Minna 81 Causse, Wanda 29 Ceausescu, Niculae 199 Chabrun, César 60 Chajn, Leon 160, 163 Challaye, Félicien 39, 40 Charachidzé, Datiko 56 Christopoulos, Dimitris 76, 156 Cianca (Italian League) 63 Cobo Martínez, Teudíselo 132 Codreanu, Corneliu-Zelea 206 Collette Kahn, Suzanne or Collette, Suzanne 59, 72, 73, 109, 114, 151, 256, 303 Companys, Lluis 123 Constantine II (King, Greece) 73, 151 Corcos, Fernand 52, 65 Costa-Foru, Constantin 55, 197, 198, 201, 202, 204, 206, 211, 215, 216 Cot, Pierre 93 Cox (English League) 27, 53 Csokor, Franz Theodor 233, 252 D’Annunzio, Gabriele 176 Dąb, Adolf 164 Daladier, Édouard 187 Dalí, Salvador 123 Daniel, Youli 73 De Almada Negreiros 55, 56, 58 De Ambris, Alceste 54, 175, 176, 180, 182 De Brouckère 55 de Gaulle, Charles 72 Deambrosis-Gartins 56 Deat, Marcel 93 Deel, Robert 55 Delbos, Yvon 37 Delbrück, Hans 81 Delgado (General, Portugal) 73 Delooz, Fabrice 283

Index of Names Demertzis, Konstantinos 144 Dessoir, Max 81 Destrées, Jules 55 Deussen, Paul 81 Dietz, Heinrich 99, 101 Dimitriou, Andreas 146 Dimitrov, Georgi 214 Dobrescu, Dem. 197, 202 Dollfuß, Engelbert 245, 247, 248 Domanski-Dubois, Irène 30 Donati, Giuseppe 180 Doukas, Stratis 140 Doxiadis, Apostolos 141 Dragoumis, Markos 146 Dupuy, Jean 67 Duracz, Teodor 161, 164 Eckardstein, Baron Hermann von 84 Ehrenhaft, Felix 234 Ehrenhaft-Steindler, Olga 234 Eigenberger, Robert 233 Einstein, Albert 56, 80, 85, 89 Eisner, Kurt 81 Ekstein, Otto 242 Elis, Panagiotis 152 Emannouilides, Emannouel 149 Emery, Léon 40 Emery, Robert 303 Engländer, Heinrich 229, 230, 231, 232, 246, 252 Epözdemir, Şevket 267 Ersanli, Büsra 270 Escolá Besada, Francisco 135 Espla, Carlos 56 Eulenberg, Herbert 81 Evdokimov, Grigori 62 Evelpidis, Chrisos 142 Evren, Kenan 259 Evripaios, Petros 149 Eyerbe, Ideal 135 Fabra Ribas, Antonio 132 Fabrikant, Vladimir 53 Facchinetti, Cipriano 55 Falla, Manuel da 123 Faubert, André 28 Ferdinand I (King, Romania) 201, 202 Ferrer Guardia, Francisco 21, 123, 124, 175 Fink, Heinrich 119 Fırat, Şükrü 267 Flechtheim, Ossip K. 115, 116 Fleischer, Leo 233, 252

317

Fleischner, Konrad 233 Fleming, Amalia 153 Flesch, Paul 53, 58, 299, 300 Florian, Radu 205 Fouzer, Suzanne 147 Franchy Roca, José 135 Franco (General) 73, 308 Freud, Sigmund 242 Freund, Richard 61, 249 Freymuth, A. 53 Frichek (Czechoslovakian League) 55 Frieb, Jan 56 Fried, Alfred H. 229 Frondizi, Arturo 25 Ganev, Venelin 58, 211 Garibaldi, Ricciotti 53, 54 Garrido, Fernando 127 Gaspar Soler, Vicente 135 Gelli, Licio 192 Georges-Etienne, René 59, 60, 61 Georgiev, Velichko 220 Gerlach, Hellmut von 50, 53, 61, 80, 82, 85, 87, 91, 244 Getino Carreño, José 135 Gide, Charles 86 Gil Robles, José María 123 Gil y Mariscal, Félix 128 Gillet (Luxembourgish League) 56, 57, 58 Giral, José 123, 126, 129, 130 Glaser (German League) 63 Glezos, Manolis 147 Globke, Hans 118 Godart, Justin 89, 93 Goebbels, Robert 300 Gökoğlu, Eyüp 267 Göktepe, Medeni 267 Goldmann, Emil 233, 252 Goldscheid, Rudolf 25, 53, 55, 211, 227, 228, 229, 230, 232, 234, 235, 236 Goldschmidt, Dietrich 119 Göring, Hermann 89 Gorki, Maxim 47 Gotzamanis, Spyros 149 Götze, Alfred 108, 109, 110, 112, 113, 114, 120 Götze, Anneliese 110 Greenwald, Glenn 115 Grelling, Richard 81 Grigoriadis 145 Grigoropoulos, Alexandros 155 Grimau, Julian 73

318

Index of Names

Groeben, Count 83 Groener, Karl Eduard Wilhelm 244 Gronski (Russian League) 56 Grossmann, Kurt 96, 99, 100, 101, 103, 113, 244, 247 Grumbach, Salomon 66, 67 Guernut, Henri 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 62, 63, 87, 89, 211, 215, 218, 242 Guerra (Spanish League) 63 Guerry, Émile 42 Gumbel, Emil Julius 58, 60, 89, 91 Gvarjaladze (Georgian League) 63 Gvazava (Georgian League) 63 Haase, Hugo 81 Habeck, Karl 232 Hadamard, Jacques 65, 93 Halbwachs, Maurice 80, 82, 86 Halimi, Gisèle 72 Halsmann, Philipp 241 Hammerschlag, Viktor 233, 253 Hanstein, Wolfram von 113, 114 Harich, Wolfgang 72 Haskins (English League) 27, 53 Hassan II (King, Morocco) 118 Hatschek, Alexander 232 Haug, Frigga 116 Haug, Wolfgang Fritz 116 Heine, Albert 233 Heller, Lotte 232, 236 Helvacı, Nevzat 262, 271, 277 Hernández, Teófilo 130 Herriot, Édouard 177 Herrmann, Rudolf 99 Hertz, Friedrich 57, 232, 236, 252 Herzog, Wilhelm 81 Hima (Dervish, Albania) 47 Himmler, Heinrich 109 Hitler, Adolf 38, 39, 40, 43, 61, 62, 63, 87, 181, 244, 305 Hollitscher, Arthur 56, 81 Hortent, Alfons 85 Horvath, Emeric 28 Huber, Johannes 249 Huber-Wiesenthal, Rudolf 229, 232, 252 Hugo, Georges 54 Hugo, Jean 54 Hugo, Victor 54 Hungerbuhler 63 Hupka, Josef 233, 242, 253 İşçi, Osman 265, 270

Istrati, Panaït 210 Jacob, G. H. 28 Jacoby, Daniel 75, 76 Jannasch, Lilly 80, 84 Jaurès, Jean 47 Jèze, Gaston 55 Jilani, Hina 270 Jouffa, Yves 76 Jouhaux, Léon 93 Kaba, Sidika 76 Kafantaris, Georgios 141 Kahn, Émile 24, 42, 51, 85, 109, 244, 255, 256, 296 Kalokairinos, Kostas 152 Kamenev, Lev B. 62 Kanellopoulos, Panagiotis 151 Kantorowicz, Alfred 104 Kapani, Münci 278 Kapp, Wolfgang 113 Karaağar, Orhan 267 Karadjoff, Dimitri 50 Karagiorgis, Alexis 147 Karagiorgis, Kostas 147 Karamanlis, Konstantinos 148, 149, 154 Karaolis, Michalis 72, 146 Karkagiannis, Antonis 147 Karolyi, Alex 28 Karolyi, Michel 54, 55 Karwinsky, Carl 248 Kassner, Max 232 Kastrinos, Antonis 142, 144 Kawereau, Siegfried 91 Kaya, Hasan 268 Kayser, Jacques 58 Kazantzakis, Nikos 146 Kek (Hungarian League) 63 Kemetter, August Maria 233, 236, 246, 248, 250 Kempner, Robert M. W. 96 Kent, Victoria 135 Kerensky, Alexander 53 Kessler, Harry 85 Khatissian, Alexandre 25, 50, 53, 55, 56, 58 Kieffer (Luxembourgish League) 63 Kiendl, Theodor 102, 105 Kılıç, Habib 268 Kılıç, Kemal 267 Kirov, Sergei M. 62 Klarsfeld, Beate 75 Kloman, Nuitray 28

Index of Names Kłuszyńska, Dorota 21, 163 Kobler, Franz 233, 253 Koch-Kent, Henri 295 Kodek, Günter K. 225, 226 Koessler, E. 80 Kogon, Eugen 100 Kohn, Fritz S. 229, 232 Koliva, Thalia 149, 152 Koopman-Lorand (Belgian League) 53, 283 Körner, Erich 224, 225 Körner, Theodor 70, 256 Kornill (Belgian League) 149 Kostopoulos, Stavros 151 Kostov, Traicho 67 Koutsocheras, Giannis 151 Kowacs (Hungarian League) 53 Kraushaar, Wolfgang 119 Kreisky, Bruno 262 Kressmann, Willy 105 Krieps, Robert 300 Kuczynski, Robert 50, 52, 53, 55, 56, 85, 86, 234 Kudrnofsky, Josef 98, 101, 102, 103, 105 Kulka, Erwin 239 Külz, Wilhelm 103 Kupsch, Katharina 97, 101 Kyriazis, Damianos 142 La Fontaine (Haitian League) 55 La Pira, Giorgio 73 Labin (Romanian League) 55, 58, 198 Lahidji, Karim 76 Lambert, David 73 Lambrakis, Grigoris 149 Lammasch, Heinrich 81 Lamprecht, Karl 81 Lange, Robert 29, 50, 52 Langevin, Paul 56, 93, 234 Langlois, Den(n)is 74, 153 Laugier, Henri 65 Laza Herrera, Enrique 132 Leclerc, Henri 74 Lehmann, Ingeborg 105 Lehmann-Rußbüldt, Otto 53, 61, 80, 82, 87, 101, 103, 104, 105, 109, 110, 113, 244 Leiris, Michel 76 Lenard, Julian M. 229 Lenz, Reimar 118 Lerner, Herman 214 Leroy, Maxime 55 Lherisson, L. C. 28 Lichnowsky, Karl Max Fürst von 80, 84

319

Liebermann, Herman 29, 171 Liebknecht, Karl 81 Lin Hon Hong 50 Liszt, Franz von 81 Lobe, P. 87 Loeventhal-Mardfin (“United States League”) 31, 57 Loewith-Ladner, Oscar 58, 59 Loffler, Adolf 28, 63 Londole (Belgian Congo) 291 Lopez y Lopez, José 55, 58 Lorand, Georges 50, 53 Lorca, García 123 Lorenzo, Anselmo 127 Lothar, Ernst 233, 236, 242 Lotterstein 213 Löwit-Ladner, Oskar 243 Lumbreras, Alberto 63, 135 Luqman, Shehzad 155 Luxemburg, Rosa 81 Machado, Antonio 123, 129, 130 Macía, Francesco 123 Madariaga, Salvador de 123 Madaule, Jacques 75 Maeztu, Ramiro 123 Magalhães Lima, Sebastião 131 Makris, G. 142 Malagarriga, Carlos 127, 128, 132 Manciu, Constantin 206 Mandelstam, Andrei 58, 59 Manetas, Konstantinos 147 Manteca Roger, José 128, 133, 135 Marañón, Gregorio 123 Marck, S. 63 Martí Jara, Enrique 126, 129, 130 Martínez Barrio, Diego 127, 128, 132, 135, 136 Martínez Corbalón, Francisco 132 Martínez Ruiz, José Augusto Trinidad 123 Mata, Ricardo 135 Matteotti, Giacomo 54, 176 Mayer, Daniel 72, 73, 74, 75, 192, 290 Mayreder, Rosa 233, 236, 237, 238, 242 Mazzini, Giuseppe 176 McCloy, John J. 111 Męczkowska, Teodora 163 Melik, Muhsin 267 Ménard-Dorian, Aline 21, 174, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 86, 132, 175 Ménard-Dorian, Pauline 54 Merce, Antonia 123

320

Index of Names

Mercouri, Melina 153 Mersch, Julien 293, 300 Metaxas, Ioannis 144 Miceli, Giuseppe 185 Mihyas, İkram 267 Miklas, Wilhelm 242 Milhaud, Maurice 89 Mille, Constantin 197 Milyukov, Pavel 53, 56 Mink (Czechoslovakian League) 55 Minor, Ossip S. 30, 50, 53 Mintz, Alexander 136, 229, 230, 231, 233, 239, 249, 252 Mirkin-Getzevich, Boris 30, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 62, 63 Miró, Joan 123 Misař, Wladimir 239 Modigliani, Amedeo 55 Modigliani, Giuseppe Emanuele 55, 56, 63, 180, 187 Moldauer, Emanuel 232 Mollet, Guy 72 Morayta, Miguel 123 Moro, Aldo 192 Mossé, Andrée 63, 69 Motz (Polish League) 58 Moutet, Marius 55, 61, 178 Mühlberger, Hermann C. 70 Müller, Hermann 236 Muñoz Martínez, Manuel 135 Muralov, Nikolai 62 Mussolini, Benito 55, 174, 175, 176, 181, 202 Mylonas, Giorgos 140, 151 Nakos, Loukas 50, 141 Nałkowska, Zofia 162 Nathan, Ernesto 191 Natoli, Aurelio 53, 188 Nedelcu, Florea 218 Nehyda (Czechoslovakian League) 63 Nenni, Pietro 191 Neumann, Franz 104 Nichbenstein (Danzig League) 26 Nicolaeff, Nicolai 50 Nicolai, Georg Friedrich 85 Niederrellmann, Hans H. 87 Nirvanas, Pavlos see Apostolidis, Petros Nitti, Francesco Saverio 55 Noguères, Henri 75 Öcalan, Abdullah 262

Oehlschläger, Ernst 103, 105 Oehme, Walter 82 Oekonomos, S. 55 Oestreich, Paul 81, 103, 104 Omari, Bahri 24 Öndül, Hüsnü 259, 268, 274, 277, 279 Öner, Abuzer 267 Oppenheim, Hermann 232 Oppenheimer, Felix 253 Oppman, Thadée 29 Orhan, Yahya 267 Ortega y Gasset, Eduardo 123, 126, 128, 131, 132, 135 Ortega y Gasset, José 55 Ortmann, Adolf 233 Ossietzky, Carl von 60, 87, 89, 96 Ossorio, Ángel 123 Özçelik, İdris 267 Özgen, Lami 272, 275, 276 Painlevé, Paul 89 Panagoulis, Alekos 153 Panagoulis, Alexandros 74 Panayotoff-Weizman 58 Pangalos, Georgios 142 Papa, Eirini 153 Papadopoulos, Georgios 74, 152 Papandreou, Andreas 151, 154 Papandreou, George 149 Papandreou, Georgios 73 Papaspirou, Dimitrios 147 Papaterpos, Alexandros 151 Patek, Stanisław 163 Patka, Marcus G. 226 Paul-Boncour, Joseph 66, 67, 71, 72, 73 Pedroso, Manuel 130 Pelzer, Robert 229, 232, 233, 239, 248, 250, 252 Pérez de Ayala, Ramón 130 Pérez Díaz, Ramón 128 Pérez Galdós, Benito 123 Persicaner, Walter 102, 103, 104 Pétain, Philippe 21 Petkov, Nicolas 66 Petroulas, Sotiris 151 Piatakov, Georgi 62 Picard, Roger 55, 56, 65, 86 Picasso, Pablo 123 Pidal, Menéndez 123 Piérard, Louis 53, 55, 283 Piłsudski, Józef 166 Pioche, Georges 215

Index of Names Pistocchi, Mario 57, 58 Poincaré, Raymond 87, 175 Poitras, Laura 115 Polat, Şirin 267 Poliakov, Léon 117 Posner, Stanislas 55 Posner, Stanisław 157, 158, 163 Prager, Hans 243 Pressensé, Francis de 47 Pribitchevitch, Svetozar 31 Primo de Rivera, Miguel 55, 126 Protopappas, Charalampos 139 Prudhommeaux, Jules 59, 60 Puig de Asprer, José 128 Quidde, Ludwig 80, 84, 87 Rabl, Rudolf 63 Racamond, Julien 93 Radek, Karl 62 Raditch, Vladimir 31 Radulescu-Motru, Constantin 216 Rajk, László 66 Rathenau, Walter 81 Rebérioux, Madeleine 72, 74, 76 Redlich, Josef 230, 233 Reger, Erik 103, 104 Reichl, Kurt 234 Renaudel, Pierre 52, 55 Renner, Karl 226, 234, 254 Rentis, Haris 151 Retzlaw, Karl 107, 109 Reuter, Ernst 80, 89, 105 Rexin, Manfred 117, 118 Reynier, Elie 40 Ribas, Fabra 30, 50 Richter, Elise 233, 234, 236, 253 Rico, Pedro 123 Ríos, Fernando de los 130, 133 Ríos, Juan 132 Rivas Cherif, Cipriano 123 Rodríguez, Francos 127 Rolin, Henri 288 Rolland, Romain 60 Roller, Mihail 216 Ronzal, Franz 233, 246 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 98, 188 Rosenberg, Ethel 12, 70, 285 Rosenberg, Julius 12, 70, 285 Rosenmark, Marc 41, 42, 62 Rosenmark, Raymond 62 Rosselli, Carlo 60

321

Rosselli, Nello 60 Rotten, Elisabeth 81 Rousopoulou, Agni 142, 154 Rousset, David 67 Rubinstein, Jacob L. 30, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61 Rumpler, Siegfried Norbert 229, 232, 237, 246, 252 Ruyssen, Théodore 55, 86 Sabakhtarishvili (Georgian League) 53, 55 Sabrás Gurrea, Amós 128, 135 Sacco, Ferdinando 35, 48, 97 Sakharov, Andrei 74 Salakaza (Georgian League) 58 Salib, Tewfik 27 Salmerón, José 130 Salvini, Lino 192 Sánchez Díaz, Ramón 132 Sangnier, Marc 86 Santiago (Spanish League) 53 Sartre, Jean-Paul 75 Savcı, Bahri 277 Scelle, Georges 63 Schaefer, Jochen Klaus 69, 71, 105, 109, 111, 112, 113 Schiff, Maximilian 233 Schikelé, René 81 Schlesinger, Hans 233, 234, 239 Schlieben, Hans 84 Schnitzler, Arthur 242 Schober, Johann 236 Schoenberner, Gerhard 117, 118 Schreier, Maximilian 233, 253 Schücking, Walter 81, 84 Schürff, Hans 242 Schuschnigg, Kurt 248, 249, 250 Schuster, Gustav 233, 250 Schwamm, Hans 53, 87 Schwartz, Laurent 75 Scie Ton Fa 50, 53 Séailles, Gabriel 48, 52 Sedov, Leon 63 Şensoy, Didar 267 Senzig, Guido 113 Serge, Victor 60 Sergio de Souza, Antonio 58 Sertel, Zekeriya 272 Seyß-Inquart, Arthur 250 Sharashidze, Datiko 27, 55, 57, 58 Sicard de Plauzoles, Justin 69 Sideris, Aristotelis 141, 142

322 Sigellakis, Antonis 147 Silgradt, Wolfgang 112 Simarro, Luis 123, 124, 128, 129 Simionovici, Dr. 215 Simoez (Portugese League) 58 Simon, Hugo 85 Sincar, Mehmet 268 Siniavski, Andrei 73 Skouriotis, Panagis 142 Skrein, Rudolf 248, 249 Skriver, Ansgar 117, 118 Slánský, Rudolf 70 Słonimski, Antoni 162 Śmiarowski, Eugeniusz 163, 164 Smirnov, Ivan 62 Snowden, Edward 115 Sobecki, François 30 Sofianopoulos 145 Sokolnikov, Grigori 62 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander 74 Someritis, Stratis 73, 142, 145, 149, 151, 152, 153, 154 Sommerhausen, Marc 249 Souchy, Augustin 91 Soysal, Mümtaz 278 Spachis, Angelos 142 Spadolini, Giovanni 191 Spanien, Samuel 67 Spiru, Vasile 213 Stalin, Iosif Vissarionovič 42, 43 Stamboliyski, Aleksandar 220 Starhemberg, Ernst Rüdiger von 248 Starnik 55 Stavisky, Serge Alexandre 36, 39 Stefanakis, Kostantinos 151 Stefanopoulos, Stefanos 152 Stefanov, Boris 215 Stein, Adam 29 Stein, Freiherr vom 83 Stephanuy (Swiss League) 58 Stibbe, Pierre 72, 73 Stöcker, Helene 85, 237 Stoiloff (Bulgarian League) 53 Stratis 145 Strauß, Max 232 Strecker, Reinhard 118 Ströbel, Heinrich 85 Strozecka, E. 63 Strug, Andrzej 160, 163, 164, 172 Strugowa, Nelly 172 Sun Yat-sen 47 Sviatsky, H. 63

Index of Names Svolos, Alexandros 139, 142, 144, 145, 146 Sychrava, Leo 56 Szende, Paul (Pál) 54, 55, 56, 232 Szucs, Jean 28 Szymanowski, Zygmunt 163 Tan, Sıddık 267 Tănase, Stelian 204, 219 Tănăsescu, Florian 218 Tarchiani, Alberto 188 Tchen, Ho Lien 26, 50 Tepper-Laski, Kurt von 80, 82 Testa, Aldo 73 Theodorakis, Mikis 153 Theodoropoulos, Spyros 142 Theotokas, Giorgos 142 Theros, Agis see Theodoropoulos, Spyros Thirring, Hans 233, 242 Thugutt, Stanisław 162, 163, 164 Tietze, Hans 233, 242, 252 Tocqueville, Alexis de 35 Tomadakis, Nikolaos 152 Tönnies, Ferdinand 81 Torrès, Henri 210, 215, 218 Trarieux, Ludovic 46 Treves, Claudio 55, 56 Triaca, Ubaldo 55, 175 Triantafillopoulos, Konstantinos 142 Trotsky, Leon 63, 202 Tsaldaris, Panagis 144 Tsankov, Aleksander 220 Tsatsos, Themistoklis 142 Tseng-Ki 53 Tsirimokos, Ilias 67, 73, 142, 145, 146, 151 Tsitselikis, Konstantinos 139 Turati, Filippo 175 Türkdoğan, Öztürk 261 Türkmen, Emir Ali 260 Tysebaert (Belgian League) 55 Unamuno, Miguel de 55, 123, 126, 127, 128, 132 Valenszak, Charles 31 Valle-Inclán, Ramón del 123 Vallina, Pedro 132 Van Remoortel, William 63 Vandervelde, Emile 53, 59, 283, 284, 285 Vandervelde, Jeanne-Emile 61, 71, 72, 249, 285, 289 Vanzetti, Bartolomeo 35, 48, 97 Veakis, Aimilios 142

Index of Names Veér, Imre 28 Vegleris, Faidon 142, 153, 154 Veis, Konstantinos 142 Vélez, Dámaso 128, 133 Venizelos, Eleftherios 141, 144 Ventosa Roig, Juan 132 Vercors 75 Verdier, Robert 73, 75 Vermeil, Edmond 63 Vettas, Fokion 147 Vetter, Adolf 232, 234, 242, 243, 246 Vidal-Naquet, Pierre 72, 74 Villa, Madame de 24 Voltaire 100 Vorkapitch (Yougoslavian League) 31 Voutsas, Lefteris 147 Wasilewska, Wanda 162 Weber, Claude 300 Weber, Paul 55 Wedel, Emil von 98, 113 Wehberg, Hans 80 Wei Jingsheng 76 Welter, Friedrich 99 Werfel, Franz 242 Weychert-Szymanowska, Władysława 163 Wieland (German League) 55, 58

323

Wilhelm II (Emperor, Germany) 79, 84, 85 Wilhelm, Julius 233 Wilmotte, Maurice 55, 56 Wilson, Woodrow 47 Winter, Karl 229, 232, 246 Wolf, Jules 290 Wolf, Markus 113 Wolff, Jeanette 105 Wolters (Belgian lawyer) 73 Wulf, Joseph 117 Xatzimbeis 145 Zagorsky 56 Zambrano, Blas 128 Zarakolu, Ragip 270 Zatorska, Helena 160, 161 Zatorski, Aleksander 161 Zayas, Fermín de 135 Zechner, Leopold 70 Zielinska (Polish League) 56 Zinoviev, Grigori 62 Zirker, Milly 50, 64, 86, 93 Zuloaga, Ignacio 123 Zurabishvili (Georgian League) 63 Zweig, Stefan 242

H I S T O R I S C H E M I T T E I LU NG E N

–

BEIHEFTE

Im Auftrage der Ranke-Gesellschaft, Vereinigung für Geschichte im öffentlichen Leben e. V. herausgegeben von Jürgen Elvert. Wissenschaftlicher Beirat: Winfried Baumgart, Michael Kißener, Ulrich Lappenküper, Ursula Lehmkuhl, Bea Lundt, Christoph Marx, Jutta Nowosadtko, Johannes Paulmann, Wolfram Pyta, Wolfgang Schmale, Reinhard Zöllner.

Franz Steiner Verlag

ISSN 0939–5385

16. Jürgen Elvert (Hg.) Der Balkan Eine Europäische Krisenregion in Geschichte und Gegenwart 1997. 367 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-07016-4 17. Jens Hohensee Der erste Ölpreisschock 1973/74 Die politischen und gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen der arabischen Erdölpolitik auf die Bundesrepublik Deutschland und Westeuropa 1996. 324 S., 13 Tab., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-06859-8 18. Jürgen von Ungern-Sternberg / Wolfgang von Ungern-Sternberg Der Aufruf „An die Kulturwelt!“ Das Manifest der 93 und die Anfänge der Kriegspropaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg 1996. 247 S. mit 13 Abb., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-06890-1 19. Armin Heinen Saarjahre Politik und Wirtschaft im Saarland 1945–1955 1996. 603 S. mit zahlr. Abb., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-06843-7 20. Arnd Bauerkämper (Hg.) „Junkerland in Bauernhand“? Durchführung, Auswirkungen und Stellenwert der Bodenreform in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone 1996. 230 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-06994-6 21. Stephan Lippert Felix Fürst Schwarzenberg Eine politische Biographie 1998. 446 S., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-06923-6 22. Martin Kerkhoff Großbritannien, die Vereinigten Staaten und die Saarfrage 1945 bis 1954 1996. 251 S., kt.

ISBN 978-3-515-07017-1 23. Hans-Heinrich Nolte (Hg.) Europäische Innere Peripherien im 20. Jahrhundert 1997. 316 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-07098-0 24. Gabriele Clemens Britische Kulturpolitik in Deutschland (1945–1949) Literatur, Film, Musik und Theater 1997. 308 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-06830-7 25. Michael Salewski Die Deutschen und die See Studien zur deutschen Marinegeschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Hg. von Jürgen Elvert und Stefan Lippert 1998. 361 S., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-07319-6 26. Robert Bohn (Hg.) Die deutsche Herrschaft in den „germanischen“ Ländern 1940–1945 1997. 304 S. mit 5 Abb., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-07099-7 27. Heinrich Küppers Joseph Wirth Parlamentarier, Minister und Kanzler der Weimarer Republik 1997. 356 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-07012-6 28. Michael Salewski (Hg.) Das nukleare Jahrhundert 1998. 266 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-07321-9 29. Guido Müller (Hg.) Deutschland und der Westen Internationale Beziehungen im 20. Jahrhundert. Festschrift für Klaus Schwabe zum 65. Geburtstag 1998. 381 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-07251-9 30. Imanuel Geiss Zukunft als Geschichte Historisch-politische Analyse und

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Prognosen zum Untergang des Sowjetkommunismus, 1980–1991 1998. II, 309 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-07223-6 Robert Bohn / Jürgen Elvert / Karl Christian Lammers (Hg.) Deutsch-skandinavische Beziehungen nach 1945 2000. 234 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-07320-2 Daniel Gossel Briten, Deutsche und Europa Die Deutsche Frage in der britischen Außenpolitik 1945–1962 1999. 259 S., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-07159-8 Karl J. Mayer Zwischen Krise und Krieg Frankreich in der Außenwirtschaftspolitik der USA zwischen Weltwirtschaftskrise und Zweitem Weltkrieg 1999. XVI, 274 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-07373-8 Brigit Aschmann „Treue Freunde“? Westdeutschland und Spanien 1945–1963 1999. 502 S. mit 3 Tab., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-07579-4 Jürgen Elvert Mitteleuropa! Deutsche Pläne zur europäischen Neuordnung (1918–1945) 1999. 448 S., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-07641-8 Michael Salewski (Hg.) Was wäre wenn Alternativ- und Parallelgeschichte: Brücken zwischen Phantasie und Wirklichkeit 1999. 171 S. mit 1 Kte., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-07588-6 Michael F. Scholz Skandinavische Erfahrungen erwünscht? Nachexil und Remigration 2000. 416 S., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-07651-7 Gunda Stöber Pressepolitik als Notwendigkeit Zum Verhältnis von Staat und Öffentlichkeit im Wilhelminischen Deutschland 1890–1914 2000. 304 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-07521-3 Andreas Kloevekorn Die irische Verfassung von 1937

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2000. 199 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-07708-8 Birgit Aschmann / Michael Salewski (Hg.) Das Bild „des Anderen“ Politische Wahrnehmung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert 2000. 234 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-07715-6 Winfried Mönch Entscheidungsschlacht „Invasion“ 1944? Prognosen und Diagnosen 2001. 276 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-07884-9 Hans-Heinrich Nolte (Hg.) Innere Peripherien in Ost und West 2001. 188 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-07972-3 Peter Winzen Das Kaiserreich am Abgrund Die Daily-Telegraph-Affäre und das Hale-Interview von 1908. Darstellung und Dokumentation 2002. 369 S., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-08024-8 Fritz Kieffer Judenverfolgung in Deutschland – eine innere Angelegenheit? Internationale Reaktionen auf die Flüchtlingsproblematik 1933–1939 2002. 520 S., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-08025-5 Michael Salewski Die Deutschen und die See II Studien zur deutschen Marinegeschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts 2002. 252 S. mit 4 Abb., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-08087-3 Jürgen Elvert / Susanne Krauß (Hg.) Historische Debatten und Kontroversen im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert Jubiläumstagung der Ranke-Gesellschaft in Essen 2001 2003. 287 S., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-08253-2 Thomas Stamm-Kuhlmann / Jürgen Elvert / Birgit Aschmann / Jens Hohensee (Hg.) Geschichtsbilder Festschrift für Michael Salewski 2003. 664 S., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-08252-5 Dietmar Herz / Christian Jetzlsperger / Kai Ahlborn (Hg.) Der israelisch-palästinensische

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Konflikt Hintergründe, Dimensionen und Perspektiven 2003. 246 S., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-08259-4 Jürgen Elvert / Friederike Krüger (Hg.) Deutschland 1949–1989 Von der Zweistaatlichkeit zur Einheit 2003. 238 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-08298-3 Alexa Geisthövel Eigentümlichkeit und Macht Deutscher Nationalismus 1830–1851. Der Fall Schleswig-Holstein 2003. 256 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-08090-3 Alexander Sedlmaier Deutschlandbilder und Deutschlandpolitik Studien zur Wilson-Administration (1913–1921) 2003. 386 S. mit 5 Abb., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-08124-5 Stefan Manz Migranten und Internierte Deutsche in Glasgow, 1864–1918 2003. VI, 317 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-08427-7 Kai F. Hünemörder Die Frühgeschichte der globalen Umweltkrise und die Formierung der deutschen Umweltpolitik (1950–1973) 2004. 387 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-08188-7 Christian Wipperfürth Von der Souveränität zur Angst Britische Außenpolitik und Sozialökonomie im Zeitalter des Imperialismus 2004. 473 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-08517-5 Tammo Luther Volkstumspolitik des Deutschen Reiches 1933–1938 Die Auslanddeutschen im Spannungsfeld zwischen Traditionalisten und Nationalsozialisten 2004. 217 S. mit 5 Abb., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-08535-9 Thomas Stamm-Kuhlmann / Reinhard Wolf (Hg.) Raketenrüstung und internationale Sicherheit von 1942 bis heute 2004. 222 S. mit 3 Abb., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-08282-2

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Frank Uekötter / Jens Hohensee (Hg.) Wird Kassandra heiser? Die Geschichte falscher Öko-Alarme 2004. 168 S. mit 6 Abb., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-08484-0 Rainer F. Schmidt (Hg.) Deutschland und Europa Außenpolitische Grundlinien zwischen Reichsgründung und Erstem Weltkrieg. Festgabe für Harm-Hinrich Brandt zum siebzigsten Geburtstag 2004. 159 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-08262-4 Karl-Georg Mix Deutsche Flüchtlinge in Dänemark 1945–1949 2005. 230 S. und 35 Abb. auf 29 Taf., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-08690-5 Karl-Theodor Schleicher / Heinrich Walle (Hg.) Aus Feldpostbriefen junger Christen 1939–1945 Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Katholischen Jugend im Felde 2005. 413 S. mit 55 Abb., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-08759-9 Jessica von Seggern Alte und neue Demokraten in Schleswig-Holstein Demokratisierung und Neubildung einer politischen Elite auf Kreisund Landesebene 1945 bis 1950 2005. 243 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-08801-5 Birgit Aschmann (Hg.) Gefühl und Kalkül Der Einfluss von Emotionen auf die Politik des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts 2005. 239 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-08804-6 Gerald Mund Ostasien im Spiegel der deutschen Diplomatie Die privatdienstliche Korrespondenz des Diplomaten Herbert v. Dirksen von 1933 bis 1938 2006. 343 S. mit 21 Abb., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-08732-2 Ralph Dietl Emanzipation und Kontrolle Europa in der westlichen Sicherheitspolitik 1948–1963. Eine Innenansicht des westlichen Bündnisses. Teil 1: Der Ordnungsfaktor Europa 1948–1958 2006. 541 S., kt.

ISBN 978-3-515-08915-9 65. Niklas Günther / Sönke Zankel (Hg.) Abrahams Enkel Juden, Christen, Muslime und die Schoa 2006. 145 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-08979-1 66. Jens Ruppenthal Kolonialismus als „Wissenschaft und Technik“ Das Hamburgische Kolonialinstitut 1908 bis 1919 2007. 273 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-09004-9 67. Ralph Dietl Emanzipation und Kontrolle Europa in der westlichen Sicherheitspolitik 1948–1963. Eine Innenansicht des westlichen Bündnisses. Teil 2: Europa 1958–1963: Ordnungsfaktor oder Akteur? 2007. 430 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-09034-6 68. Herbert Elzer Die Schmeisser-Affäre Herbert Blankenhorn, der „Spiegel“ und die Umtriebe des französischen Geheimdienstes im Nachkriegsdeutschland (1946–1958) 2008. 373 S. mit 10 Abb., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-09117-6 69. Günter Vogler (Hg.) Bauernkrieg zwischen Harz und Thüringer Wald 2008. 526 S. mit 14 Abb., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-09175-6 70. Rüdiger Wenzel Die große Verschiebung? Das Ringen um den Lastenausgleich im Nachkriegsdeutschland von den ersten Vorarbeiten bis zur Verabschiedung des Gesetzes 1952 2008. 262 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-09218-0 71. Tvrtko P. Sojčić Die ,Lösung‘ der kroatischen Frage zwischen 1939 und 1945 Kalküle und Illusionen 2009. 477 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-09261-6 72. Jürgen Elvert / Jürgen Nielsen-Sikora (Hg.) Kulturwissenschaften und Nationalsozialismus 2009. 922 S., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-09282-1

73. Alexander König Wie mächtig war der Kaiser? Kaiser Wilhelm II. zwischen Königsmechanismus und Polykratie von 1908 bis 1914 2009. 317 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-09297-5 74. Jürgen Elvert / Jürgen Nielsen-Sikora (Hg.) Leitbild Europa? Europabilder und ihre Wirkungen in der Neuzeit 2009. 308 S. mit 8 Abb., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-09333-0 75. Michael Salewski Revolution der Frauen Konstrukt, Sex, Wirklichkeit 2009. 508 S. mit 34 Abb., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-09202-9 76. Stephan Hobe (Hg.) Globalisation – the State and International Law 2009. 144 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-09375-0 77. Markus Büchele Autorität und Ohnmacht Der Nordirlandkonflikt und die katholische Kirche 2009. 511 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-09421-4 78. Günter Wollstein Ein deutsches Jahrhundert 1848–1945. Hoffnung und Hybris Aufsätze und Vorträge 2010. 437 S. mit 2 Abb., geb. ISBN 978-3-515-09622-5 79. James Stone The War Scare of 1875 Bismarck and Europe in the Mid-1870s. With a Foreword by Winfried Baumgart 2010. 385 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-09634-8 80. Werner Tschacher Königtum als lokale Praxis Aachen als Feld der kulturellen Realisierung von Herrschaft. Eine Verfassungsgeschichte (ca. 800–1918) 2010. 580 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-09672-0 81. Volker Grieb / Sabine Todt (Hg.) Piraterie von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart 2012. 313 S. mit 15 Abb., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-10138-7

82. Jürgen Elvert / Sigurd Hess / Heinrich Walle (Hg.) Maritime Wirtschaft in Deutschland Schifffahrt – Werften – Handel – Seemacht im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert 2012. 228 S. mit 41 Abb. und 4 Tab., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-10137-0 83. Andreas Boldt Leopold von Ranke und Irland 2012. 28 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-10198-1 84. Luise Güth / Niels Hegewisch / Knut Langewand / Dirk Mellies / Hedwig Richter (Hg.) Wo bleibt die Aufklärung? Aufklärerische Diskurse in der Postmoderne. Festschrift für Thomas StammKuhlmann 2013. 372 S. mit 12 Abb., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-10423-4 85. Ralph L. Dietl Equal Security Europe and the SALT Process, 1969–1976 2013. 251 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-10453-1 86. Matthias Stickler (Hg.) Jenseits von Aufrechnung und Verdrängung Neue Forschungen zu Flucht, Vertreibung und Vertriebenenintegration 2014. 204 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-10749-5 87. Philipp Menger Die Heilige Allianz Religion und Politik bei Alexander I. (1801–1825) 2014. 456 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-10811-9 88. Marc von Knorring Die Wilhelminische Zeit in der Diskussion Autobiographische Epochencharakterisierungen 1918–1939 und ihr zeitgenössischer Kontext 2014. 360 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-10960-4 89. Birgit Aschmann / Thomas Stamm-Kuhlmann (Hg.) 1813 im europäischen Kontext

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2015. 302 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-11042-6 Michael Kißener Boehringer Ingelheim im Nationalsozialismus Studien zur Geschichte eines mittelständischen chemisch-pharmazeutischen Unternehmens 2015. 292 S. mit 16 Abb. und 13 Tab., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-11008-2 Wolfgang Schmale (Hg.) Digital Humanities Praktiken der Digitalisierung, der Dissemination und der Selbstreflexivität 2015. 183 S. mit 2 Tab., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-11142-3 Matthias Asche / Ulrich Niggemann (Hg.) Das leere Land Historische Narrative von Einwanderergesellschaften 2015. 287 S. mit 8 Abbildungen ISBN 978-3-515-11198-0 Ralph L. Dietl Beyond Parity Europe and the SALT Process in the Carter Era, 1977–1981 2016. 306 S., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-11242-0 Jürgen Elvert (Hg.) Geschichte jenseits der Universität Netzwerke und Organisationen in der frühen Bundesrepublik 2016. 276 S. mit 8 Abbildungen, kt. ISBN 978-3-515-11350-2 Jürgen Elvert / Lutz Feldt / Ingo Löppenberg / Jens Ruppenthal (Hg.) Das maritime Europa Werte – Wissen – Wirtschaft 2016. 322 S. mit 10 Abb. und 11 Tab., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-09628-7 Bea Lundt / Christoph Marx(Hg.) Kwame Nkrumah 1909–1972 A Controversial African Visionary 2016. 208 S. mit 21 Abbildungen, kt. ISBN 978-3-515-11572-8 Frederick Bacher Friedrich Naumann und sein Kreis 2017. 219 S. mit 8 Abb., kt. ISBN 978-3-515-11672-5

When the French Ligue des droits de l’homme was founded in 1898, it was the world’s first league for human rights. Over the following decades, human rights leagues were formed in many other countries following its example, and from 1922, they advocated for a universal human rights ideal under the auspices of a shared umbrella organization. The majority of these leagues were forced to interrupt their activities at some point, especially during the National Socialist period. After World War II, many leagues experienced a renaissance. Not least through their cooperation with the United Nations, they significantly contributed to the global acceptance of the very idea of human rights in the second half of the 20th century. The contributors in this volume break new ground: they provide a so-far lacking overview of international research on human rights leagues, synthesizing it and identifying research desiderata. Some of the presented civil society associations, like those in Eastern Europe, have never before been subject to scholarly consideration.

www.steiner-verlag.de Franz Steiner Verlag

ISBN 978-3-515-11627-5