Sozialistische Monatshefte Archives

Period 1897-1911
Total size 3.5 m.
Consultation  Not restricted

Biography

Joseph Bloch: born in Russia 1871, grew up in Köningsberg, East Prussia; socialist and zionist; studied mathematics; founded Der sozialistische Akademiker in 1895, in January 1897 succeeded by Sozialistische Monatshefte, which he edited until its suppression in 1933; died in Prague 1936, where he had lived as an emigré from 1933. Sozialistische Monatshefte: never an official organ of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), the monthly was the main counterpart of Die Neue Zeit and a platform for the `Revisionismus' debate, where Bloch took the revisionist stand; during the First World War Bloch advocated a `continental' Europe without Great Britain, a peaceful coexistence of Germany with France and a free Russia; finding little favour for this line Sozialistische Monatshefte lost its influence on the party debate.

Content

Correspondence by Joseph Bloch as editor of Sozialistische Monatshefte with Leo Arons, Eduard Bernstein, Hjalmar Branting, Kurt Eisner, Luigi Fabbri, Alfred Götze, Wolfgang Heine, Camille Huysmans, Paul Kampffmeyer, James Ramsay Macdonald, Tom Mann, Emile Vandervelde, Willem Vliegen and others.

Part of the papers at the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz.

Arrangement

Purchased by the IISH and stored at its Paris branch in 1939, the archives were confiscated by the Nazis and in 1945 by the Soviet Union; originals were kept at the Centr Chranenija Istoriko-Dokumental'nych Kollekcii (CChIDK) in Moscow until 2002.

Alternate Form of Material

9 microfilms (1994)