Karl Kautsky Papers

Period  1789-1996
Total size   21.5 m.
Consultation Not restricted
User restriction  The papers will be digitized in 2012. The originals are not available, please ask information at the reading room if you want them. For the nos. C 1 to H 1/447 only microfilms can be consulted. For consultation the number of the microfilm is needed, see Liste der Filme vom Kautsky-Archiv.

Biography

Born in Prague 1854, died in Amsterdam 1938; social democratic writer and Marxist theorist; joined Austrian social democracy in 1874 and worked as a journalist within the Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (SAPD, from 1890 SPD) from 1879; in 1883 founder and editor of Die Neue Zeit, leading theoretical organ of the German and international labour movement; leading Marxist theorist in the period of the Second International; his main goal was to popularize Marxism; resisted the war policy of the majority of the party in 1915; the party dismissed him as editor of Die Neue Zeit in 1917; left the SPD to join the Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (USPD); minor role during the German revolution in 1918/19 as an assistant Secretary of State of Foreign Affairs and chairman of the Sozialisierungskommission; left the USPD in 1921 and joined the reunited SPD in 1922 but had lost most of his enormous influence on German and international social democracy; returned to Vienna in 1924 and published voluminous theoretical and historical studies including `Die materialistische Geschichtsauffassung' 1933 and `Sozialisten und Krieg' 1937.

Content

Karl Kautsky papers: extensive world-wide correspondence with many socialists and others, in particular Eduard Bernstein, J.H.W. Dietz(-Verlag) and Franz Mehring, also with Victor Adler, Pavel Aksel'rod, Otto Bauer, August Bebel, Adolf Braun, Heinrich Braun, Eugen Dietzgen, Gustav Eckstein, Hugo Heller, Paul and Hanna Hertz, Rudolf Hilferding, Paul Lafargue, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, David Rjazanov, F.A. Sorge, Clara Zetkin and others, and some correspondence with Lenin (photocopies) and Trotsky; files on the International Socialist Congress in Paris 1900, the International Socialist Bureau 1900-1906, the `Russischer Fonds' 1906-1915, the `Sozialisierungskommission' of the SPD 1918-1923, Russian social democrats 1912-1930, etc.; manuscripts and proofs, excerpts and notes; manuscripts from Eduard Bernstein, Fedor Dan, Eugen Dietzgen, Kurt Eisner, Petr Garvi, Iraklij Tsereteli; press clippings of articles by and on Kautsky. Kautsky family, including Karl Kautsky, his wife Luise Kautsky-Ronsperger (1864-1944), their sons Felix (1891-1953), Karl (1892-1978) and Benedikt (1894-1960), his mother Minna Kautsky-Jaich (1837-1912) and other members of the families Kautsky, Jaich and Ronsperger: correspondence by Karl Kautsky mainly with the same persons as in the Kautsky papers; correspondence by Luise Kautsky with Paul and Hanna Hertz, Paul and Oda Olberg, Berta Pritchard, Emma and Vladimir Vojtinskij, Clara Zetkin and others; files of Karl Kautsky on the International Socialist Congresses in Amsterdam 1904 and in Hamburg 1923, Die Neue Zeit 1898-1917, etc.; files of Benedikt Kautsky on the resurrection of the Labour and Socialist International (LSI/SAI) 1944-1946, etc.; political and literary manuscripts by Karl Kautsky, manuscripts by Luise Kautsky, Benedikt Kautsky; personal documents of Karl and Luise Kautsky; letters to Minna Kautsky-Jaich from Wilhelm Kienberger, Wilhelm, Natalie and Karl Liebknecht, Franz and Eva Mehring and others; manuscripts of plays and novels written by Minna Kautsky-Jaich; a file from Minna Kautsky-Jaich on the Verein der Schriftstellerinnen und Künstlerinnen in Wien 1885-1906. NB. For the papers of Karl Kautsky, both collections have to be consulted.

Processing information

Inventory made by Ursula Balzer in 2003.

Alternate Form of Material

Security microfilms 1985 Partly published in: August Bebels Briefwechsel mit Karl Kautsky. Hrsg. von Karl Kautsky jr. Assen, 1971; Karl Kautsky, Erinnerungen und Erörterungen. Hrsg. von Benedikt Kautsky. The Hague, 1960; Dietrich Geyer, Kautskys Russisches Dossier. Deutsche Sozialdemokraten als Treuhänder des russischen Parteivermögens 1910-1915. Frankfuhrt/New York, 1981; Karl Kautsky und die Sozialdemokratie Südosteuropas. Korrespondenz 1883-1938. Hrsg. von Georg Haupt, Janós Jemnitz und Leo van Rossum. Frankfuhrt/New York, 1986; Wilhelm Liebknecht, Briefwechsel mit deutschen Sozialdemokraten. Band 1. 1862-1878. Hrsg. und bearbeitet von Georg Eckert. Assen, 1973. Band 2. 1878-1884. Hrsg. von Götz Langkau unter Mitwirkung von Ursula Balzer und Jan Gielkens. Frankfurt/New York, 1988; Der Zentralrat der Deutschen Sozialistischen Republik 19.12.1918-8.4.1919. Bearbeitet von Eberhard Kolb unter Mitwirkung von Reinhard Rürup. Leiden, 1968.

Transcriptions of letters by Parvus (A.Helphand) to Kautsky.