Iwan Katz (1 February 1889 - 20 September 1956) was a German politician (SPD, USPD, KPD, AAUE, SED and UAPD). In many ways the period of his greatest influence, within the Communist Party and after his expulsion from it in 1926 outside it, came between 1924 and approximately 1927. Between 1924 and 1928 he served as a member of parliament (Reichstags Mitglied). On account of his record of activism he was subject to persecution during the twelve Hitler years, spending the years from 1941 till 1944 in concentration camps. He nevertheless survived became a post-war force in the politics both of Berlin and, till serious heart triggered disease his retirement in 1954, in East and West Germany more broadly.
Life
Provenance and early years
Iwan Katz was born in Hannover, son of the Jewish businessman Gustav Katz and his wife, born Johanna Magnus. He himself identified his confessional status as "without religion". He attended "Gymnasia" (secondary schools) successively in Osnabrück, Dortmund and Linden, before moving on to a broadly based university-level education. Katz attended universities at Berlin, Würzburg and Hannover. During 1909 he broke off his university studies and spent a year working in the Metals Industry. Subjects he studied included Jurisprudence, Applied Economics, Statistics and Medicine. His own curriculum vitae refers to his having obtained a doctorate, but it has not been possible to find any details or corroboration for his having obtained the degree. In 1911 Katz took a position as a research assistant at the Statistical Office in Hannover. The next year he undertook and completed his military service.
Politics and Marriage
Katz had become active in the labour movement while still at school, in 1906. In 1907 he was elected chairman of the SPD-affiliated Young Workers' Association ("Arbeiterjugendverein") for North-West Germany. By 1913, despite his young age, he had emerged as an activist member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD).
During 1913 Iwan Katz married Anna Kerwel (1879–1947). Anna was the daughter of a former army officer who had been dismissed from the Imperial Army on account of his political activities. Anna Kerwel's father was another member of the Social Democratic Party.
War
During the First World War, which broke out at the end of July 1914, Iwan Katz served on the frontline as a Leutnant (junior officer) and company commander with the Second Machine-gun Company of the 74th Infantry Regiment. (It seems likely that he had been listed as part of the military reserve ever since undergoing his Military Service in 1912.) He also became a staff officer.
As the end of the war approached, two months before the signing of the armistice, Iwan Katz assumed a leading position, as "Geschäftsführer", of the Demobilisation Committee for Hannover in September 1918.
Politics, and ructions on the left
Three months after the outbreak of the rash of revolutionary outbreaks that swept across the cities and towns of Germany following the abdication, Katz became a Hannover city councillor in February 1919. Unlike many of those who would come to prominence as leading figures of the political extreme left in Germany during the 1920s, Katz had not at this stage switched his party allegiance to the anti-war Independent Social Democratic Party. It was as a member of the SPD that in June 1919 he attended the party's party congress at Weimar, a small town which had acquired a hitherto implausible degree of political significance earlier in the year.
At the end of 1919, however, Iwan Katz did indeed move across to the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD). The USPD was by this stage rapidly approaching its own moment of truth, however. In October 1920 Katz and his wife attended the party conference in Halle as delegates. it turned out to be the conference at which the party effectively broke apart. Following a crucial vote, a minority of the members returned to the mainstream Social Democratic Party (SPD). Iwan Katz was part of the majority that stayed with what became known, briefly, as the USPD (Linke / Left) and then, in December 1920, merged with the recently formed Communist Party. (The merged party was briefly rebranded as the "United Communist Party ..." / "Vereinigte Kommunistische Partei ...".) He continued to be an activist city councillor in Hannover, where he was viewed as a left-wing member of his party, working closely with comrades such as Berthold Karwane and Theodor Gohr.