Leonard, Suzanne

Suzanne's father died in 1895, after his death the girl was raised by his grandfather the banker. She studied at the city school in Oshac, then for two years she was educated at a boarding school in Leipzig , in 1912-15 she received an education at a school for girls in Chemnitz , where she received a high school diploma.

In the years 1915-1919, Suzanne Köhler studied mathematics and philosophy at the universities of Gottingen and Berlin. From her student years she adhered to left-wing political views, actively participated in the organization of free students, and in 1916 joined the organization of the Liebknecht youth (“ Union of Spartak ”). Engaged in journalism and writing articles for Minna Kauer publications. In 1919-1920, she worked as secretary of the editorial board of the illegal edition of the Correspondence of Communist Councils ( Kommunistische Räte-Korrespondenz ) in Berlin.

In 1918, Suzanne Köhler married an expressionist poet and playwright Rudolf Leonhard . Marriage was terminated in 1919. In 1920, joining the ranks of the KKE, Suzanne Leonard moved to Vienna , where she worked as the head of the press bureau of the Soviet embassy in Austria. In 1921, she married the ambassador of Soviet Russia in Austria, Mechislav Bronsky . This marriage also failed to stand the test of time and was soon declared invalid, because it was concluded only under Soviet law. Rudolf Leonhard, Suzanne's first husband, in 1921 officially recognized himself as the father of Wolfgang Leonhard .

During this period, the first major work of Suzanne Leonard saw the light of the underground literature in revolutionary Germany during the world war. Already in 1922, Leonard returned to Berlin and again turned to journalism. She wrote mainly for the communist press, and later, after her departure from the KPD due to ideological differences in 1925, for left-bourgeois publications. She participated in the work of a Marxist discussion group organized in Berlin by Karl Korsch , where Bertolt Brecht and Alfred Döblin had been .

After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Suzanne Leonard was denied admission to an ideologized professional association, as a result of which she lost her right to engage in journalism. She earned a living working as a dancer due to her choreographic education at the Wigman School, received in the 1920s, and participated in communist resistance, acting as a courier.

In March 1935, Leonard left for Sweden , where she learned about the arrest threatening her, so she emigrated with her son to the USSR. In Moscow, Leongard worked as a teacher of German, but already in 1936 she was arrested and spent twelve years in a forced labor camp in Vorkuta and Siberia. Her son Wolfgang was brought up without a mother in Moscow. In 1945, he returned to Germany with the Ulbricht group and quickly moved up the career ladder in the Soviet zone of occupation of Germany . In 1948, with the assistance of Wilhelm Pick, Wolfgang managed to secure the release of his mother from prison. In 1949, shortly before the formation of the GDR , Wolfgang Leonard fled from East Germany to the West, where he became a leading expert on the USSR and Stalinism .

In August 1948, Suzanne Leonard returned to Germany. At first she lived in East Berlin, but in the spring of 1949 she moved to West Germany , where she was arrested by American counterintelligence and held in custody until 1950. Despite her anti-Stalinist views, she refused to cooperate with the Americans.

After her release, Suzanne Leonard settled in Stuttgart . Following her son, she joined the Left Independent Labor Party of Germany , which followed the Yugoslav ideas of building socialism. In the 1960s, she led the local branch of the German Free-Alliance Union and worked closely with independent left-wing socialists, for example, Fritz Lamm .

• Unterirdische Literatur im revolutionären Deutschland während des Weltkrieges. Berlin 1920
• Gestohlenes Leben. Schicksal einer politischen Emigrantin in der Sowjetunion. Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Frankfurt am Main 1956
• Fahrt ins Verhängnis. Als Sozialistin in Stalins Gulag. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1983, ISBN 3-451-07998-4

Russian translations

• Dran E. , Leonard S. Underground literature of revolutionary Germany during the world war. - M.: Red Nov, 1923. - 176 p.

• Biography (German)