Gerhart Eisler

Background

Gerhart Eisler was born on February 20, 1897, in Leipzig, Germany. He was the son of Rudolf Eisler, a professor of philosophy at the University of Leipzig, and Marie Edith Fischer.  The family moved to Vienna shortly after Eisler's birth.

Education

Eisler attended the University of Vienna but interrupted his studies to enlist in the Austrian army during World War I.

In the late 1920s, Eisler was called to Moscow, where he was allowed to attend an espionage training school.

Career

After his discharge from the army in 1918, Eisler joined the Austrian Communist party. In 1920, Eisler, at the urging of his sister Elfriede, transferred his membership to the Communist party in Berlin, where he worked as an organizer and propagandist for the party during the 1920s.

In 1928, Eisler became involved in an attempt to depose the German party leader, Ernst Thaelmann. Joseph Stalin thwarted the move, and Eisler fell into disgrace within the party.

In the late 1920s, Eisler was called to Moscow. He then was dispatched to China in 1930 or 1931, to serve as the liaison between the Comintern and the Chinese Communist party.

After the arrest of two Comintern agents, Eisler decided to leave China. His sister later claimed that his mission was to purge rebellious Chinese Communists, a task that, she maintained, he performed cruelly and effectively.

In 1933, Eisler, traveling under forged passports, entered the United States. He reputedly became the top Comintern agent in America.

In that year, Eisler went to Spain, where he served with the Spanish Loyalists as a "political commissar" to a battalion of antifascist Germans fighting against Francisco Franco.

Eisler, who was in France at the outbreak of World War II, was detained in an internment camp by the Vichy government as a suspicious character of German origins.

During this period, he is reputed to have led Comintern-supported missions to aid antifascist underground movements in Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Switzerland.

In 1941, a relief organization arranged Eisler's return to the United States via Mexico. He was stopped at Ellis Island and told that Communists could not be granted transit visas.

Eisler explained later that he lied about his past and, after a ten-week investigation, won permission to stay in the United States on a visitor's visa.

Although Eisler lived quietly in Queens, New York, he resumed his former position as liaison between the Comintern and the United States Communist party.

Eisler's main missions were to infiltrate labor unions and liberal organizations and to form front organizations for the party. On an October 13, 1946, radio broadcast from Detroit, Louis Budenz, the former managing editor of the Daily Worker, who had turned anti-Communist, alluded to Eisler as one of the Soviet Union's top agents in America.

After the broadcast, Eisler and his wife attempted to leave the country, but they were stopped by immigration officials and their exit permits were canceled.

Eisler was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) on February 6, 1947. During a stormy session, he refused to be sworn before reading a prepared statement.

After a fifteen-minute shouting match with the committee chairman, J. Parnell Thomas, Eisler was cited for contempt. He was sentenced to one year in jail and received an additional one to three years for having falsified his record in seeking to leave the United States.

During the same HUAC session, his sister testified against him, calling him "a most dangerous terrorist, both to the people of America and to the people of Germany. "

She also claimed that during the Soviet purges of the 1930s, Eisler was responsible for the deaths of Hugo Eberlein, a German Communist, and Nikolai Bukharin, the great Soviet theorist.

In September 1947, Eisler's brother, Hanns, a composer, was brought before HUAC as a suspected member of the Communist party. While appeals to both of his convictions were pending, Eisler jumped a $23, 500 bail bond by stowing away on the Polish liner Batory when it sailed from New York for England on May 7, 1949.

When the Batory landed in Southampton, Eisler was arrested, but a London court declined to extradite him to the United States. He proceeded to East Germany, where he became a professor at the University of Leipzig.

Eisler became a leading Communist propagandist and a member of East Germany's Central Committee; he also served as chairman of the state radio and television committee.

Eisler died in Yerevan, in the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, while attending to a contract between the East German and Soviet radio networks.

Achievements

• Eisler was a classic espionage agent who hid in the shadows and frequently altered his identity while guiding revolutions in four countries. He was a leading Communist propagandist and a member of East Germany's Central Committee. He also served as chairman of the state radio and television committee.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The lesson of Germany;: A guide to her history

    (Published 1945 at the collapse of Hitler's Germany, this ...)

  • Men without faces;: The Communist conspiracy in the U.S.A

    (305 pages, index. Features such intriguing chapter titles...)

  • My Side of the Story. The Statement the Newspapers Refused to Print
  • IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, OCTOBER TERM, 1948 Gerhart Eisler V. the United States of America

Politics

In 1918, Gerhart Eisler joined the Austrian Communist party. He was a lifelong communist.

Personality

Eisler used various aliases, including "Edwards" and "Hans Burger" and remained in the United States until 1936.

Eisler was a small, bespectacled man who looked like an underpaid bookkeeper.

Quotes from others about the person

• " Eisler is a man who never shows his face. Communist leaders never see him, but they follow his orders or suggestions implicitly. " - Louis Budenz

Connections

During the early 1920s, Eisler married Hede Tune; they had no children and separated in 1923.

Then, he married Ella Tune, the sister of his first wife, on November 2, 1931, in Vienna; they had one child. The marriage did not last.

He married Bruenhilde Rothstein during the early 1940s.

Father:

Rudolf Eisler

1873 - 1926

Mother:

Marie Edith Fischer

Wife:

Ella Tune

Wife:

Bruenhilde Rothstein

Wife:

Hede Tune

References

• The Committee: The Extraordinary Career of the House Committee on Un-American Activities
• THE CASE OF RICHARD SORGE Soviet Spy in Japan
• This Deception by Hede Massing (1987-06-12)
• The Red Plot Against America
• Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938-1968
• The Communist Controversy in Washington: From the New Deal to McCarthy