Career
In 1923 Barthel moved from the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) to the Social Democratic Party of Germany. In 1922 he had worked Communist ideas into the poem "Arbeiterseele" (The Worker"s Soul), but in 1934 his novel Das unsterbliche Volk (The Immortal Volk) described "the transformation of a German worker from a Communist to a follower of the Führer". In a tone of resignation, Barthel titled his postwar autobiography Kein Bedarf an Weltgeschichte (Number Need for World History.