Education
He studied English literature, partly at the University of Reading.
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Walther Haenisch
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Career
Haenisch did his Abitur at the famous Karl-Marx-Schule in Neukölln. He also published an article on Marx and the Democratic Association of 1847 in one of the first editions of "Science and Society", the leading Marxist publication in the United States of America. Haenisch"s connections to Western countries and culture as well as the earlier accusations which lead to his dismissal from Marx-Engels-Institute raised the suspicion of the NKWD, which arrested him in March, 1938. In June, 1938, Haenisch was sentenced to death for "espionage" ( like thousands of German communists ) and subsequently shot at Butovo firing range and interred in a mass grave there.
Haenisch was married to Gabriele Bräuning, who was deported to Uzbekistan in 1941 and returned to the German Democratic Republic in 1954.
Gabriele Stammberger, Michael Peschke: Gut angekommen – Moskau. Das Exil der Gabriele Stammberger 1932-1954.
Basisdruck Verlag, Berlin 1999, (memoirs of Haenischs widow, especially pp 101–110 containing a self-written CV of Haenisch)
Robert Kaufman: Intervention & Commitment Forever! Shelley in 1819, Shelley in Brecht, Shelley in Adorno, Shelley in Benjamin: In: Reading Shelley"s Interventionist Poetry 1819-1820: (Michael Scrivener, ed): "Romantic Circles", University of Maryland, United States of America (mentions Haenisch"s Shelley essay in Paragraphs 6 to 12) online
Andrew Benjamin: Walter Benjamin and Art: Bloomsbury Academic, 2005, ( on Haenisch"s Shelley essay, South 134-135 ).
Politics
In 1935 Walter Haenisch was laid off (there were accusations of "social democratic leanings" against him) and subsequently wrote several articles in "Internationale Literatur", for example on William Cobbett, and a famous article on the impact of Percy Shelley on Marxism, which was published in Das Wort (edited by Lion Feuchtwanger and Bert Brecht).
Membership
He became a member of the communist party KPD in 1931 and moved to Moscow, where he initially participated in Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe, the ambitious project of a complete edition of the works of Marx and Engels.
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Born
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Died
1938 (aged 32) -
Nationality
Soviet Union -
Political Party
Communist Party of Germany