Cette thèse de doctorat est une biographie politique de Paul Levi, militant marxiste qui a fait carrière en Allemagne durant la période de l’entre-deux-guerres. Dès 1914, Levi incarne un courant radical à l’intérieur du Parti social-démocrate d’Allemagne (SPD). Il dénonce, entre autres, aux côtés de Rosa Luxemburg l’appui du parti à l’effort militaire national. Levi s’inspire également de Lénine qu’il rencontre pour la première fois en Suisse en 1916-1917. Lorsqu’il prend les commandes du Parti communiste d’Allemagne (KPD) en 1919, Levi dirige celui-ci d’une main de fer, selon le concept du « centralisme démocratique ». Il fait également tout en son pouvoir pour faire éclater la révolution ouvrière en Allemagne afin d’installer une dictature du prolétariat qui exclurait toutes les classes non ouvrières du pouvoir. En ce sens, Levi imagine un État socialiste semblable à celui fondé par Lénine en Russie en 1917. Contrairement à l’historiographie traditionnelle, notre thèse montre conséquemment que Levi n’était guère un « socialiste démocrate ». Il était plutôt un militant marxiste qui, par son radicalisme, a contribué à diviser le mouvement ouvrier allemand ce qui, en revanche, a fragilisé la république de Weimar. Cette thèse fait également ressortir le caractère résolument rebelle de Paul Levi. Partout où il passe, Levi dénonce les politiques bourgeoises des partis non-ouvriers, mais aussi celles de la majorité des organisations dont il fait partie, c’est-à-dire les partis ouvriers de la république de Weimar et le Reichstag. Son tempérament impulsif fait de lui un homme politique isolé qui, d’ailleurs, se fait de nombreux ennemis. En 1921, à titre d’exemple, il se brouille avec d’importants bolcheviques, ce qui met fin à sa carrière au sein du KPD. Les communistes voient désormais en lui un ennemi de la classe ouvrière et mènent contre lui de nombreuses campagnes diffamatoires. Levi, de son côté, dénonce ouvertement la terreur stalinienne qui, selon lui, est en train de contaminer le mouvement communiste européen. Notre travail montre également que Levi, cette fois en tant qu’avocat juif, lutte corps et âme contre les nazis. En 1926, dans le cadre d’une commission d’enquête publique du Reichstag chargée de faire la lumière sur des meurtres politiques commis en Bavière, il tente par tous les moyens d’inculper certains criminels nazis. Levi est conséquemment la cible de la presse antisémite allemande. Il refuse toutefois de céder à l’intimidation et choisit plutôt de poursuivre en justice quelques-uns des plus importants membres du Parti nazi, dont Alfred Rosenberg et Hitler lui-même, en plus de forcer de nombreux autres nazis à comparaître devant la commission d’enquête du Reichstag. Bref, si ce travail se veut critique envers la pensée révolutionnaire de Levi, il souligne aussi l’intégrité politique de cet homme dont les convictions sont demeurées inébranlables face aux dérives criminelles des extrêmes idéologiques de son époque. / This Ph.D. thesis is a political biography of Paul Levi, a German Marxist of the interwar period. Already in 1914, Levi embodied a radical faction within the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Alongside Rosa Luxemburg, the leader of this same left wing, he is contesting, above all, the party’s participation in the national war effort. But Levi is also inspired by Lenin, who he met in Switzerland in 1916-1917. In fact, when taking over the leadership of the German Communist Party (KPD) in March 1919, Levi ruled with an iron fist according to the theory of “democratic centralism”. As Lenin has done in Russia in October 1917, Levi also did everything in his power to promote a workers’ revolution in Germany in order to set in power a dictatorship of the proletariat, which would exclude all other social classes from sitting in the government. Consequently, in opposition to traditional historiography, this thesis shows that Levi was not a “democratic Socialist” of the Luxemburg school, but rather a Marxist whose political thought resembled that of the Bolsheviks. In fact, his action contributed to further weaken an already frail Weimar Republic and all its democratic institutions. This study also shows that Levi’s outstanding career was in large part the result of his rebellious character. Throughout his life, Levi consistently denounced the bourgeois politics of the non-workers’ parties, but he also systematically went against the majority within the political organizations in which he took part: the workers’ parties and the Reichstag. His impulsive nature set him apart as a solitary politician. In fact, Levi had many enemies. In 1921, he ran afoul of major Bolshevik leaders, which caused him to lose the leadership of the KPD. The Communists subsequently saw him as an enemy of the working class, slandering him in the press and in the Reichstag. Levi denounced, for his part, the Stalinist terror and made a mockery of the KPD, which had become, according to him, no more than a Soviet puppet. But this thesis also reveals that Levi, as a Jewish lawyer, led a major political campaign against the Nazis. In 1926, for example, as he served on a Reichstag public commission investigating Bavarian political assassinations, he tried by all possible means to charge important Nazis with murder. The Nazi press replied with a vicious anti-Semitic press campaign against him. Levi, however, refused to kneel before such intimidation and rather chose to sue important Nazi leaders, such as Alfred Rosenberg and Hitler himself before the court, in addition to summoning many others before the above-mentioned Reichstag commission. In the end, despite the fact that this study very critically evaluates Levi’s ideology, it praises his political integrity, which remained unshakable though faced with adversity and the criminal drift of the political extremes of the interwar period.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

O objetivo desta tese é o estudo da vida dos judeus na Alemanha, a partir de msua saída do gueto ao final do século XVIII. Tive a preocupação em contextualizar a história do antijuda-ísmo, desde a chegada dos romanos na antiga Germânia no século II, ressaltando os momentos mais críticos, como a Primeira Cruzada em 1096 e o enforcamento do judeu Süß em 1738, por razões de animosidades políticas. O estudo rastreia o antissemitismo a partir dos acontecimen-tos da primeira metade do século XIX, permitindo compreender a eclosão dos horrores da Shoá, como o auge de um processo que se desenvolveu durante um longo período. Foram observadas tentativas de integração à sociedade alemã, envolvendo progressos curtos, entremeados por re-cuos, pontuados por movimentos dos próprios judeus, evidenciando o paradoxo entre a liber-dade adquirida pela saída do gueto, com a entrada na vida urbana, e os crescentes sentimentos antijudaicos, agora no seio da sociedade alemã, ocasionando o agravamento desses sentimentos, com os quais os judeus tiveram de conviver. O trabalho demonstra como essa integração se tornou estímulo para o recrudescimento de tendências antijudaicas latentes. O antissemitismo foi tomando, progressivamente, forma mais política e serviu de sustentação ao crescimento do na-cional-socialismo, que o tomou como bandeira, para dar sentido ao ódio gerado pelas tensões vigentes na nação germânica. A insatisfação decorrente da humilhação acarretada pela derrota da Primeira Guerra Mundial e pelo Tratado de Versalhes fez com que o movimento crescente em direção à Segunda Guerra Mundial ficasse aí determinado. A imagem dos judeus ficou as-sociada ao que passou a ser visto pelos setores reacionários e nacionalistas, como intimamente ligados à República de Weimar, levando os arianos a declarar guerra a tudo o que fosse oci-dental, judaico, liberal e iluminista. A maldição estava posta. Houve tentativas de reação judai-cas, objeto central deste estudo, a partir da fundação do Central Verein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens em 1893, que existiu até 1938, e é a reafirmação da identidade alemã dos judeus. A insistência dos judeus em constituir-se como parte integrante da sociedade alemã pôde ser verificada a posteriori. Foi uma tentativa derradeira, condenada ao fracasso, porém corajosa. A abertura dos arquivos de Moscou permitiu conhecer este processo e alimentou de informações preciosas o estudo aqui apresentado. / The purpose of this study was to investigate the life of the German Jews after leaving the ghetto at the end of the 18th Century. There was a concern to put the History of Anti-Judaism in con-text, ever since the Romans entered Ancient Germania, emphasizing critical moments such as the 1st Crusade and the hanging of the Jew Süss in 1738 because of political animosities. The study tracked Anti-Semitism from the events of the first half of the 19th century, allowing an understanding of the outburst of the horrors of the Holocaust as the peak of a long progressing process. Attempts of the Jews to become integrated in the German society were observed, with momentary progresses interspersed with retreats, punctuated by movements of the Jews them-selves in this integration process. There is a paradox between the freedom conquered by exiting the ghetto and entering the urban life and the growing anti-Jewish feelings within the German society with which they had to live. It is shown in this work how this integration became a stimulus for anti-Jewish revivals. Anti-Semitism became more and more political, supporting the growth of National Socialism that adopted it as a flag, in order to give a meaning to the hatred arising from the tensions present in the German population. Then the dissatisfaction re-sulting from the humiliation caused by the defeat in World War I and the Treaty of Versailles determined the increasing movement towards World War II. Reactionary and nationalist sectors associated the image of the Jews with the Weimar Republic and so the Arians declared war against everything considered Western, Jewish, liberal and enlightening. The curse was on. Jewish attempts to react, also featuring a confirmation of their German identity and their insist-ence in belonging to the German society, were the core of this study. In retrospect, the founda-tion of the CV can be considered a last and brave attempt, yet destined to fail. The opening of the Moscow archives allowed getting to know this process, providing valuable information for the present study.

No description available.

Cette thèse de doctorat est une biographie politique de Paul Levi, militant marxiste qui a fait carrière en Allemagne durant la période de l’entre-deux-guerres. Dès 1914, Levi incarne un courant radical à l’intérieur du Parti social-démocrate d’Allemagne (SPD). Il dénonce, entre autres, aux côtés de Rosa Luxemburg l’appui du parti à l’effort militaire national. Levi s’inspire également de Lénine qu’il rencontre pour la première fois en Suisse en 1916-1917. Lorsqu’il prend les commandes du Parti communiste d’Allemagne (KPD) en 1919, Levi dirige celui-ci d’une main de fer, selon le concept du « centralisme démocratique ». Il fait également tout en son pouvoir pour faire éclater la révolution ouvrière en Allemagne afin d’installer une dictature du prolétariat qui exclurait toutes les classes non ouvrières du pouvoir. En ce sens, Levi imagine un État socialiste semblable à celui fondé par Lénine en Russie en 1917. Contrairement à l’historiographie traditionnelle, notre thèse montre conséquemment que Levi n’était guère un « socialiste démocrate ». Il était plutôt un militant marxiste qui, par son radicalisme, a contribué à diviser le mouvement ouvrier allemand ce qui, en revanche, a fragilisé la république de Weimar. Cette thèse fait également ressortir le caractère résolument rebelle de Paul Levi. Partout où il passe, Levi dénonce les politiques bourgeoises des partis non-ouvriers, mais aussi celles de la majorité des organisations dont il fait partie, c’est-à-dire les partis ouvriers de la république de Weimar et le Reichstag. Son tempérament impulsif fait de lui un homme politique isolé qui, d’ailleurs, se fait de nombreux ennemis. En 1921, à titre d’exemple, il se brouille avec d’importants bolcheviques, ce qui met fin à sa carrière au sein du KPD. Les communistes voient désormais en lui un ennemi de la classe ouvrière et mènent contre lui de nombreuses campagnes diffamatoires. Levi, de son côté, dénonce ouvertement la terreur stalinienne qui, selon lui, est en train de contaminer le mouvement communiste européen. Notre travail montre également que Levi, cette fois en tant qu’avocat juif, lutte corps et âme contre les nazis. En 1926, dans le cadre d’une commission d’enquête publique du Reichstag chargée de faire la lumière sur des meurtres politiques commis en Bavière, il tente par tous les moyens d’inculper certains criminels nazis. Levi est conséquemment la cible de la presse antisémite allemande. Il refuse toutefois de céder à l’intimidation et choisit plutôt de poursuivre en justice quelques-uns des plus importants membres du Parti nazi, dont Alfred Rosenberg et Hitler lui-même, en plus de forcer de nombreux autres nazis à comparaître devant la commission d’enquête du Reichstag. Bref, si ce travail se veut critique envers la pensée révolutionnaire de Levi, il souligne aussi l’intégrité politique de cet homme dont les convictions sont demeurées inébranlables face aux dérives criminelles des extrêmes idéologiques de son époque. / This Ph.D. thesis is a political biography of Paul Levi, a German Marxist of the interwar period. Already in 1914, Levi embodied a radical faction within the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Alongside Rosa Luxemburg, the leader of this same left wing, he is contesting, above all, the party’s participation in the national war effort. But Levi is also inspired by Lenin, who he met in Switzerland in 1916-1917. In fact, when taking over the leadership of the German Communist Party (KPD) in March 1919, Levi ruled with an iron fist according to the theory of “democratic centralism”. As Lenin has done in Russia in October 1917, Levi also did everything in his power to promote a workers’ revolution in Germany in order to set in power a dictatorship of the proletariat, which would exclude all other social classes from sitting in the government. Consequently, in opposition to traditional historiography, this thesis shows that Levi was not a “democratic Socialist” of the Luxemburg school, but rather a Marxist whose political thought resembled that of the Bolsheviks. In fact, his action contributed to further weaken an already frail Weimar Republic and all its democratic institutions. This study also shows that Levi’s outstanding career was in large part the result of his rebellious character. Throughout his life, Levi consistently denounced the bourgeois politics of the non-workers’ parties, but he also systematically went against the majority within the political organizations in which he took part: the workers’ parties and the Reichstag. His impulsive nature set him apart as a solitary politician. In fact, Levi had many enemies. In 1921, he ran afoul of major Bolshevik leaders, which caused him to lose the leadership of the KPD. The Communists subsequently saw him as an enemy of the working class, slandering him in the press and in the Reichstag. Levi denounced, for his part, the Stalinist terror and made a mockery of the KPD, which had become, according to him, no more than a Soviet puppet. But this thesis also reveals that Levi, as a Jewish lawyer, led a major political campaign against the Nazis. In 1926, for example, as he served on a Reichstag public commission investigating Bavarian political assassinations, he tried by all possible means to charge important Nazis with murder. The Nazi press replied with a vicious anti-Semitic press campaign against him. Levi, however, refused to kneel before such intimidation and rather chose to sue important Nazi leaders, such as Alfred Rosenberg and Hitler himself before the court, in addition to summoning many others before the above-mentioned Reichstag commission. In the end, despite the fact that this study very critically evaluates Levi’s ideology, it praises his political integrity, which remained unshakable though faced with adversity and the criminal drift of the political extremes of the interwar period.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Diss.--Freie Universität Berlin. / Bibliography: p. [439]-462.

O objetivo desta tese é o estudo da vida dos judeus na Alemanha, a partir de msua saída do gueto ao final do século XVIII. Tive a preocupação em contextualizar a história do antijuda-ísmo, desde a chegada dos romanos na antiga Germânia no século II, ressaltando os momentos mais críticos, como a Primeira Cruzada em 1096 e o enforcamento do judeu Süß em 1738, por razões de animosidades políticas. O estudo rastreia o antissemitismo a partir dos acontecimen-tos da primeira metade do século XIX, permitindo compreender a eclosão dos horrores da Shoá, como o auge de um processo que se desenvolveu durante um longo período. Foram observadas tentativas de integração à sociedade alemã, envolvendo progressos curtos, entremeados por re-cuos, pontuados por movimentos dos próprios judeus, evidenciando o paradoxo entre a liber-dade adquirida pela saída do gueto, com a entrada na vida urbana, e os crescentes sentimentos antijudaicos, agora no seio da sociedade alemã, ocasionando o agravamento desses sentimentos, com os quais os judeus tiveram de conviver. O trabalho demonstra como essa integração se tornou estímulo para o recrudescimento de tendências antijudaicas latentes. O antissemitismo foi tomando, progressivamente, forma mais política e serviu de sustentação ao crescimento do na-cional-socialismo, que o tomou como bandeira, para dar sentido ao ódio gerado pelas tensões vigentes na nação germânica. A insatisfação decorrente da humilhação acarretada pela derrota da Primeira Guerra Mundial e pelo Tratado de Versalhes fez com que o movimento crescente em direção à Segunda Guerra Mundial ficasse aí determinado. A imagem dos judeus ficou as-sociada ao que passou a ser visto pelos setores reacionários e nacionalistas, como intimamente ligados à República de Weimar, levando os arianos a declarar guerra a tudo o que fosse oci-dental, judaico, liberal e iluminista. A maldição estava posta. Houve tentativas de reação judai-cas, objeto central deste estudo, a partir da fundação do Central Verein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens em 1893, que existiu até 1938, e é a reafirmação da identidade alemã dos judeus. A insistência dos judeus em constituir-se como parte integrante da sociedade alemã pôde ser verificada a posteriori. Foi uma tentativa derradeira, condenada ao fracasso, porém corajosa. A abertura dos arquivos de Moscou permitiu conhecer este processo e alimentou de informações preciosas o estudo aqui apresentado. / The purpose of this study was to investigate the life of the German Jews after leaving the ghetto at the end of the 18th Century. There was a concern to put the History of Anti-Judaism in con-text, ever since the Romans entered Ancient Germania, emphasizing critical moments such as the 1st Crusade and the hanging of the Jew Süss in 1738 because of political animosities. The study tracked Anti-Semitism from the events of the first half of the 19th century, allowing an understanding of the outburst of the horrors of the Holocaust as the peak of a long progressing process. Attempts of the Jews to become integrated in the German society were observed, with momentary progresses interspersed with retreats, punctuated by movements of the Jews them-selves in this integration process. There is a paradox between the freedom conquered by exiting the ghetto and entering the urban life and the growing anti-Jewish feelings within the German society with which they had to live. It is shown in this work how this integration became a stimulus for anti-Jewish revivals. Anti-Semitism became more and more political, supporting the growth of National Socialism that adopted it as a flag, in order to give a meaning to the hatred arising from the tensions present in the German population. Then the dissatisfaction re-sulting from the humiliation caused by the defeat in World War I and the Treaty of Versailles determined the increasing movement towards World War II. Reactionary and nationalist sectors associated the image of the Jews with the Weimar Republic and so the Arians declared war against everything considered Western, Jewish, liberal and enlightening. The curse was on. Jewish attempts to react, also featuring a confirmation of their German identity and their insist-ence in belonging to the German society, were the core of this study. In retrospect, the founda-tion of the CV can be considered a last and brave attempt, yet destined to fail. The opening of the Moscow archives allowed getting to know this process, providing valuable information for the present study.

No description available.

No description available.