Victor Grossman died in Berlin yesterday at age 97. He was one of a handful of humans who grew up in capitalism in America as Stephen Wechsler, escaped to socialism in the GDR, and then was forced to submit to capitalism in united Germany again.
From Junge Welt:
spoiler
Victor Grossman has died. The journalist, author, and translator passed away on Wednesday in Berlin at the age of 97. This was reported by junge Welt, citing his family. Grossman was born Stephen Wechsler in New York City in 1928. As a teenager, he joined the youth organization of the Communist Party of the USA in 1942 and, while studying at Harvard, also joined the party itself. While serving as a US soldier stationed in Bavaria, he deserted in 1952 after receiving a summons to appear before the military tribunal in Nuremberg. Because he had not disclosed his Communist Party membership, he faced imprisonment. Near Linz, he swam across the Danube to reach the Soviet occupation zone of Austria. From there, he went to the young GDR, where, on the advice of a Soviet officer, he adopted the name Victor Grossman.
Grossman studied journalism in Leipzig between 1954 and 1958, subsequently working in Berlin as an editor and proofreader, where he established the Paul Robeson Archive at the Academy of Arts. From 1968 onward, he worked as a freelance writer, translator, and public speaker. He recognized the decline of the GDR early on and, as he stated in a 2023 jW interview, was "despairing" of it. After 1990, he joined the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism), remained active in publishing, and took an active part in political life well into old age. An obituary will follow.
If you want to read the obituary from the same source:
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When you joined the Army, you had to sign a list. It contained about 25 organizations, and by signing, you confirmed that you weren't a member of any of them, Victor Grossman told us when we spent three hours talking about his life in his apartment on Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin, which he had moved into in 1961, in 2023, just before his 95th birthday. "I was definitely in a dozen," he said, smiling, with the strong American accent he still used to speak the language of the country he had come to in 1952, even after more than seven decades.
Why hadn't he simply disclosed his membership when he was drafted? "Because I was afraid," he said without hesitation. In the US, since 1950, every member of the Communist Party or an affiliated organization had to register individually as a "foreign agent." Failure to do so could result in severe prison sentences. Victor hadn't done it. Much later, he met a comrade who had refused to sign the list back then. After some time, he had been "dishonorably" discharged, but without punishment. The price: He ended up on a blacklist that was kept everywhere he applied for jobs.
Stephen Wechsler, as Victor was then known, had signed the contract and came to Bavaria as a soldier in the US Army. The soldiers who had reported physical injuries during basic training to avoid overseas service were sent to Korea. When Victor recounted this, his horror at such cynicism was still evident.
It only took a few months before Private Wechsler was caught in some kind of check. When he returned from leave and received a summons from the military court in Nuremberg, he immediately decided to defect. So determined, in fact, that he walked into the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) headquarters in Nuremberg in his uniform and asked the astonished comrades there – unsuccessfully, of course – to smuggle him into East Germany. Determination and resolve were Victor's most striking qualities.
When I gave him the edited interview to review, he wasn't satisfied with one aspect: the day he swam across the Danube in Linz had been the most important day of his life—and now it was only mentioned in one sentence. Given the sheer volume of material, this was unavoidable, but the criticism was certainly justified. As he swam across the river, Stephen Wechsler became Victor Grossman. The 24-year-old deserter had been advised to change his name for security reasons by a Soviet officer.
That's how he came to the young GDR. He studied journalism in Leipzig and met "my Renate," to whom he was married until her death in 2009. He worked as an editor and proofreader for the Democratic German Report and the foreign broadcasting service, and he established the Paul Robeson Archive at the Academy of Arts. However, this self-assured and direct man never got along with his superiors. He called his work as a freelance writer since 1968 "life-extending." It was clear that, without ever accepting citizenship or joining the SED (Socialist Unity Party), he had made the GDR more "his" country than many who held office or positions there. When we talked about its decline and demise, he used words like "despair" and "bitterness." "The party was practically gone," he said of the second half of the 1980s.
He joined the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism) and became involved in anti-fascist organizations. Even in his later years, he was a familiar face at events large and small in Berlin. As the Left Party slid deeper into crisis, Victor couldn't rest easy. The leadership, he said, only wanted to conduct politics in parliaments and governments, no longer on the streets. But it was on the streets, in concrete struggles, as the young communist had learned in the 1940s and never forgotten, that a party's true "alive" nature became apparent. The word was important to him in this context: he longed for a "living," militant left-wing party that spoke to people in their everyday lives—not one that merely greeted them from posters every four years just before an election. When we spoke in 2023, he said he didn't even know if he was still listed as a member. The comrade who had always collected the dues had died.
Victor Grossman died in Berlin on Wednesday at the age of 97. Another person has passed away who will be missed. "We did what we could," he told me. With him, it was true.
I only learned of him last year, though the name must have crossed my eyes before. The quote I read went something like, "in the GDR you never had to despair that you needed to find a job. You never had to worry about losing income. You have no idea how good that feeling was. [...] If you didn't like your job, they tried to find something else for you, anything you wanted to do, you could do somehow..."
I think about that a lot. Hate my job, and just signed on for the money and because I have to pay child support. Fuck Germany, personally I think it's more neoliberal than even the UK (by European standard I mean)
So long, Victor...
You radical tankies love to paint pictures of economic doom and gloom - and yeah okay, 20% of oil and gas production might be gone for years, and it will hit the less fortunate the hardest.
But there is a sort of bright side - and I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere so far - which is, global CO2 emissions are almost guaranteed to go down his year (because of shortages) and will also almost certainly stay lower over the next 3-5 years, as many countries will actively search for renewables to replace at least part of their existing fossil fuel infrastructure; again mostly out of necessity. Right?
It's quite possible that this war did more to switch societies around the globe to renewable energies than any other measure (save for China, of course) at a time when it really mattered.
Iran may have just just locked in a double victory for us and our Queen - less Zionazi influence AND less CO2!