Attempted Exclusion of Egon Kisch From Australia - Legacy

Legacy

In response to their humiliation, the Lyons Government introduced a new law, whereby a person charged as a prohibited immigrant became ineligible for bail.

The dictation test was used again in 1936, controversially and for reasons that were never made clear, to exclude Mabel Freer, a white British woman born in India, who was confronted with a test in Italian. Interior Minister Thomas Paterson resigned from the Lyons Cabinet following the controversy. The test was not abolished until 1958.

RMS Strathaird was requisitioned for war service on the outbreak of the Second World War, endured the war and returned to civilian service.

The White Australia Policy was dismantled in a series of reforms begun by Gough Whitlam's Australian Labor Party government in 1973, and completed by Malcolm Fraser's Liberal government's review of immigration law in 1978.

Kisch detailed his antipodean adventures in his 1937 book Australian Landfall. He returned to Czechoslovakia in 1946. Following his death in 1948 he was acknowledged as a hero of the German Democratic Republic.

In 1977 Stern magazine founded the Egon Erwin Kisch Prize for German journalism.

The Kisch Welcome Committee developed into a literary appreciation society known as the Writers League.

Maurice Blackburn was expelled from the Australian Labor Party over his membership of the Movement Against War and Fascism and its links to the Communist Party. As a consequence he was defeated in his electorate of Bourke. However his Wife Doris Blackburn successfully contested Bourke and served as an independent after her husband's death.

The Comintern policy of creating a united front against fascism in Australia was successfully resisted by Australia's mainstream political parties. The Australian Labor Party opposed links and cooperation with the Communist Party which remained isolated and marginalized.

Melbourne communist writer Frank Hardy detailed Kisch's Australian visit in his fictionalized version of John Wren's life, Power Without Glory. In 1976 this story was adapted for television by the Australian Broadcasting Company in which Egon Kisch was played by Kurt Ludescher.

Robert Menzies visited Germany in August 1938, as Attorney-General of Australia in the pro-Appeasement Lyons government. Menzies spent several weeks in Nazi Germany and was extremely impressed with the achievements of the "New Germany", and on his return gave public talks expressing warm approval of the Hitlerite dictatorship, as he said, "based on my personal experience". Menzies later attempted to distance himself from the Kisch affair, claiming the debacle had been initiated by Thomas Paterson and that his own involvement had just been a mistake. In 1951 Christian Jollie Smith worked with H. V. Evatt to prevent an attempt by Menzies (now Prime Minister) to ban the Communist Party in Australia.

Willy Münzenberg was murdered near Saint-Marcellin by the NKVD in June 1940, during the Battle of France when Joseph Stalin had a non-aggression pact with Adolf Hitler.