Otto Braun (Li De) - Communist Activity in The 1920s and Early 1930s

Communist Activity in The 1920s and Early 1930s

It seems that it was in 1921 that Braun became a full-time paid KPD party worker.

He was involved in an affair concerning the theft of some sensitive documents from Colonel Freyberg, a White Russian emigre based in Berlin. For his part in this he was detained by the police in July 1921. He was put on trial but managed to hide his Communist connections and convince the court that he was a "right-winger." Due to the bias often exhibited by the judicial system of the Weimar Republic, this masquerade helped him get off with a light sentence. In fact, he did not go to jail, but went into hiding.

By that time, he was already a central member of the KPD apparatus, not only regularly writing articles for the party papers but, after 1924, heading the party's "counter-espionage" efforts. He was also deeply involved in its militia and para-military activities.

The police caught up with him again in September 1926. He first served his "Freyberg sentence" of 1922, then kept in detention at the Moabit Prison. However, on April 11, 1928, a band of Communists including his then-lover Olga Benário succeeded in staging his jail break.

The daring escape got worldwide publicity. Braun and Benário then made their way to Moscow, where they became involved in the International Communist movement. Both of them were at the Lenin School operated by the Comintern. Braun went to the Frunze Military Academy while Benário worked as an instructor of the Communist Youth International, first in the Soviet Union, then in France and Great Britain, where she participated in coordinating anti-fascist activities.

Braun and Benário parted ways in 1931. She went on to marry the famous Brazilian revolutionary leader Luís Carlos Prestes and went to live in his country. She was finally arrested by the Getúlio Vargas dictatorship and extradited to Germany, where she was eventually gassed to death at the Bernburg Euthanasia Centre. She is remembered as a martyr by the Brazilian and German Left. For his part, Otto Braun embarked on the most significant – and in some ways, the most controversial – part of his revolutionary career, as the Comintern representative in China.