Jerzy Sobotta

ON JULY 13, 2015, Jerzy Sobotta spoke with Stefan Bollinger, member of the Historical Commission of Die LINKE (the Left Party) and former political scientist and historian at Humboldt University, Berlin. Their discussion concerned the end of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the transformation of its formerly governing party, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, or SED) into a new political entity, Die LINKE. An edited transcript of their conversation follows. [Read More]

THE FOLLOWING TRANSCRIPT is from an event that took place on April 2, 2012 at the University of Chicago, in conjunction with the 2012 Platypus International Convention, titled “Responses to the Global Economic Downturn.” Members and contacts of the Platypus Affiliated Society in Europe were invited to speak on their experience of leftist responses to the economic downturn. The speakers included Haseeb Ahmed (Netherlands), Valentin Badura (Austria), Cengiz Kulac (Austria), Moritz Roeger (Germany), Jerzy Sobotta (Germany), and Thodoris Velissaris (Greece). [Read More]

ULI VOM HAGEN’S RESPONSE1 to my article on the current state of the German Left2 engages in a remarkable apology for its nationalism, which results from its near complete failure to digest the dangerous policies of the German KPD of the 1920s and 30s. With his focus on the events of 1923 and his excitement for “National Bolshevism,” vom Hagen presents a highly symptomatic position informed by a gross conflation of nationalism and romantic-regressive anti-capitalism, which experienced its peak with the rise of European fascism and National Socialism in Germany. [Read More]

IN MAY OF 2009 SCIENTISTS IN BERLIN claimed to have unearthed the corpse of the martyred revolutionary leader Rosa Luxemburg. Stored in the cellar of a hospital, the corpse had neither a head, nor feet, nor hands. The stump of a corpse of Rosa Luxemburg lay rotting in a basement, subjected to the un-tender mercies of modern forensic science. Less than fourteen years after the death of one of its greatest leaders, the German Left died. [Read More]