Comrade Klemperer: Communism, Liberalism and Jewishness in the DDR. The Later Diaries 1945–59

Abstract

This article seeks to analyse the ‘later’ Victor Klemperer through his newly published diaries for the period, 1945–59. It attempts to unravel the complex reasons for his turn to communism — after many years of vehement opposition to that movement — and his life and fate as a citizen of the German Democratic Republic. It also maps Klemperer's fraught and changing attitudes towards that regime. At the same time, the article traces the tensions between Klemperer's newly-formed political loyalties and his ongoing liberalism as well as his continuing problematic relations with his own Jewishness and the issue of Zionism.