Kurt Landau

Kurt Landau (January 29, 1903 – on or shortly after September 23, 1937, Pseudonyms Agricola, Wolf Bertram, Spectator) was an Austrian communist, member of the International Left Opposition, author, and Trotskyist. He was murdered by agents of Stalin's NKVD during the Spanish Civil War.

Life Kurt Landau was born on 29 January 1903 in Vienna, the son of the wine merchant Abraham Simon (1872-1940 murdered in a concentration camp) and Rosa Feldmann (1878–1935). He studied in Vienna and joined the Währing section of the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ) in 1921. He soon became the head of the Agit-Prop department and cultural editor of the party newspaper Rote Fahne. He began a relationship in 1923 with Julia Lipschutz (born 1895 or 1905, died after 1984), who became his wife under the name Katia Landau. He defended Leon Trotsky and his positions against those of the party line of the KPÖ and became one of the central figures in opposition to the slowly forming Stalinism. In 1927, he and like-minded colleagues were expelled from the party. Katia Landau went on to marry the Spanish naval officer Benjamin Balboa (1901-1976), who in 1936 played a key role in ensuring that much of the Spanish navy did not join in the Spanish coup of 1936. Both would go into exile in Mexico in 1940. Until 1984, Katia Landau would campaign in the memory of Kurt Landau.

Kurt Landau's brother Alfred Landau was a socialist student leader in Vienna and later a high official of the United Nations.

Works

Wesen und Geschichte des Anarcho-Kommunismus in Österreich. Abschließende Bemerkungen zu den Fraktionskämpfen in der Kommunistischen Partei Österreichs (The nature and history of anarcho-communism in Austria. Final remarks on the faction fights in the Communist Party of Austria). Vienna 1927.