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Gerhart Eisler FOIA Files

Call Number

TAM.219

Dates

1941-1968, inclusive
; 1947-1951, bulk

Creator

Schrecker, Ellen
United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation
Schrecker, Ellen (Role: Donor)

Extent

8.5 Linear Feet in 9 record cartons

Language of Materials

Materials are in English

Abstract

Gerhart Eisler (1897-1968) was a journalist and prominent communist activist in Austria, Germany, the United States, and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). A political refugee from Europe, he arrived in the United States in 1941. In 1947 he was publicly accused of being an agent of the Soviet Union, and was charged and stood trial on separate charges of contempt of Congress (because he refused to be sworn in at a hearing before the U.S. Congress' House Un-American Activities Committee) and of perjury for misrepresenting his Communist Party affiliation on his immigration application. He was sentenced to one and three years in prison, but was released on bond. In May 1947 he jumped bail and fled the country, making his way to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), where he remained for the rest of his life. The materials in this collection are photocopies of original documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests made to the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation for records pertaining to Eisler. They document the intense scrutiny and surveillance of Gerhard Eisler, his wife, and associates, by the United States government from the 1940s through the 1960s.

Historical/Biographical Note

Gerhart Eisler (1897-1968) was a journalist and prominent communist activist in Austria, Germany, the United States, and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). Born in Leipzig, Gerhard Eisler grew up in Vienna. He served in the First World War and returned from the Front radicalized. In 1918, with his sister, Ruth Fischer, and his brother, the leftist composer Hans Eisler, he was among the founders of the Austrian Communist Party. In 1920 or 1921 he moved to Germany and joined the German Communist Party (KPD). From 1929 to 1931 he was a liaison between the Communist International (Comintern) and the Communist Parties in China, and then from 1933 to 1935 its liason to the United States. The Comintern then sent Eisler to Spain during the Spanish Civil War to head a radio station broadcasting antifascist programming and publish a newspaper for volunteers serving in the International Brigades. From Spain he went to Paris and wrote articles for KPD publications to be distributed clandestinely in Nazi Germany. In 1939 he was interned by French authorities. After more than a year of imprisonment an offer of asylum to Spanish Civil War veterans by the Mexican government allowed him to be released and depart France. In 1941, Eisler and his companion, Brunhilde Rothstein (who later became his third wife), were on their way to Mexico when the ship on which they were traveling was torpedoed and British authorities interned them in Trinidad for some weeks. They were then allowed to continue to New York, but upon arrival were detained. Although granted transit privileges, they were not actually allowed to resume their trip, but were forced to stay on Ellis Island, as in the face of the advancing World War, the United States government had issued an order forbidding Germans or Austrians transit or exit visas to Latin American countries. After a determined campaign of several months by their friends, they were granted permission to enter the United States.

In the U.S. the Eislers lived in New York City and Gerhart Eisler worked as a journalist and helped found the anti-Nazi newspaper,The German-American. In 1946, as Eisler prepared to return to Germany, he was publicly accused of being an agent of the Soviet Union and his permission to leave the United States was rescinded. He and his wife and friends were subjected to intense surveillance by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and other federal agencies, and in February 1947 he was arrested for misrepresenting his Communist Party affiliation on his immigration application. Several days later he was summoned to testify at a hearing of the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). There he refused to be sworn in without first reading a statement and was charged with contempt of Congress. One of the witnesses at the hearing testifying against him was his sister, Ruth Fischer (the two had been estranged since 1933), who had become fiercely anti-Communist. Eisler was tried in two separate trials for both charges, and lost both. He was sentenced to one to three years in prison, but released on bond, while his cases were on appeal (the Supreme Court had agreed to consider his contempt charge). Shortly thereafter he was arrested by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in connection with deportation proceedings and held on Ellis Island for three months and was only released when he went on a hunger strike, putting him in the position of having the U.S. government attempting both to deport and detain him simultaneously. Eisler's case became a celebrated one, for both the American right (an American Cold War film, I Was a Communist for the FBI, featured an actor portraying Eisler as a leading character, a villainous foreigner secretly heading the American Communist Party) as well as the left.

In May 1949, Eisler escaped by stowing away on a Polish liner bound for London. Once in England, although initially detained by the authorities, the British government allowed him to leave a month later. Eisler flew to the German Democratic Republic, where he joined his brother, Hans (who had been deported from the U.S. a year earlier also after refusing to cooperate with HUAC). Eisler remained in East Germany the rest of his life, continuing to work in radio and as a journalist.

Arrangement

Files are arranged in one series. Materials obtained from the Federal Bureau of Investigation are arranged using its own filing system, that is, in FBI file number-subfile-section number order. Folders containing materials from other U.S. federal agencies are filed after the FBI folders in roughly alphabetical order by (archivist-assigned) folder titles.

Scope and Contents

The materials in this collection are photocopies of original documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests made to the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for records pertaining to Gerhard Eisler. They document the intense scrutiny and surveillance of Gerhard Eisler, his wife, and associates, by the United States government, not only during the late 1940s when Eisler was charged with and tried for perjury and contempt of Congress, but earlier, beginning when he arrived in the United States in 1941, and after his flight from the U.S. as well, nearly up to his death in 1968 in East Germany. They also document the cooperation between the FBI and additional U.S. federal departments in shadowing Eisler, including the U.S. postal service, Internal Revenue Service, and local U.S. police departments as well as police departments in Europe (including copies of documents from Germany during the 1930s).

Documents include detailed narrative reports, surveillance photographs, summaries of interviews with confidential informants (including Eisler's sister, Ruth Fischer, before she publicly accused him of being a Communist agent), and FBI agents' daily surveillance reports. The documents also reveal that that FBI the devoted considerable additional resources to investigating Eisler, including having translations of entire newspapers from German and wiretaps from Czechoslovakian, and intercepted letters tested for secret ink and examined by cryptologists in the FBI's crime laboratories.

Conditions Governing Access

Materials are open without restrictions.

Conditions Governing Use

Materials in this collection, which were created in 1941-1968, are in the public domain. Permission to publish or reproduce is not required.

Preferred Citation

Identification of item, date; Gerhard Eisler FBI Files; TAM 219; box number; folder number; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.

Location of Materials

Materials are stored offsite and advance notice is required for use. Please contact tamiment.wagner@library at least two business days prior to research visit.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Materials were donated by Ellen Schrecker in 2007. The accession number associated with this gift is 2008.006.

Custodial History

Ellen Schrecker sent a gift of documents obtained as a result of a number of separate requests she made to the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other U.S. federal agencies, using the mechanism of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), for records pertaining to Gerhard Eisler in 2007.

Separated Materials

Duplicates of the following congressional documents were removed from the collection, as all are available in hard copy at the Tamiment Library and also may be found online, via commercial vendors (Proquest Congressional which New York University students and on-site Tamiment researchers may use) and freely via the Internet Archive :

Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the U.S., February. 6, 1947, Transcript of Proceedings (Committee on Un-American Activities. House of Representatives)

HTTP://congressional.proquest.com/congressional/docview/t29.d30.hrg-1947-uah-0001?accountid=12768

Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the U.S. (Regarding Leon Josephson and Samuel Liptzen) - March 5 and 21, 1947 -Hearings before the Committee on Committee on Un-American Activities. House of Representatives

HTTP://congressional.proquest.com/congressional/docview/t29.d30.hrg-1947-uah-0008?accountid=12768 Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the U.S., March 24, 1947.

Hearings before the Committee on Committee on Un-American Activities. House of Representatives on Bills to Curb or Outlaw the Communist Party of the United States. Part 1: Testimony of Hon. William C. Bullitt

HTTP://congressional.proquest.com/congressional/docview/t29.d30.hrg-1947-uah-0004?accountid=12768

Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the U.S. - March 24-28, 1947. Hearings before the Committee on Committee on Un-American Activities. House of Representatives, on Bills to Curb or Outlaw the Communist Party of the United States.

HTTP://congressional.proquest.com/congressional/docview/t29.d30.hrg-1947-uah-0003?accountid=12768

Hearings Regarding Communism in Labor Unions in the U.S., February 27; July 23, 24, and 25, 1947, before the Committee on Committee on Un-American Activities. House of Representatives.

HTTP://congressional.proquest.com/congressional/docview/t29.d30.hrg-1947-uah-0012?accountid=12768

Related Archival Materials

Gerhart Eisler Scrapbook (TAM 438)

Collection processed by

Peter Filardo

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-08-20 16:57:39 -0400.
Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language: Description is written in: English, Latin script.

Processing Information

Materials were removed from pressboard file backers with metal fasteners and placed in acid-free folders and boxes.

Repository

Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
2nd Floor
New York, NY 10012