Max Hölz was a heroic working class figure who led the armed resistance to the 1920 Kapp Putsch and 1921’s ‘March Action,’ for which he was sentenced to life in prison, his case being the focus of an international solidarity campaign making him well-known internationally. On his release he went to Moscow where he had, publicly, a hero’s status. Critical of Party policy, he and another German Communist military hero, Erich Wollenberg, were accused of a ‘counter-revolutionary’ plot by the NKVD. Max Hölz died in a disputed drowning in Russia on September 15, 1933. Felix Halle was a leading Marxist jurist, counsel for the KPD and lawyer for Hölz who emigrated to the Soviet Union after 1933 where he, like so many exiled German Communists, fell victim to a 1937 purge, and was executed on November 5, 1937.

‘The Case of Max Hölz’ by Felix Halle from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 6 No. 76. November 18, 1926.

Max Hölz did not spring from the proletariat of the big towns but of the country. After leaving school he first worked as a farm hand. The intelligent youth, however, made the acquaintance of an engineer, who took him to England with him and thus he gained a wider horizon. Strictly educated as a Catholic, Hölz, right throughout his youth had petty bourgeois ideals. He was desirous of obtaining a better position in life for himself in order to be able to recompense his parents in their old age for the trouble and sacrifice they had had to undergo to rear and educate their children.

It was not until the world war that Max Hölz began to concern himself with social problems. He was first drawn into the economic and political struggles of the working class in the post-war period. In the year 1919 one third of the population of the little town of Falkenstein, in Vogtland, was unemployed. Max Hölz was elected to the Unemployed Council. As he very energetically championed the interests of the unemployed he soon came into conflict with the laws of the bourgeois State. Persecuted for having caused disturbances, he had to flee.

It was in this period of illegality that he made his first attempt to obtain a fundamental knowledge regarding the proletarian class struggle. His teacher was the former social-democratic member of the Reichstag, Rühle, who at that time had become a typical ultra-Left supporter of the K.A.P.D. (Communist Labour Party). Hölz very rapidly grasped the world outlook and the aims of Marxism, but as regards the methods of the class struggle he never obtained a Leninist training. Dominated by a passionate temperament, he exerted a suggestive force upon the masses.

In 1920, on the occasion of the Kapp Putsch. Hölz imrediately emerged from his illegality and with his few hundred armed proletarians, who nevertheless yielded him unquestioning obedience, succeeded in exercising such a power in Vogtland that the Government saw itself compelled to despatch a greater force of Reichswehr troops against him. The Vogtland proletariat was unable to stand against this superior force. After his band of followers had been broken up Hölz fled to Czecho-Slovakia.

The German Government demanded his arrest and extradition as a common robber and incendiary. The Czech courts, however, were compelled, owing to the proofs brought before by the Defence, to recognize that the actions of Hölz did not constitute common crimes, but military measures in civil war, and therefore Hölz was able to claim right of asylum as a political fugitive. The Czech Government thereupon refused to extradite Max Hölz. In the proceedings connected with the demand for his extradition the lying assertions of the bourgeois press that Max Hölz was a common criminal were officially refuted.

Hölz did not, however, remain for long in secure asylum abroad, but like a true revolutionary and in spite of the fact that over a dozen warrants were out for his arrest, returned secretly to Germany and carried on agitation for the proletarian revolution. The solidarity of his class comrades shielded him for over a year from his persecutors. The intensification of the situation in Central Germany in March 1921, the act of provocation by Severing and Hörsing in calling in the Scnupo (Defensive Police), again summoned Hölz to the scene of struggle. He immediately appeared as the recognised military leader at the head of the fighting proletariat of Central Germany. After the defeat of the working class Hölz again went into hiding. Owing to treachery he finally fell into the hands of the authorities.

The trial of Max Hölz before the Special Court was dominated by the demand of the bourgeoisie for vengeance for his having attempted to call into question their rule. It was demanded that Hölz should not be tried and sentenced as a political prisoner, but that he should be branded as a common criminal. A reward of over 50,000 marks was offered merely for evidence that should serve to “convict” Max Hölz. All this hounding down did not fail to achieve its result. While Hölz’s troops were crossing the Manor of Roitz an estate owner named Hess was shot. The prosecuting authorities now endeavoured to make Hölz out to be the murderer of this estate owner. Although at the preliminary proceedings the widow of the deceased, at repeated examinations, had not recognised Hölz as the perpetrator at the main proceedings and under the pressure of the whole atmosphere of suggestion prevailing, she indicated Max Hölz as the one who had fired the shot. A member of Hölz’s band was also found who declared that he had seen Hölz shoot the estate owner. Another man of his band, who had previously been given three years imprisonment for fraud, who claimed to be a writer and journalist and hat joined the “Red Army” as a reporter (in reality as a spy), stated that he had heard Hölz say that he, along with his followers, had shot the estate owner.

These statements did not suffice even the bourgeois court to condemn Hölz as a murderer as the Prosecution desired. The court found a way out by bringing in a verdict of an unpremeditated killing, that is, manslaughter. The sentencing of Hölz to 15 years imprisonment for manslaughter with loss of civil rights enabled the court also in other cases to represent him as a man who did not have much consideration for the lives of his fellow-men.

At his trial Hölz admitted all his revolutionary acts and only emphatically denied the charge of murder and manslaughter of the estate owner and two other alleged attempts to kill. After being sentenced Hölz consistently characterised the sentence on account of manslaughter as an error of justice, and took up the fight against this. Holz spoke the truth. Now, after five and a half years, the one who actually committed the deed for which Holz was condemned has made a confession before a notary and will give himself up within the next few days. Following on this confession the chief witness for the prosecution has now declared that his statement at the trial was due to mistaken identity. Even the widow of the deceased. Frau Hess has admitted in a written declaration that she may have been mistaken in her accusation of Hölz.

Max Hölz has been condemned to a total sentence of lifelong imprisonment and permanent loss of all rights. With the fresh evidence the Hess case completely falls to the ground.

As no person found guilty of high treason is to be found in prison at least so far as members of the Right Parties are concerned, the crime of high treason for which Hölz can now only be held guilty, must, after five and a half years imprisonment, be pronounced to have been expiated. Even according to bourgeois law there no longer exists any reason for keeping Max Hölz in prison. The working class must therefore demand his release all the more energetically.

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecorr” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecorr’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecorr, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1926/v06n76-nov-18-1926-Inprecor.pdf