Beaten But Not Defeated
Siegi Moos, an anti-Nazi and active member of the German Communist Party, escaped Germany in 1933 and, exiled in Britain, sought another route to the transformation of capitalism.
Siegi Moos, an anti-Nazi and active member of the German Communist Party, escaped Germany in 1933 and, exiled in Britain, sought another route to the transformation of capitalism.
Siegi Moos, an anti-Nazi and active member of the German Communist Party, escaped Germany in 1933 and, exiled in Britain, sought another route to the transformation of capitalism.
Germany, Political
Siegi Moos, an anti-Nazi and active member of the German Communist Party, escaped Germany in 1933 and, exiled in Britain, sought another route to the transformation of capitalism.
This biography charts Siegi’s life, starting in Germany when he witnessed the Bavarian uprisings of 1918/19 and moving to the later rise of the extreme right. We follow his progress in Berlin as a committed Communist and an active anti-Nazi in the well-organised Red Front, before much of the German Communist party (KPD) took the Nazis seriously, and his deep involvement in the Free Thinkers and in agit-prop theatre.
The book also describes Siegi’s life as an exile: the loss of family, comrades, his first language and ultimately his earlier political beliefs. Against a background of the loneliness of exile, the political and the personal became indissolubly intertwined when Siegi’s wife, Lotte, had a relationship with an Irish/Soviet spy.
Lastly, we look into Siegi’s time as a research worker at the prestigious Oxford Institute of Statistics at Oxford University from 1938, becoming an economic advisor under the Labour Prime Minister, Wilson, 1966-1970, and how, finally, after retirement, he returned to writing.
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Merilyn, can't put it down you have done an excellent piece of work bringing alive the conflicts and tension in the German Working Class during the rise of Hitler. ~ Roger Cox
What a terrific read your book is - the struggles, intrigues, > factionalism and understandable paranoia on the Left > is extraordinarily detailed by you. > My grandfather also died in Terezin and my childhood was > haunted by insecurities > about what secrets there were ~ Mike Bor, email
‘Beaten but not Defeated. Siegfried Moos: a German anti-Nazi who settled in Britain’ is a biography of Siegi Moos, written by his daughter Merilyn Moos. The events of the late 1920’s and early 1930s in Germany shaped the 20th century. Echoes of the rise of fascism are all too strong today in Europe as far right parties gain strength in a number of European countries. Merilyn Moos examines events in Germany through the prism of what she has been able to uncover of her father’s life. Siegfried Moos was at the heart of events as a Communist, anti-fascist and participant in radical theatre. While the dominant narratives of the left and mainstream historians in part obscure the lived experience and the debates of the period, this book provides tantalizing glimpses of what it was like to resist the rise of the Nazis. ~ Pete Cannell
This is a fascinating and often moving account of the life of Siegfried Moos, a German Communist and workers’ theatre activist in the years before Hitler came to power, and later exiled in Britain; it casts valuable new light on the advent of Nazism and the opposition to it. ~ Ian Birchall, London Socialist Historians Group, author of ‘Sartre Against Stalinism’