Gerhart Eisler

Gerhart Eisler (20 February 1897 – 21 March 1968) was a German politician. Along with his sister Ruth Fischer, he was a very early member of the Austrian German Communist Party (KPDÖ) and then a prominent member of the Communist Party of Germany during the Weimar Republic.

Life and career

Eisler was born in Leipzig, the son of Marie Edith Fischer and Rudolf Eisler, a professor of philosophy at Leipzig but of Austrian nationality. His father was Jewish and his mother was Lutheran.

His brother was the leftist composer Hanns Eisler and his sister was Communist activist Ruth Fischer. In November 1918, Eisler returned from the front of World War I and joined the Austrian Communist Party under the influence of his older sister. In 1919, he married Hede Massing (1900–1981). In 1920, he followed his sister to Berlin, where in January 1921 he became associate editor of the Die Rote Fahne. It was Germany's leading left-wing newspaper.

He left Hede in 1923 for her sister Elli Tune. Elli left him with their baby daughter Natasha in 1933, when she could no longer cope with the demands the Comintern made on him. In 1937 he met Hilde Vogel-Rothstein and they married in Queens, New York City in 1942. His first wife Hede and her third husband Paul Massing both spied for the Soviet Union in the USA and they all kept in touch. Hede Massing later turned towards the FBI and testified against Alger Hiss in his second trial.