Hans-Jürgen Shultz
(1933-98)
On the 15 July 1998 our comrade Hans-Jürgen Schulz died at the age of 65 of the cancer from which he had suffered for almost 10 years.
In 1954, when the defeat of the West German Left was already indisputable, he joined what was then the high school organisation of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) - the German Socialist Student Alliance (SDS) - and a little later the Young Socialists, the youth organisation of the SPD. At times Hans-Juergen belonged to the national
Hans-Jürgen took part on the left wing of the Party in the controversies of the 50s, around the questions of the remilitarisation of West Germany, the equipping of the newly-formed armed forces (Bundeswer) with nuclear weaponry, and the adaptation of the SPD to the restored capitalism of the Adenauer era. And he learnt what it means to swim against the stream.
When the SPD leadership made its infamous announcement that membership of the SPD was incompatible with that of the more radical SDS in November 1961, Hans-Jürgen, who in the meantime had become a member of the Hamburg leadership of the SPD, preferred to be expelled from the Party than betray the SDS. In the following period he kept up contact with left socialist circles through the "Society for the Promotion of Socialism", later "Socialist League" around Wolfgang Abendroth.
In the 60s he played a leading role in the 'Easter march' movement against the nuclear arms race. Despite massive police harassment and denunciation by bourgeois politicians, the marches crystallised the extraparliamentary movement in West Germany.
In 1967 a spark of rebellion ignited youth across West Germany. Jürgen, who in the meantime had made a name for himself as an active trade unionist and shop steward, was one of the leading organisers in Hamburg of the biggest explosion against the bourgeois order in West Germany. The 1968 movement was a decisive and formative phase of his life.
In 1969, after the German section abandoned entrism in the SPD, Hans-
Jürgen joined the Fourth International.
He soon played a leading role in the
GIM - the International Marxist Group as the section was then known. He contributed authoritatively to the development of the practical politics and analytical foundations of revolutionary socialism in West Germany, whether in the 70s in antimilitarist work and in the campaign of trade unionists against the bomb, in the antiwar movement of the 80s or the antiracist and antifascist movement of the 90s.
In 1986 Hans-Jürgen supported the merger of the GIM and KPD to form the VSP, the United Socialist Party. When he became convinced that this experiment contributed nothing to the strengthening of the revolutionary left, he, together with several others, left the VSP at the end of the 80s/beginning of the 90s. It is from this time of a renewed defeat of the West German left that he suffered the most painful personal and political wounds.
Despite much resistance and his severe cancer, Hans-Jürgen did not allow himself to be swayed from also organising a revolutionary Marxist nucleus in East Germany. Through the "Avanti' group he made a massive contribution to the refoundation of the German section, and the formation of the RSB in 1994.
He was active in Vietnam solidarity, campaigning for the liberation of Kurdistan, the struggle for socialism in Sri Lanka, and the European Marches
In Autumn 1982, Hans-Jürgen and his wife Barbara were arrested in the GDR for the transport of underground material of the Fourth International to Poland and held for 18 days. Stasi chief Mielke kept himself personally informed about the course of the process against them. Only an international campaign led to their release.
Writing as Karl Karew, Fred Sommer, or simply HJS, he left us countless articles, books and pamphlets. He analysed militarism in Germany, the Soviet Union and the USA; he investigated the workings of secret services and fascist organisations; he dissected the downfall of Stalinism in East Germany and the development of neoliberal capitalism in West Germany and internationally.
It is our task to take Hans-Jürgen's exemplary involvement against all forms of exploitation, repression and exclusion as a spur for ourselves. To continue the organised struggle against capitalist revolutionary socialism - with the radicalism, tenacity, sincerity, modesty, seriousness and humanity which Hans-Juergen passed Political Secretariat of the RSB
Same time next year!