Führer seiner Klasse: Freiheit! - Leader Of His Class: Freedom!
"Freedom" or "The Thalmann Column," is a German Communist and anti-fascist song written in 1936 to serve as the anthem of the Thalman Battalion fighting in the Spanish Civil War, a unit of volunteers and exiles from Germany. After the rise of the Nazis in Germany, many Communists, anti-fascists, and other enemies of the Nazis were forced to flee Germany under threat of arrest, torture, and murder. Ernst Thalmann, the leader of the German Communist Party beloved by the workers of Germany and an outspoken anti-fascist, was among those unlucky Communists who could not escape, being sent to a German death camp where he would die in 1944 on Hitler's orders. The German Communists who could escape to France, where they would sign on with the French Communist Party, or the Soviet Union, where they would continue working as representatives of the Comintern, saw their duties against fascism as doubled as they pledged to not let another Hitler come to power. When the fascists in Spain began their push for power, the German exiles were among the first to volunteer to fight for the Spanish people against fascism, forming the Thalmann Battalion of German-speaking volunteers, named for their imprisoned leader.
"Ernst Thalmann: Leader Of His Class," is a German two-part biographical miniseries chronicling the life of German Communist leader, Ernst Thalmann, who was brutally tortured throughout the Nazi's reign and finally murdered in 1944 on the orders of Hitler. The miniseries was produced in the early 1950s soon after the liberation of Germany from fascism in a period of great remembrance for the many great heroes and leaders martyred by the fascists such as Thalmann and other members of the Communist Party. The series is still warmly regarded by many German Communists.
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