Heinrich Laufenberg

Heinrich Laufenberg (1872 - 1932) was a leading German communist and is claimed as a forerunner of National Bolshevism. He lived in Hamburg from 1908. In 1909 he moved from the Catholic Party to the SPD. On November 30 1918, during the German Revolution, he was elected President of the Council of the Workmen and Soldiers of Hamburg.

With Fritz Wolffheim, he was involved in the Hamburg branch of the Communist Party of Germany, but began to call for a "national communism", with close collaboration between the working class and the middle classes a and a peaceful transition to Socialism, led by the proletariat and in close alliance with the Soviet Union, would rebuild itself militarily and wage war on the Allied powers in order to restore German prestige. Laufenberg was immediately condemned by Karl Radek as a "national Bolshevik", whilst Vladimir Lenin joined in the condemnation in 1920 when he accused Laufenberg of seeking a war coalition with the German bourgeoisie (V. I. Lenin, "Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 41, mai–noiabr’ 1920").

Laufenberg went on to become a founder member of the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD), although his nationalist ideas were condemned at the Party's founding conference in Heidelberg. While neither he nor Wolffheim were expelled, they were asked to leave, which they did.

Laufenberg also wrote under the name Karl Erler and is referred to by Lenin under this name in his writings.