International Workers Relief

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The International Workers Relief (also known as International Workers Assistance, International Workers Aid and, in German. as Internationale Arbeiterhilfe, IAH ) was a Communist International affiliate, which released proletarian films in the 1920s and early 1930s years in addition to providing social security benefits for workers. Their center of the IAH was in Berlin.

1 Beginning
2 Activities
3 Film Production
4 See also
5 German Weblinks

[edit] Beginning

The IAH was created on 12 August 1921 as reaction to a call of Lenin, in order to recruit international support in response to a drought and famine in the Volga area. Its initiator Willi Muenzenberg had been recommended by his activities as a youth functionary of the Communist Party of Germany. Politician and women's rights campaigner Clara Zetkin served as president of the organization until her death in 1933.

[edit] Activities

In the following years the IAH supported workers in Germany and other countries in strikes, and also in wars, civil wars and natural catastrophes by distribution of clothes, food and money. It won their financial resources by fund drives. Further means of assistance wer obtained through industrial companies which the IAH maintained in Soviet Union.

[edit] Film Production

Muenzenberg recognized the potential for cinematic propaganda, and therefore the IAH imported Soviet films as well as producing their own films. In 1922 Muenzenberg founded Aufbau Industrie und Handels AG to distribute Soviet films. Hermann Basler led the office for film distribrution, which in March 1923 with Polikuschka(director Alexander Sanin, 1922, production of Mezhrabpom-Rus (Russian: Межрабпом-Русь (Международная рабочая помощь)) for the first time brought a Soviet film into German cinemas.

As Weimar Republic Germany imposed regulations against the importation of foreign films, the IAH moved in 1924 to Vienna, Austria. IAH at first brought out only one film at its Austrian location however: Kurt Bernhardt's directoral debut Nameless Heroes (1924). Eventually, the Viennese center took over and produced later films like Kuhle Wampe (1931/32). In 1928 IAH began to produce communist documentary films via the specialized film production company World Film.

The IAH was supported by numerous left intellectuals, among them Martin Andersen Nexö, Henri Barbusse, Maxim Gorki, George Grosz, Maximilian Harden, Arthur Holit, Käthe Kollwitz, George Bernard Shaw, Upton Sinclair and Ernst Toller.

After Nazi takeover in 1933 the IAH was severely disrupted. In 1935, the USSR dissolved is division of the IAH, depriving the remnant organization of material support. Some functions were continued by the International Red Aid.