He withdrew from active participation in politics after resigning from the fractious and short-lived Communist Workers' Party ("Kommunistische Arbeiter-Partei Deutschlands" / KAPD) in 1922, but continued his contribution as an independent left of centre commentator-journalist.
[6] He grew up in Danzig where his father Karl Julius Schwab, a musician and composer, was in charge of the music ("als Opernkappelmeister") at the city opera house.
[4] He attended a Gymnasium (secondary school) in Danzig and then moved on to study Philosophy, Germanistics, Classical languages, Applied Economics ("Nationalökonomie"), Sociology and Civil law at Rostock, Jena, Heidelberg and Freiburg i.B.
On 8 May 1914 the unmarried status of two members of the cohabiting community ended when Alexander Schwab married Dr Hildegard Felisch: it was her twenty-fifth birthday.
[1] The next year he joined the Spartacus League: he was numbered among the close friends of the movement's best-known founders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.
[1] At the end of the year the Communist Party of Germany emerged from the USPD, founded formally at a three-day conference in Berlin between 30 December 1918 and 1 January 1919.
Beyond the world of party politics, directly following the revolutions of 1918/19, he teamed up with the teacher Frieda Winckelmann (1873–1943) and others to set up a "Free academy community for proletarians" ("Freie Hochschulgemeinde für Proletarier") from which emerged, in the first part of 1919, the "Soviet school of the Greater Berlin labour movement" ("Räteschule der Groß-Berliner Arbeiterschaft").
He was sharply critical of Comrade Lenin's political tactics in respect of western Europe:[1] the speeches he contributed were published in the congress minutes, using the cover name "Sachs" to identify him.
Back in Germany his friend and political ally Karl Schröder was removed from his position as head of a major group within the KAPD in 1922.
[7]) Between 1928/29 and 1933 Alexander Schwab was employed as chief press spokesman for the National Institution for Unemployment Insurance ("Reichsanstalt für Arbeitslosenversicherung").
Schwab was dismissed from his job as a press spokesman under the provisions of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service ("Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums") enacted in April 1933.
[1][3] One source indicates that his (relatively) early release resulted from the personal intervention of his father-in-law, Dr. Paul Felisch, with Magnus von Levetzow, the Berlin police commissioner.
[4] Even before 1933 Schwab had teamed up with old comrades from their KAPD days to form the secretive Rote Kämpfer ("Red fighters") operation, an apparently broadly based association drawing members from various groups on the political left, intended to prepare for "underground opposition" in the event of a Nazi take-over.
By its nature, details of the organisation are in short supply, but others involved in setting it up included Karl Schröder, Arthur Goldstein and Bernhard Reichenbach.
However, shortly after his release his wife Hildegard died, which some sources implicitly connect with his new determination to stay in Germany and engage in (illegal) political activity in opposition to the government.
In the context of a wider round-up of the organisation's leadership, Alexander Schwab's office was surrounded by Nazi paramilitaries on 17 November 1936 and he was arrested.
His testimony had to be paused while a colleague explained to the leading judge, "he means, sort of, between young and old" ("Er meint, so zwischen jung und alt.").
[8] According to Schröder's not necessarily completely unbiased memories, he himself had so impressed the court that they came close to releasing him without further ado on the grounds that he was evidently "not entirely of sound mind" ("nicht ganz zurechnungsfähig").
[10] Of the six men facing the court it was Alexander Schwab who received the longest sentence, which seems to have reflected his continuing determination to absorb, as far as possible, the culpability that might otherwise attach to comrades.