Karl Kreibich (politician, born 1883)

Kreibich emerged as the main leader of the revolutionary socialist movement amongst German workers in Bohemia after the First World War.

[2] After the war, he became the chairman of the Reichenberg branches of the German Social Democratic Workers Party in the Czechoslovak Republic (DSAP) and its youth organization.

[1][3] The leftwing elements in the DSAP, centered in Reichenberg and led by Kreibich, took part in the December 1920 general strike.

The expelled DSAP left founded the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (German Division) in March 1921.

[9] Lenin in particular was pushing for the unification of the communist movement in Czechoslovakia into a single party, a move that the Czech leftists had initially resisted.

[9] The German communists had taken a more radical stand than the Czech left leader Bohumír Šmeral, who for tactical reasons hesitated in forming a new party.

[8] Drawing from the experiences of the building of the KPD, Kreibich sought to utilize the same approach to Šmeral's group as the Spartacus League had employed in winning over large parts of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany.

[2][18] In spite of his anti-fascist credentials, Kreibich was interned by British authorities due to his German ethnicity for a period.

[16] As a member of the London-based State Council he took part in approving the controversial Beneš decrees, paving the way for mass expulsions of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia.

[2][1] Kreibich fell out of favour with the Communist Party, as he emerged as a major critic of the Slánský trial.

His biography did not get published, and the Institute of Party History began downgrading his past role as a founder of the communist movement in Czechoslovakia.