[Marxism] Guenter Reimann

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, April 4, 2005
Guenter Reimann, Economic Publisher, Is Dead at 100
By WOLFGANG SAXON

Guenter Reimann, a Marxist economist early in his career who eventually 
published one of the most expensive and influential newsletters on 
international capitalism and monetary exchange, died on Feb. 5 in Valley 
Stream, N.Y. He was 100 and lived in Manhasset, N.Y.

His death was announced by his family.

In his youth, Mr. Reimann was associated with the Communist opposition to 
Hitler's rise to power in Germany. After fleeing into exile, first to 
Britain and then to the United States, he published his first books here 
analyzing the market systems of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

After World War II, having settled in New York, he started International 
Reports on Finance and Currency, a weekly advisory compiled for an elite 
group of subscribers who paid handsomely for it. It made him well-to-do but 
never changed his own his dim view of capitalism, especially in its 
unfettered variety.

His newsletter billed itself as the "oldest advisory service in all fields 
of international finance." He started it in the wake of the Bretton Woods 
conference, which created the International Monetary Fund and the World 
Bank. The institutions were established in 1946, but in the postwar chaos 
official exchange rates were largely on paper only and international 
commerce often was at the mercy of bartering and black market vagaries. Mr. 
Reimann helped dispel the confusion with his advisories.

His newsletter counted leading economists among a worldwide network of 
correspondents who provided independent analyses of current conditions and 
trends. It had bureaus in Europe, the Middle East, South America and Asia 
as well as an editorial board of international bankers and academics.

Supplements provided specific information for specific areas, at extra 
cost. The readership was clustered in central banks, embassies, government 
ministries and the head offices of Fortune 500 companies.

Mr. Reimann remained editor in chief until 1982, when he sold his business 
- International Reports Inc. of New York, by then a multi-title newsletter 
on international finance - to The Financial Times.

Guenter Hans Reimann was born Hans Steinecke, scion of a merchant family, 
in Angermünde, northeast of Berlin. He linked up with the leftist youth 
movement at 14 and joined the Communist Party, a strong force at the time. 
At 17, he was business editor of Red Banner, a party organ. He graduated 
with a degree in economics from the University of Berlin in 1928, and in 
the early 1930's traveled in the Soviet Union, by invitation, to report on 
its economic programs.

By that time he had parted company with the German Communist Party because 
of its growing fealty to Moscow. Once Hitler came to power, he went 
underground with the leftist resistance; he took the name Guenter Reimann 
and kept it for the rest of his life.

He left Germany in the mid-1930's and went to Paris and then London, where 
he learned about international finance from the economist John Atkinson 
Hobson. When British authorities moved to send him back to Germany as an 
undesirable alien for having engaged in politics, the American Friends 
Service Committee arranged for him to come to the United States as a 
political refugee in 1937.

A book he had researched at the British Library, "The Vampire Economy: 
Doing Business Under Fascism," was published by Vanguard Press in 1939. He 
followed it with two other analytical works, "The Myth of the Total State" 
(1941) and "Patents for Hitler" (1942).

As a New Yorker, Mr. Reimann never lost touch with the land of his birth. 
After the war he took a public stand against the Morgenthau Plan, a wartime 
proposal that envisioned a totally de-industrialized Germany.

His testimony before Congress helped win the repeal of the Trading With the 
Enemy Act, which immediately opened the way for the shipment of CARE 
packages to German families needing food, clothing and medicines. He also 
maintained a steady correspondence with Herbert Wehner, the German Social 
Democratic leader, an old friend once exiled like himself. It was published 
in book form in 1998.

Mr. Reimann is survived by his wife of 50 years, Jutta Ruesch Reimann; 
their daughter, Karen Reimann-Steinecke of Dresden, Germany, and son, 
Robert Reimann-Steinecke of Port Washington, N.Y.; a daughter and son from 
his earlier marriage, Margaret Reimann of Bedford, Pa., and John Reimann of 
Oakland, Calif.; four grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter.

Louis Proyect
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org 


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