Peter Blachstein (30 April 1911 – 4 October 1977) was a German journalist who became a politician. During the middle 1930s he spent time in the Hohnstein Concentration Camp, but he was released and participated in the Spanish Civil War on the anti-fascist side. The rest of the Nazi years he spent outside Germany, mostly in Norway and Sweden. Following the restoration of diplomatic relations between West Germany and Yugoslavia, in 1968 he became West Germany's ambassador in Belgrade.
Life
Family provenance, early years and education
Peter Blachstein was born in Dresden. His father, Max Blachstein, was a businessman who worked in the textiles sector. His mother, Gertrud Blachstein (born Gertrud Welsch), worked as a librarian. As he was growing up the family lived at George-Bähr-Straße 4, a city centre address. Between 1917 and 1929 Blachstein attended the local junior and secondary schools ("Volksschulle" & "Gymnasium") but, unusually with this type of school, he left without passing his school leaving exams ("Abitur"). Still in 1929, he embarked on a traineeship in the book trade, but quickly abandoned this. By now he had resolved to become a journalist. He applied for and obtained a special dispensation from the regional Ministry of Economics to enroll at the Dresden Technical Academy ("Technische Hochschule") despite never having completed his school exams. He studied here between 1929 and 1933, focusing on Economics and Germanistics, which included significant study of history and literature. He also found time to attend lectures at Dresden's theatre school: he was thereby a "guest student" with Erich Ponto (drama), Josef Gielen (theatre direction) and Fritz Busch (opera).
Politics in the crisis years
While still at school he was a member of the German-Jewish Youth Association (" Deutsch-Jüdischen Jugendgemeinschaft " / DJJG) and of the German-Jewish Comradely Hikers League ("Kameraden, deutsch-jüdischer Wanderbund"). In 1931/32 he led the Dresden region DJJG group. In 1928 he had joined the Young Socialists, and in 1929 became a member of the Social Democratic Party ("Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" / SPD). As a student he financed his studies by working as a journalist. He was already writing for left of centre newspapers such as the , for Breslau's Sozialistische Arbeiterzeitung and for the young persons' newspaper, Junge Pioniere. His principal journalistic focus was on the arts and culture.
The early 1930s were years of surging political tensions. The German-Jewish Hiker League was dissolved in Easter 1932 as a consequence of increasing tensions between right-wing nationalists and socialist member. Later that year Blackstein joined the "Free German-Jewish Youth" ("Freie Deutsch-Jüdischen Jugend") group, which was concerning itself with educating Jewish youngsters on the merits of socialist approaches and attitudes. The political tensions of the times were also reflected inside the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Towards the end of 1931 Max Seydewitz was one of several SPD members expelled from the party for breaches of party discipline. Those excluded responded by setting up the Socialist Workers' Party ("Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands" / SAPD). Seydewitz was a local man, and Blachstein reacted by switching from the SPD to the new SAPD. In Dresden he established a youth wing for the SAPD. He was also entrusted with what was termed, in the spirit of the time, Agitprop work in the Dresden area, and it was in this context that he set up a political cabaret group called "Die Nebelspalter" (loosely "The fog destroyers") which campaigned for the SAPD in the two general elections of 1932. (The SAPD was not very successful electorally, however.) Although the focus of his journalistic work remained on the arts, he was also writing in support of the fight against the introduction of military sports ("Wehrsport") and of voluntary labour service ("Freiwilliger Arbeitsdienst") which the government was promoting as a remedy against the very high levels of unemployment which accompanied the economic depression that had been triggered by the Wall Street Crash back in 1929.