Karl Kreibich

Born Dec. 14, 1883, in Cvikov; died Aug. 2, 1966, in Prague. A leader in the Czechoslovak workers’ movement. The son of a worker.

Kreibich graduated from a commercial school. In 1902 he joined the Social Democratic Party of Austria and was active in its left wing. For several years he was the editor of the Social Democratic newspaper Vorwdrts (in the city of Liberec), the only Social Democratic organ in Austria-Hungary to come out in 1914 with a condemnation of war. After 1918 he headed the left wing of the German social democrats in Czechoslovakia and in 1921 helped create the Czechoslovak Communist Party. Kreibich was a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International in 1921–22 and a member of the International Control Commission from 1924 to 1928. From 1920 to 1929 he was a deputy to the National Assembly, and from 1935 to 1938 he was a member of the Senate of Czechoslovakia from the Communist Party. From 1941 to 1945 he was a representative of the Communist Party in the State Council, a consultative body under the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London. In the postwar years he engaged in scholarly work and journalism and wrote a number of works on the history of the workers’ movement. In 1950–52 he was Czechoslovakia’s ambassador to the USSR.