Comintern Shanghai group - 1930's.

[kebabking]

After reading Ben MacIntyres' excellent book Agent Sonja on Ursula Kuczynski I've become fascinated by the GRU/NKVD/Comintern spy ring and it's wider circle - the stream of people flowing in and out, people upping sticks from Europe to live and work in an utterly alien environment...

I know than many of the spies/agents/fellow-travellers there ended up being murdered in Stalin's purges, but there's one who's named in the book as Irene (or Isa) Weidemeyer or Wedemeyer from Berlin for whom a fate isn't recorded. She ran the Zeitgeist Bookshop in Shanghai, which was the hub of the communist community, and a front for the Comintern. She was married to a member of the Chinese Communist party and was definitely an agent of the Soviet Union, probably the GRU.

Its possible that she's a very dim, distant relative of mine - the spelling Weidemeyer is in my family history, so it kind of leapt out at me while I was reading the book.

Does anyone know of any sources which might be able to throw light on what happened to her?

Cheers.

 

[Serge Forward]

China Rhyming » Blog Archive » Tracking Down Shanghai’s Zeitgeist Bookshop

 

[A380]

I'll have a look at the book, i wasn't really aware of the 30s Shanghai activity.

Not really related but I have been to the house that was the base for the original Chinese Communist Party in 1920s Shanghai which is now a museum. It's ironic on a couple of levels: Shanghai being both the birthplace of the CCP and then the last major city to be held by the Nationalists at the end of the civil war before they escaped to Taiwan (or didn't); and secondly, it's now a in really bijou shopping and dining area, just like Covent Garden, even down to many of the same shops, (after seeing the birthplace of the CCP I had a late lunch of schnitzel and pilsner at the Pauliner beerkeller restaurant...)

Eta: just got the kindle version of the book.

 

[LDC]

Shanghai in the '20s and '30s is fascinating. I read this a while ago which was great.

Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai: Amazon.co.uk: Bickers, Robert: 9780141011950: Books

 

[kebabking]

China Rhyming » Blog Archive » Tracking Down Shanghai’s Zeitgeist Bookshop

cheers for that. It mentions a sister of Irene/ISA, but someone in the comments section disputes that, saying that it wasn't a sister but another German communist. I'm pretty sure from the book that the 'sister' was actually Ursula, though the description of Isa as red haired, pale, with freckles would look nothing like Ursula...

Does anyone know if there's an online register of purge victims, or was the NKVD not that efficient?

 

[JimW]

What's the name of the man she married? Can look for stuff in Chinese.

 

[kebabking]

What's the name of the man she married? Can look for stuff in Chinese.

It's Wu Shao-Kuo - met him in about 1925 apparently, but no idea when they married...

Muchly appreciated.

 

[JimW]

It's Wu Shao-Kuo - met him in about 1925 apparently, but no idea when they married...

Muchly appreciated.

I'll see if anything comes up, looks likely to be an older romanisation but there won't have been many Party members with a Russian wife then so might get mentioned.

 

[kebabking]

I'm pretty sure she was German - she was almost certainly from Berlin, though possibly from Konigsberg in East Prussia.

 

[JimW]

I'm pretty sure she was German - she was almost certainly from Berlin, though possibly from Konigsberg in East Prussia.

D'oh, you did say that in the OP. Bet that's set your mind at rest about my research skills.

 

[JimW]

Found this: 沿苏州河而行·地标｜河滨大楼的房客，一块上海近代史拼图城市漫步澎湃新闻-The Paper

瀛环书店店主是Irene Petraschevskaya，德国哥廷根人，德共党员。与武兆镐相爱后，改名武漪莲。1925年8月，随武兆镐赴莫斯科，先在中山大学旁听，后到共产国际工作。根据租界警方的记录，她同样住在河滨大楼。

The director of the Zeitgeist bookstore was Irene Petraschevskaya, a German from Gottingen and a member of the German Communist Party. After she married Wu Zhaogao (武兆镐) she changed her name to Wu Yilian (武漪莲)/ In August 1925 Wu Zhaogao went to Moscow, where he first audited classes at Sun Yat-sen University then went to work for the Comintern. Foreign Concession police records show her to be living at the 河滨大楼 [there's a place called that now in Shanghai but it wasn't built until 1935 so this must be somewhere else. ETA, hang on, the story is about the building Perhaps she moved there later or 1935 was a refit]
I'll keep digging.
ETA, that led to this on a Party history site that is probably where the above was cribbed from: https://yads.org.cn/index.php?m=home&c=View&a=index&aid=594
武漪莲（1908——？），原名Irene Petraschevskaya，德国哥廷根人，德共党员。与武兆镐相爱后，改名武漪莲。1925年8月随武兆镐赴莫斯科，先在中山大学旁听，后到共产国际工作。1930年随武兆镐回到上海，从事地下工作。后因工作关系转赴西班牙，下落不详。在武兆镐的26封家书中，有5封英文信系武漪莲所写。在武兆镐的中文书信和武漪莲的英文书信结尾处，有时武漪莲和武兆镐会各附有长短不等的留言。
As you can see, gives year of birth as 1908 and says she went with her husband to Moscow, then they returned to Shanghai in 1930 where they engaged in underground work. She later went to Spain on a work assignment, after which we do not know what happened to her. There are five letters written by her in English in a collection of 26 family letters of Wu Zhaogao. They would apparently write short notes to each other in the postscripts of [presumably work-related] correspondence.

 

[JimW]

I'd not be surprised if her maiden name was Weidemeyer/Wedemeyer as that Petraschevskaya looks to be the feminine of her husband's nom de guerre; he was apparently later one of China's top German experts and had studied in Gottingen (maybe they met there rather than Shanghai, it's apparently where he became a communist and seems a coincidence it's her hometown) so surprised she wrote in English

 

[petee]

i detect a monograph coming ...

 

[kebabking]

Bit of a bump.

I emailed Ben MacIntyre about it - he said that he was certain that Irene Weidermayer had left China, had almost certainly gone to Spain - or at least had been ordered to go to Spain - but had been murdered by the NKVD while she was in Moscow during the purges.

No date of death, no grave, no nothing.

Pretty much the whole of the GRU's Chinese section - bar Sorge, who went to Japan, Ursula Kuczynski, and Agnes Smedley - were murdered in the purges. All the recruiters of the Cambridge five suffered the same fate...

One of my colleagues whose German is much better than my own is exploring the German records to research her family.