picture upper left: Czernowitz, Austro-Hungary around 1900; photo: postcard; lower right: Guangzhou (Canton) 2018, China; photo: PR Newswire
Klara Blum (1904-1971) was the daughter of Joseph Blum (born 1846), who was Wilhelm Reich’s great-uncle (mother side). He owned the astounding property of 8 square kilometers of land in Yuzhynets (Bukovina) that Wilhelm’s father Leon managed as a tenant.
In 1901 Joseph Blum married Cipres Maschler (nee Kramer). For both it was their second marriage. Cipres was appr. 30 years younger than Joseph. Their daughter Klara was born in on Nov. 27 1904 in Czernowitz, when Wilhelm was 7 years old. In 1913 the Joseph and Cipre divorced. Klara Blum moved to Vienna together with her mother, where she studied psychology in 1923. Graduation stopped due to a difficult financial situation. In order to support herself she worked as a journalist for several newspapers. She immigrated to Israel as a Zionist. Israel, then Palestine in 1929 - but was disappointed and returned to Vienna. In Vienna joined the revolutionary labor movement. In 1934 she went to the Soviet Union where she wrote revolutionary poetry in German and tied her life with the Chinese revolutionary journalist - and Hingtz‘ang (Zhu Xiangcheng) at some point disappeared. Clara believed the Chinese companion-partner traveled to China on a secret mission. In reality Hingtz‘ang was arrested by order of the Stalinist regime, and was transferred to Siberia, where he died in 1934. After World War II, Clara left the Soviet Union to China. She went there looking for him. In 1952, she taught the German language at Nanjing and two years later received Chinese citizenship. In 1957, she taught at the University of Guangzhou. Clara settled in Shanghai at the end of her life. She wrote in the German language a novel „The Shepherd and the weaver.“ Her poems referring to her hometown of Chernivtsi. They call for increasing class struggle in Romania and embellish the city. Freed in 1940 by the Soviet army. Her writings in German appeared in German in East Germany (communist Germany). Clara died on May 4, 1971 in Guangzhou (Canton), China. In 2008 in Vienna a street in the 22nd district was named after Klara Blum.
Literature:
Bolbecher, Siglinde/Kaiser, Konstantin (2000). Lexikon der österreichischen Exilliteratur. Wien, S. 95 ff./Bearbeitet von Armin Eidherr, Salzburg.
Yang, Z. (1996). Klara Blum - Zhu Bailan. Frankfurt am Main ; New York: Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften.