Hede Massing

Hede Tune Massing, née "Hedwig Tune" (also "Hede Eisler," "Hede Gumperz," and "Redhead") (6 January 1900 – 8 March 1981), was an Austrian actress in Vienna and Berlin, communist, and Soviet intelligence operative in Europe and the United States during the 1930s and 1940s.

After World War II, she defected from the Soviet underground.

Massing was born in 1900 to a Polish father and Austrian mother in Vienna.

Her parents' unhappy marriage (caused in large part by her father's constant philandering) alienated her from her family.

She had a brother, Walter, seven years younger, and sister, Elli, nine years younger.

After finishing high school, she apprenticed unhappily and unsuccessfully in a millinery shop.

Attendance of summer public lectures by Karl Kraus rekindled her interest in literature.

She applied for and received a scholarship for dramatic literature at the Burgtheater that eventually led to her external career as an actress.

Entering the cafe, literary scene (her Stammtisch was at Cafe Herrenhof), she met Peter Altenberg, Elizabeth Bergner, Franz Werfel, Albert Ehrenstein—and her first husband, Gerhart Eisler.

Eisler invited her to join his Communist-committed life by leaving her family and coming to live with him at his parents' home in a party marriage.

In 1920, when Eisler received an invitation to work in Berlin, the two got a civil marriage in December 1920.

In January 1921, Gerhart Eisler became associate editor of the Die Rote Fahne.

It was Germany's leading left-wing newspaper.

He moved to Berlin and joined the German Communist Party.

Hede became more involved in politics and spent hours discussing politics with her husband and sister-in-law, Ruth Fischer.

"I read about the Russian Revolution, about Lenin and Vera Figner, who became my idol; and I learned to love the idea of socialism the idea of a better life for everyone. True, I never faced the reality of everyday work within the movement. I moved only among the upper crust of the Communists... I was imbued with the rather snobbish attitude of Gerhart to people who were not as bright as he was."

Massing and Eisler left Vienna for Berlin early in January 1921 so Eisler could accept a position as editor of Rote Fahne.

He rose rapidly in the ranks of the German Communist Party ("KPD" in German), where his sister Ruth Fischer was a communist member of the German Reichstag.

Massing pursued her acting career while living a domestic life amidst the top leadership of the KPD.

Their different careers often led them to live apart; they drifted apart when Massing moved into the Berlin suburbs during a prolonged illness.

There she met Julian Gumperz and began living with him in 1924 in the Lichterfelde West district.

Gumperz ran Malik Verlag, an early publisher of paperback books in Europe.

Massing brought her younger sister to live with them and finish her schooling.

When Eisler came to live with the Massing and Gumperz after the economic collapse in Weimar Germany, he and Elli became lovers and then married.

Meantime, by 1925, Gumperz became head of "all the German Communist party publishing" but quit in 1926 out of dissatisfaction with the Soviet Union, to which he had been traveling frequently on business (This Deception, p. 55).

Massing and Gumperz traveled to the United States in August 1926.

Arriving in New York City, they socialized with their American communist counterparts.

Before doing so, the two married in December 1927—US citizenship would save her life in Moscow in 1938.

They returned to Germany (Frankfurt am Main), where Gumperz became an economist with the Frankfurt School, and separated soon after.

Hede Massing went to live with Paul Massing.

Richard Sorge recruited Hede Massing for the Soviet Intelligence, where she worked under Ludwig (Ignace Reiss).

Hede and Paul Massing became disillusioned with life in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.

"In 1930 and 1931 everybody was hungry, had no clothes, no decent beds, no decent linen... True, there were some exceptions - the GPU (today the MVD) and the foreigners. It was also about this time when children were called upon to spy on their parents; to report negativism, derogatory remarks, religious inclinations, or religious services attended; to tell whether their mother really had been sick or had really just washed her clothes, cleaned her miserable dwelling, or even relaxed, instead of attending those endless, ludicrous meetings."

Both Massings later were members of the NKVD apparatus and in the USA worked under the direction of a Soviet officer, Fred (Boris Bazarov), based in New York.

They met Kenneth Durant, Mike Gold, and Helen Black (representative of the Soviet Photo Agency and in 1931 contributing editor to the New Masses when Whittaker Chambers began submitting short stories).

They traveled to Mill Valley, CA, then traveled to Los Angeles and Pasadena (where Gumperz met Upton Sinclair) before returning to New York.

Money began running out.

Mike Gold got Massing a job in Pleasantville, NY, at an orphanage; there, Massing first became interested in Freud and human behavior.

Meantime, Gumperz decided to return to Germany to write his doctorate at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main.

She came to prominence by testifying in the second case of Alger Hiss in 1949; later, she published accounts about the underground.