Hanns Eisler - The HUAC Investigation

The HUAC Investigation

Eisler's promising career in the U.S. was interrupted by the Cold War. He was one of the first artists placed on the Hollywood blacklist by the movie studio bosses. In two interrogations by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the composer was accused of being "the Karl Marx of music" and the chief Soviet agent in Hollywood. Among his accusers was his sister Ruth Fischer, who also testified before the House Committee that her other brother, Gerhart, was a major Communist agent. The Communist press denounced her as a "German Trotskyite." Among the works that Eisler composed for the Communist Party was the "Comintern March", "The Comintern calls you/Raise high Soviet banner/In steeled ranks to battle/Raise sickle and hammer."