• YOU understandably reproduce a photograph of Rudolf Feistmann in John Gulliver’s tribute to his sister Barbara Cartlidge who recently died (A jewel in the crowd, March 9).

Feistmann was a distinguished German Communist Party journalist from 1933, when he emigrated to Paris, then – not to the USA – but to Mexico, returning to East Germany in 1947, where he became foreign editor of the official party daily, Neues Deutschland. Feistmann took his own life in June 1950 at a time of deep schisms in the party.

He left a letter expressing his total political disillusion.

Officially he was said to have died of food-poisoning.

NICK JACOBS
Lady Margaret Road
NW5