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Walter Ulbricht (June 30, 1893 – August 1, 1973) was a German communist politician. As First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1950 to 1971, he held arguably the most central role in the early development and establishment of East Germany (the German Democratic Republic).
Early life
Ulbricht was born in Leipzig as the son of a tailor. Both his parents worked actively for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD). He attended secondary school (Volksschule), and learned the trade of a joiner. Later, he served in World War I from 1915 to 1917 in Galicia and on the Balkan Front.Frank, Mario, Walter Ulbricht. Eine Deutsche Biographie (Berlin 2001) 52-53. He deserted in 1917 as he had been opposed to the war from the beginning. In 1918 he was released from his prison in Charleroi during the November revolution.
Political career
In 1912, Ulbricht joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany. A founding member of the Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, KPD) in 1919, Ulbricht attended the International Lenin School of the Komintern in Moscow in 1924/1925. The electors subsequently voted him into the regional parliament of Saxony (Sächsischer Landtag) in 1926. He became a Member of the German Parliament (the Reichstag) from 1928 to 1933.
In 1931, Ulbricht urged fellow communists Heinz Neumann and Hans Kippenberger to plan the murder of two Berlin police officers, Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenck. This murder was carried out by Erich Ziemer and Erich Mielke. Throughout the period preceding the Machtergreifung, street gangs made up of members of Nazi and Communist paramilitary fighters clashed in the streets of Berlin. The Komintern ordered the KPD to cooperate with the Nazis in 1932, so Ulbricht and Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda chief of the Nazi Party, both urged their respective constituents to support a planned strike. The strikers were appalled by the scene of Nazis and Communists marching together and the strike was halted in 5 days. Ibid., 88-89. The Nazi Party attained power in Germany in January 1933, and very quickly began a purge of Communist and Social Democrat leaders in Germany. Following the arrest of the KPD's leader, Ernst Thälmann, Ulbricht campaigned to be Thälmann's replacement as head of the Party. Many competitors for the leadership were killed in the Soviet Union thanks to Ulbricht.Ibid., 117-121. Frank only gives an example of Kippenberger. Other competitors were killed as well, but it is very likely the initiative of the NKVD, given the anti-German frenzy in the Soviet union at that time.
Ulbricht lived in exile in Paris and Prague from 1933 to 1937. The German Popular Front under the leadership of Heinrich Mann in Paris was dissolved after a campaign of behind-the-scenes jockying by Ulbricht to place the organization under the control of the Komintern. Ulbricht tried to persuade the KPD founder Willi Münzenberg to go to the Soviet Union, allegedly so that Ulbricht could have 'them take care of him.' Münzenberg refused. He would have been in jeopardy of arrrest and purge by the NKVD, a prospect in both Münzenberg's and Ulbricht's minds.Ibid., 124-139. He lived in the Soviet Union from 1937 to 1945.
Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, he was active in a group of German communists under NKVD supervision (a group including, among others, the poet Erich Weinert and the writer Willi Bredel) which, among other things, translated propaganda material into German, prepared broadcasts directed at the invaders, and interrogated captured German officers. In February 1943, following the surrender of the German Sixth Army at the close of the Battle of Stalingrad, Ulbricht, Weinert and Wilhelm Pieck conducted a Communist political rally in the center of Stalingrad which many German prisoners were forced to attend. The political pragmatist Lavrenty Beria commented that Ulbricht was the greatest idiot that he had ever seen. Ibid., 241. This could mean that Ulbricht was not pragmatic himself, but a strong believer in the Stalinist ideology.
In 1957 he visited the Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaft of Trinwillershagen in order to demonstrate the GDR's modern agricultural industry to the visiting soviet politburo member Anastas Mikojan.
A leader of the East German communist Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) from 1949 to 1971, he also served as Staatsratsvorsitzender (Chairman of the Council of State: head of state) of East Germany from 1960, when President Wilhelm Pieck died, until his own death in 1973. The Soviets ousted Ulbricht from power in 1971 and he had to hand over the leadership of the SED to Erich Honecker, although he remained the nominal head of state. He died at the Döllnsee near East Berlin on August 1, 1973 and was interred and honoured by a major state funeral.
Famous quotes
- "No one has the intention of building a wall" (Berlin, June 15, 1961) two months prior to the building of the Berlin wall and the wall between East and West Berlin.
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1893 births | 1973 deaths | East German politicians | German communists | Leaders of East Germany
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"Walter Ulbricht"