Walter Ulbricht
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| “ | The victory of the working people over the exploiters and slave holders is at the same time the victorious struggle for liberation by the German people. | „ |
| ~ Walter Ulbricht |
Walter Ulbricht (June 30th, 1893 — August 1st, 1973), was a German Communist politician who served as as the First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany from 1950 to 1971. He was instrumental in the creation of the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, the communist state that existed for much of the Cold War, and also built the Berlin Wall in 1961.
Biography edit
Ulbricht was born in 1893 in Leipzig, Saxony, to Pauline Ida (née Rothe) and Ernst August Ulbricht, an impoverished tailor. He spent eight years in primary school (Volksschule) and this constituted all of his formal education since he left school to train as a joiner. Both his parents worked actively for the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which Walter joined in 1912. The young Ulbricht first learned about radical socialism at home then in Leipzig's Naundorfchen workers' district.
Ulbricht served in the Imperial German Army during World War I from 1915 to 1917 in Galicia, on the Eastern Front, and in the Balkans. He deserted the Army in 1918, as he had opposed the war from the beginning. Imprisoned in Charleroi, in 1918 he was released as part of the collapse of Imperial Germany.
In 1917 he became a member of the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) after it split off from the Social Democratic Party over support of Germany's participation in World War I.
During the German Revolution of 1918, Ulbricht became a member of the soldier's soviet of his army corps. In 1919, he joined the Spartakusbund and became one of the founding members of the KPD.
After the war he entered the new Communist Party of Germany (KPD). A bureaucrat and organizer, he was elected to the party’s central committee in 1923. With the rise of Joseph Stalin, He became instrumental in Bolshevizing the German party and organizing it on a cell basis. He became a member of the Reichstag (parliament) in 1928 and led the Berlin party organization from 1929. After the accession of Adolf Hitler to power in Germany (January 1933), He fled abroad, serving for the next five years as an agent of both the KPD and the Comintern in Paris and Moscow and in Spain during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), all the time relentlessly persecuting Trotskyites and other deviationists.
Back in Moscow at the start of Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union (1941), He was assigned to propagandize German prisoners of war and process information from the German army. Returning to Germany on April 30th, 1945, He helped reestablish the KPD and was charged with organizing an administration in the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany. He played a leading role in the merger of the KPD and the SPD into the Socialist Unity Party (SED; April 1946), which controlled East Germany until 1989. On the formation of the German Democratic Republic (October 11th, 1949), He became deputy prime minister, adding the post of general secretary of the SED in 1950.
When President Wilhelm Pieck died in 1960, the office of the presidency was abolished and a council of state instituted in its stead. Subsequently, He became chairman of the council, thus formally taking supreme power. He crushed all opposition and became so powerful that he was able to block the de-Stalinization movement that swept eastern Europe after the death of the Soviet dictator.
Ulbricht’s leadership and policies were largely modelled on those of Stalin. He implemented a five-year economic plan for industrialization and modernization, collectivizing both agricultural and industrial labour. A cult of personality was also constructed around Ulbricht. He was praised highly in party and government propaganda (“our people are represented by a truly great human being, one honored by the entire progressive world”, one public servant said of Ulbricht). He also created two mass movements: the Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth) and Demokratischer Frauenbund Deutschlands (German Women’s League); both were socialist in intent but reminded many of Nazi-era organizations.
Ulbricht also imposed political controls and expanded both the size and power of the Stasi, the notorious East German secret police. Only after the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961 did the government finally begin to ease its strict control and permit a certain amount of economic liberalization and decentralization. East Germany became one of the most industrialized countries in eastern Europe, yet Ulbricht remained implacably opposed to the Federal Republic of Germany. Forced to retire as first secretary of the SED in May 1971 when the Soviet Union opened new relations with West Germany, he retained his position as head of state until his death.