Franz Dahlem

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Franz Dahlem
Dahlem in 1946
Secretary for Cadre Affairs of the
Party Executive of the Socialist Unity Party
In office
23 April 1946 – 24 January 1949
Serving with Erich Gniffke
Chairman
Preceded byPosition established
Succeeded byWalter Ulbricht
Secretary for Youth of the
Party Executive of the Socialist Unity Party
In office
23 April 1946 – 24 January 1949
Serving with Max Fechner
Chairman
Preceded byPosition established
Succeeded byAnton Ackermann
National Leader of the
Revolutionäre Gewerkschafts Opposition
In office
November 1930 – June 1932
Preceded byFritz Emrich
Succeeded byFritz Schulte
Parliamentary constituencies
Member of the Volkskammer
for Berlin
In office
20 October 1963 – 17 October 1976
Preceded byMulti-member district
Succeeded byMulti-member district
In office
18 March 1948 – 3 February 1954
Preceded byConstituency established
Succeeded byPeter Florin
Member of the Reichstag
for Potsdam II
In office
1 July 1928 – 28 February 1933
Preceded byMulti-member district
Succeeded byConstituency abolished
Member of the Landtag of Prussia
for Cologne–Aachen
In office
10 March 1921 – 5 January 1925
Preceded byMulti-member district
Succeeded byMulti-member district
Central Committee Secretariat[a] responsibilities
1949–1952KPD Working Office
1949–1952West Department
Personal details
Born(1892-01-14)14 January 1892
Rohrbach bei Bitsch, Elsaß-Lothringen, German Empire
Died17 December 1981(1981-12-17) (aged 89)
East Berlin, East Germany
Political partySED (1946–1981)
KPD (1920–1946)
USPD (1917–1920)
SPD (1913–1917)
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1919; died 1974)​
Children4
Occupation
  • Politician
  • Civil Servant
  • Party Functionary
Awards
  • Star of People's Friendship
Military service
Allegiance German Empire
 Spanish Republic
Branch/serviceImperial German Army
International Brigades
Years of service1914–1918
1936–1938
RankCommissar
Battles/wars
Central institution membership
Other offices held

Franz Dahlem (14 January 1892 – 17 December 1981) was a German

German Democratic Republic, and held senior positions in the Volkskammer and SED Central Committee
.

Dahlem participated in the

Second World War.[2] Dahlem became well-known and popular in the SED leadership by the early 1950s and was seen by some as a possible rival to Walter Ulbricht.[3][4] Dahlem was one of several high-ranking SED officials to be removed from power by Ulbricht after the Uprising of 1953. Dahlem was formally rehabilitated by the SED in 1956, serving on the Central Committee from 1957 until his retirement in 1974.[4][3]

Early life

Franz Dahlem was born on 14 January 1892 in

railway worker.[2] After attending middle school in Château-Salins, he went on to senior school at Sarreguemines, where his school career was curtailed due to lack of money.[6] He was also a member of the Catholic Youth League at Sarreguemines between 1908 and 1911.[3] He undertook a traineeship as an export salesman in Saarbrücken between 1911 and 1913.[3] and / or Cologne[2] In 1913, Dahlem joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD).,[5] remaining a member of it till 1917.[3]

Dahlem, despite his opposition to the

First World War, served in the Imperial German Army between 1914 and 1918.[5] However, when the SPD split in 1917, primarily over the issue of party support for continuing its support for the government line over the war, he chose the breakaway anti-war Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD).[4] That year he was wounded in action while serving on the Eastern Front and, after being transferred to Macedonia, developed malaria which led to several periods in hospital.[4]

In 1919, Dahlem married Käthe Weber, who shared in his political beliefs and activism.[7]

Weimar Republic

Dahlem's official Landtag of Prussia portrait, 1921

Following the war, Dahlem was involved in the

German Revolution of 1918–19 and joined the workers' and soldiers' councils, initially in Allenstein in East Prussia, and subsequently in Cologne, participating in support of implementation of the slogan "All power to the councils" ("Alle Macht den Räten!").[2] He also co-founded and became the editor of Sozialistische Republik, a USPD newspaper in which he powerfully advocated the party's membership of the Comintern and a party merger with the new Communist Party of Germany (KPD).[2] He also served, between 1919 and 1923, as a Cologne city councillor.[3]

In December 1920, Dahlem took part in the "unification party conference" at which the

Leninist principles" to party organisation. In 1927, he himself joined the Central Committee, becoming a member of its Politburo just two years later.[2]

Dahlem's official Reichstag portrait, 1930

Dahlem also participated in the legislative processes of

Weimar Germany, sitting as a member in the Landtag of Prussia between 1921 and 1924, and as a member of the Reichstag, representing the Potsdam electoral district, between 1928 and 1933.[4][1]

Recurring fragmentation was a feature of German

left-wing politics in general and of the KPD in particular during the 1920s. One reason Dahlem was sent to Berlin in 1921 to edit the Internationalen Presse-Korrespondenz was to enforce his separation from Central Committee members in his Rhineland home patch at a time when he was opposing the party leadership. Areas of contention included both the party's attitude to the competing factions of Soviet communism during the Russian Civil War and the practical issue of how fast to progress the party's revolutionary objectives fter what was seen as the failure of the revolution of 1918–1919. After 1923, with Grigory Zinoviev sidelined in Moscow and Joseph Stalin's control becoming more absolute, there was no longer any question of the KPD having to choose between competing versions of Soviet communism, and the party became more focused domestically. Dahlem was closely aligned with the strategy of the KPD leader Ernst Thälmann during a further period of internal fragmentation at the end of the 1920s. Thälmann's strategy was variously seen either as a determined policy to unite the working class behind the party in order to resist the rising Nazi Party, or else as an aggressive and sustained assault on the centre-left SPD which created a bitter division on the political left through which helped the Nazis find their path to power.[2][3][4] In November 1930, Thälmann suggested that Dahlem take over the leadership of the Revolutionary Trades Union Opposition.[2][6] He retained this function till he was replaced by Fritz Schulte in June 1932.[6]

Nazi period and exile

The

concentration camps
.

In May 1933, under instructions from the party leadership, Dahlem himself fled to Paris with Wilhelm Pieck und Wilhelm Florin, which quickly became the de facto headquarters of the KPD. In 1934, he had taken French citizenship, which he would retain till 1941.[3] His own membership of the Central Committee was confirmed in 1935, following internal party ructions during the early 1930s. In 1939, he was back in the party Politburo.[6]

Dahlem was back in Berlin (secretly and illegally) between February and July 1934, undertaking "political work".[3] Much of his activity was involved in trying to build and strengthen an Lutetia Circle, a left-wing anti-Nazi resistance organisation.[2] In July 1935, he took part in the 7th World Congress of the Comintern.[2] In 1936, after he had been undertaking "party work" in Prague for some months, he was stripped of his German citizenship.[3] By 1937, the Spanish Civil War was becoming, for adherents of both sides, the fulcrum of the struggle between fascism and communism. Between 1936 and 1938, Dahlem was in charge of the Central Political Commission of the International Brigades in Spain.[3] In 1938/39, he took over as leader of the Central Committee secretariat of the KPD in its Paris exile, in succession to Walter Ulbricht whose by this time, when not in Spain, was spending most of his time not in Paris but in the Soviet Union.[3] Dahlem took the lead in preparing for and running the German Communist Berner conference in Paris, which took place in February 1939.[2]

Second World War

In September 1939, the

Vichy government to hand him over immediately.[12]

In October 1941, he was one of approximately 20 German prisoners removed to a secret prison at

Mauthausen concentration camp in Upper Austria.[6] According to one source, he survived his internment at Mauthausen only because of the solidarity shown to him by fellow veterans of the Spanish Civil War.[12] Because of his Comintern involvement and his participation in Spain, Dahlen had a high-profile internationally at this time. In the United Kingdom in early 1942, a petition was signed by 350 people, including 98 members of the House of Commons and 40 members of the House of Lords, calling for the release of Dahlen, Luigi Longo and other opponents of the Nazi regime imprisoned at Castres.[14]

German Democratic Republic

Dahlem (second from right) at the merger of the KPD and SPD in April 1946

On 7 May 1945, the day before

Stalinization or democratic centralism (at least not openly), he did stress the need for rank-and-file participation in the decision-making process, arguing that the party leadership could only be effective if they followed "the will of the party membership."[15]

Dahlem welcoming two party veterans to the 3rd Congress of the SED, 1950

Dahlem served as a member of the SED Party Executive and its powerful Central Committee between 1946 and 1953.

General Secretary of the SED.[6]

Condemnation and rehabilitation

In March 1953, Stalin died without a designated successor and the subsequent

Uprising of 1953 in June. It was suppressed with the help of Soviet Forces in Germany, and was followed by a period of heightened anxiety within the SED leadership. This in turn triggered a purge of senior party officials seen as insufficiently loyal to the party line, and therefore possible threats to the power base of Ulbricht. Dahlem's son Robert had been a leader of the strike and demonstrations in Rostock, and appealed for his release. This was successful as Erich Mielke
personally had Robert released, but he was expelled from the party and lost his job.

In 1950, Dahlem had already attracted the attention of the

Zionist conspiracy and Ulbricht pressed Moscow to give the go ahead to set up a show trial for Dahlem along with one for Merker.[17] Dahlem refused to co-operate in a process of self-criticism, and accordingly the ZPKK dug back into his past in some detail.[6] Hermann Matern, the head of the commission, was critical above all of the attitude Dahlem had displayed in Paris back in 1939, which seems to be a reference to his offer to the French government of military support on behalf of the German communists in French exile.[6] His wife spoke up in his defence, in June 1953 accusing Matern of lying.[7] In the end, Dahlem was spared a show trial, which one source attributes to the lessening of political savagery sometimes characterised as the Khrushchev Thaw.[6] Ulbricht nevertheless had his way in respect of Merker whose show trial took place on 29/30 March 1955 and ended with the pronouncement of an eight-year prison sentence.[17][18]

Dahlem's return to grace began in 1955, though he was never again powerful enough to be seen as a threat to Ulbricht. He was given a junior post in the department for

higher education, and a couple of years later he was promoted to the rank of a junior minister in the department.[6] His formal rehabilitation took place in July 1956.[6] In January 1957, he was co-opted back into the Central Committee, and also became a member of the influential National Research Council.[3][6] Merker was also released and rehabilitated in 1957. From 1964, he was also president of the German-French Society of the GDR and a member of the executive committee of the Committee of Antifascist Resistance Fighters
.

Later career

Under the new

1968 Constitution of East Germany, power was resided unambiguously with the SED, and the Volksammer served as little more than a rubber stamp for the Central Committee. The stark inferiority of the parliament was in some respects obscured because senior members of the Central Committee, including Dahlem, also sat as members of the Volkskammer.[3] He formally handed in his mandate on 3 February 1954. He returned to the Volkskammer in 1963 and remained a member of it until 1976.[5]

Awards and honours (not necessarily the full list)

Notes

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Dahlem, Franz". Reichstags-Handbuch, Wahlperiode. Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n "Franz Dahlem (1892 – 1981)". Freundeskreis „Ernst-Thälmann-Gedenkstättte“ e.V., Ziegenhals. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Bernd-Rainer Barth; Helmut Müller-Enbergs. "Dahlem, Franz * 14.1.1892, † 17.12.1981 Mitglied des Politbüros des ZK der SED, Kaderchef der SED". Wer war wer in der DDR? (Note that this web page also includes, lower down, paragraphs on Dahlem from the "Handbuch der Deutschen Kommunisten" authored and compiled by Hermann Weber and Andreas Herbst). Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin & Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Berlin. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i mw. "Franz Dahlem 1892-1981". Lebendiges Museum Online (LeMO). Stiftung Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin & Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  5. ^ a b c d "Franz Dahlem (14. Januar 1892 - 17. Dezember 1981)". Biografien. Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, Berlin. Retrieved 6 May 2015.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u "Dahlem, Franz * 14.1.1892, † 17.12.1981 Mitglied des Politbüros des ZK der SED, Kaderchef der SED". Handbuch der Deutschen Kommunisten. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin & Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Berlin. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  7. ^ a b c d Bernd-Rainer Barth. "Dahlem, Käthe geb. Weber * 20.3.1899, † 25.12.1974 DFD-Funktionärin". Wer war wer in der DDR?. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin & Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Berlin. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  8. ^ Hermann Weber; Andreas Herbst. "Ackermann, Henriette * 8.9.1887, † 31.8.1977". Handbuch der Deutschen Kommunisten. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin & Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Berlin. Retrieved 21 October 2016.
  9. ^ "Die illegale Tagung des ZK der KPD am 7. Februar 1933". Freundeskreis „Ernst-Thälmann-Gedenkstättte“ e.V., Ziegenhals. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  10. ^ "Zur Entstehung und Geschichte der Ernst-Thälmann-Gedenkstätte in Ziegenhals". Freundeskreis „Ernst-Thälmann-Gedenkstättte“ e.V., Ziegenhals. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  11. ^ "Teilnehmer an der Tagung des ZK der KPD am 07. Februar 1933". Freundeskreis „Ernst-Thälmann-Gedenkstättte“ e.V., Ziegenhals. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  12. ^ a b c Gerhard Leo (August 1998). "Deutsche im französischen Widerstand - ein Weg nach Europa". DRAFD e.V. (Verband Deutscher in der Résistance, in den Streitkräften der Antihitlerkoalition und der Bewegung "Freies Deutschland"), Berlin. Retrieved 7 May 2016.
  13. ^ Gerd Joswiakowski (December 2009). "Flucht aus dem Geheimgefängnis". book review of Wie sich Antifaschisten in Castres selbst befreiten by Jonny Granzow. Zeitschrift “antifa” - Magazin für antifaschistische Politik und Kultur, Berlin. Retrieved 7 May 2016.
  14. ISBN 978-3-940781-27-7
    , p. 62
  15. ^ Grieder, Peter (1999). The East German leadership 1946-1973. Manchester: Manchester University Press. p. 33.
  16. ISBN 0-618-21925-0
    .
  17. ^
    ISBN 0-275-92783-0. Retrieved 7 May 2016. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help
    )
  18. ^ "Merker, Paul * 1.2.1894, † 13.5.1969 Mitglied des Politbüros des ZK der SED". Handbuch der Deutschen Kommunisten. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin & Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Berlin. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
  1. ^ Party Executive Committee Central Secretariat until July 1950.
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