Karl Schirdewan

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Karl Schirdewan
Paul Fröhlich (1953)
First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party
in Saxony
In office
February 1952 – October 1952
Second Secretary
  • Gerda Meschter
Preceded byErnst Lohagen
Succeeded byPosition abolished
Member of the Volkskammer
In office
23 July 1952 – 24 February 1958
Preceded byErnst Lohagen
Succeeded byHarry Bachmann
Central Committee Secretariat responsibilities
1956-1958Cadre Affairs
1953-1958Youth
1953-1958Woman
1952-1956Party Organs
Personal details
Born(1907-05-14)14 May 1907
Stettin, Province of Silesia, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire (now Szczecin, Poland)
Died14 July 1998(1998-07-14) (aged 91)
Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany
Political partyParty of Democratic Socialism
(1989–1998)
Other political
affiliations		Socialist Unity Party
(1952–1989)
Communist Party of Germany
(1925–1946)
SpouseGisela Schirdewan
Children4
Occupation
  • Politician
  • Civil Servant
  • Party Clerk
AwardsPatriotic Order of Merit, 1st class
Central institution membership
Other offices held
  • 1958–1965: Director,
    State Archives Administration
  • 1954–1957: Member,
    Security Commission at the Politburo
  • 1950–1952: Head, West Department of the Central Committee

Karl Schirdewan (14 May 1907 – 14 July 1998) was a German

East German politician.[1][2]

During the mid 1950s, Schirdewan was seen as a potential successor to Walter Ulbricht but fell out of favour in 1958.[3] Ulbricht continued to lead the government until 1971, while 1958 was the year in which Schirdewan was thrown out of the Politburo[4] and placed in charge of the National Archives at Potsdam,[2] a position from which he retired in 1964[4] or 1965.[1]

Biography

Early years

Schirdewan was born in

Breslau, but in 1918 his step-mother died of tuberculosis, and his relationship with his step-father's new wife never became close.[9] Karl Schirdewan left school when he was 16 and looked, without success, for work in a book shop. He then, in 1922, began a commercial apprenticeship with a grain company: this occupied him till 1924[1] when the company went bankrupt.[9] Later, between 1926 and 1929, he worked as an office assistant and as messenger.[1] At one stage he was employed as a transport worker,[8] and there were also periods of unemployment, notably between 1929 and 1931.[1]

Communist Party of Germany

On the political front, Karl Schirdewan joined the

Breslau branch of the Communist Party itself in 1925.[2] Between 1925 and 1927 he was employed with the Young Communists as an official, in September 1929 voted onto the organisation's central committee,[8] and appointed chairman of the Silesian regional Communist Party branch.[7] In 1931/32 he took publishing department of the party's "Junge Garde" newspaper,[7] also becoming co-editor:[1]
this represented his first senior party position.

Following feuding within the local communist leadership, Friedrich Schlotterbeck and Karl Schirdewan were relieved of their party functions in Silesia in the Autumn of 1931:[8] in 1932 Schierwan took over as chairman of the Young Communists in the important East Prussia region.[7]

In the KPD Underground and Concentration Camps - 1933-1945

In January of 1933,

forced march, as the regime abandoned and rushed to try and destroy concentration camps in eastern parts of the country, which were being over-run by Soviet forces.[7]

Post-war Soviet occupation zone

The

contentious merger that in April 1946, created the Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands / SED), he was a member of the leadership committee ("Parteivorstand") of what by 1949 would become the ruling party in a new German one- party dictatorship.[11] During 1946/47, however, his political engagement was unavoidably compromised by illness, as a result of which a stay in a Berlin Hospital was followed by a period in the Sülzhayn Sanatorium.[1]

In 1947, he became the leader of a working group on the "Study of illegal party history" ("Studium der illegalen Parteigeschichte"), mandated to gather information on the attitudes of party comrades to the Nazi period. In practice, as Schirdewan later recalled, the group's work involved combing through Gestapo files to gather information on anti-fascists - Communists and Socialists - who had been targets for government information gathering during the twelve Nazi years. The information would be used after 1949 in support of political purges of the SED. In January 1949, when party membership had reached 1,773,000, the party was purged of 23,000 "class enemies", in an exercise which evidently made use of the work undertaken by Schirdewan's working group.[12]

When the

Soviet occupation zone in 1946 through a merger of the Communist Party and the more moderately left-wing SPD, the intention in Moscow seems to have been to accomplish something similar in the other military occupation zones further to the west and south.[13] In (East) Berlin the SED operated, from the outset, a "West Germany" desk headed up by Franz Dahlem.[13] Two senior officials with suitable diplomatic and intellectual abilities worked for Dahlem on liaison with the residual Communist Party in the British and US occupation zones. Schirdewan was the man entrusted with liaison in the British zone.[13] By 1949, however, it was becoming clear that imposing a Soviet-style solution across the western zones of Germany would not be possible without successful prosecution of another major war, and as the party structures adapted to this reality it was no more than part of a natural progression that in February 1949 Karl Schirdewan was appointed as deputy head of the "Westkommission",[13] described by one authority as an operation "looking for ways to win over West German politicians for the Communist cause".[2] In 1950 he was appointed to head up the newly "West department" (Westabteilung) within the Party Central Committee.[14]

German Democratic Republic

In October 1949, partly in response to the creation of the

German Democratic Republic (East Germany), a stand-alone Soviet sponsored German states with constitutional arrangements increasingly modeled on those of the Soviet Union itself. Schirdewan's experience on the political front-line with West Germany and his Central Committee responsibilities for the "West Department" effectively made him the leader of the East German ruling party's on-going Social Democratic Action Sozialdemokratische Aktion / (SDA) project.[15]

On 6 May 1955, in a ceremony timed to honour the tenth anniversary of the "Liberation from Fascism", Karl Schirdewan was an early recipient of the Patriotic Order of Merit (Vaterländischer Verdienstorden) in Gold from the president in recognition of his "struggle against Fascism and his contributions to the creation of the German Democratic Republic"

1952 was the year in which the German Democratic Republic abolished the regional tier of government, and it was the year in which Karl Schirdewan was appointed First Secretary of the party leadership in Saxony in succession to Ernst Lohagen. With the abolition of Saxony as a regional power hub politically, later that year he became First Secretary of the party leadership in the important Leipzig region, a post he held till 1957.[1] Nationally, although he had been working closely with the Party Central Committee since the party's foundation, it was only in May 1953 that Karl Schirdewan was himself co-opted as a member, following the disgrace and expulsion from it of Wilhelm Zaisser and Rudolf Herrnstadt, on 17 June 1953 also taking Zaisser's place in the Politburo.[8] He now acquired various further powers and responsibilities, serving from 26 July 1953 as head of the Central Committee's newly created "Chief Organ of the Party and of Mass Movements" ("Leitende Organe der Partei u. der Massenorganisationen"),[1] and from 1954 as a member of the Central Committee's "Security Commission".[16]

The mid 1950s were the high point of Karl Schirdewan's political career. Sources refer to him as the "Second Man" ("zweiter Mann"), second only to Walter Ulbricht in the national hierarchy.[10] It was always obvious to him, as he later recalled, that he had achieved his eminence because of the Soviet Union and not because of Walter Ulbricht.[10] The two men loathed one another. Schirdewan described Ulbricht as a "happy intriguer" ("Intrigant Fröhlich") and was known to have been close to senior East German politicians, such as Anton Ackermann and Paul Merker, who had experienced enforced career-breaks or worse, after falling out with Ulbricht.[10]

Relations with Nikita Khrushchev

Schirdewan was a member of the four man delegation sent by the East German

"Communist" Central Europe.[17] Admitting to the scale of Stalin's crimes against humanity and implicitly destroying the old Stalinist certainties: it appeared to open to way to a form of communist state more open to progress and less dependent on repression, which for Schirdewan was clearly part of Khrushchev's calculation.[17] While Schirdewan was open to such possibilities his fellow East German delegates, taking their queue from Ulbricht, reacted with horror to the possibility that new political trends in Moscow might be emerging to threaten the stranglehold that the communist states such as East Germany held over their people.[17]


Quotation

"Die SED wurde durch die Verteidigung des Stalinismus dem Verfall preisgegeben. Ihr Versagen vor der Geschichte ist nicht zu überbieten. Ein demokratischer Sozialismus hätte auf dem Programm dieser Partei niemals stehen können. Diese SED mußte erst zerschlagen werden, um ein freies Denken zu ermöglichen und eine Partei zu schaffen, die die sozialistischen Grundsätze ausreifen läßt und befolgt."[5]

Karl Schirdewan 1994


"The SED descended to ruin by defending Stalinism. Their failure to recognise historical reality could not have been more absolute. A democratic form of socialism could never have been included in this party's programme. In order to make free thought possible and to create a party able to build and follow socialist principles, it was necessary first to destroy the SED."


Quotation

"Eine politische Dekadenz breitete sich aus. Es war wie eine Inquisition aus dem Mittelalter.Die politische Unkultur, wie sie wohl so niemals in der Parteigeschichte stattgefunden hatte, wucherte bis zum Exzeß."[18]

Karl Schirdewan


"Political decadence took hold [of the SED]. It was like an inquisition from the Middle Ages. An excess of political barbarism, probably unprecedented in the party's history, grew out of control."

"Secret Speech"

Khrushchev's wish to open up the Soviet past to scrutiny was in stark contrast with Walter Ulbricht's approach, and tensions between the two leaders over this, and over Khrushchev's determination to improve access to West Berlin from West Germany, provide a defining backdrop to Schirdewan's own career between 1956 and 1958. Following the Secret Speech, divides seem to have opened up between reformers and hardliners in the politburos of various countries, including the Soviet Union itself, with the hardliners generally outnumbering the reformers. The obvious personal tensions in Ulbricht's relations with his Soviet counterpart nevertheless encouraged East German Politburo members with reformist tendencies to contemplate a scenario under which Soviet pressure, manipulative skills, and simple power might enforce the replacement of Ulbricht,[2] which is indeed what happened when Erich Honecker took over from Ulbricht in 1971.[2] In 1957, talk of Schirdewan as Ulbricht's potential successor merely intensified Ulbricht's discretely frenetic counter-scheming in order to block such a possibility.[7]

Although the speech itself remained secret, on 5 March 1956, Khrushchev distributed a written account of Stalin's crimes to the 18 million Soviet citizens who were also Communist Party members, and who now discovered that their idol was a mass murder (at least, according to his successor). Reactions in the Soviet Union were mixed and confused. When the revelations of the crimes committed by Stalin and his followers found their way to the party leadership in East Germany, they were accompanied by an internal document which included a guide on how the revelations should be interpreted, together with an estimation of how the revelations would be impacting Soviet society.[17] Towards the end of March 1956, Schirdewan again encountered Nikita Khrushchev, this time at the funeral of the Polish leader, Bolesław Bierut who had died suddenly - some said he was poisoned - a couple of weeks after returning to Warsaw following the 20th Party Congress in Moscow. Khrushchev took the opportunity to express his fury over the way his publicising of Stalin's crimes had been communicated to the party leadership by the Ulbricht government in Berlin.[17]

During a visit to East Berlin in 1957, Khrushchev invited Schirdewan to give his opinion on the possibilities of a more collaborative relationship with Social Democratic parties.[17] Recalling his working-class upbringing in Breslau, Schirdewan related how the left-wing elements in youth movements of the Social Democratic Party in 1920s Germany had worked well with their Communist comrades.[17] The Soviet leader pressed for more details and then suggested Schirdewan should holiday with him at the Black Sea resort of Sochi so that the two of them might discuss the future further.[17] Schirdewan had already taken his holiday entitlement for 1957 and explained that a second holiday would need to be cleared with his boss.[17] Ulbricht, when asked, responded with the single word answer, "Ach!".[17] It is still not clear for how long, nor how powerfully Schirdewan had been arguing the case for reform with his Politburo colleagues in Berlin, but it is apparent that by 1957, his relationship with Ulbricht was not good.[7] There was no second holiday.[17]

Downfall

Within the East German leadership, Schirdewan, according to his own later recollection, continued to urge colleagues to respond more actively to the

show trials. It is true that the sentences handed out to Wolfgang Harich, Walter Janka and their alleged fellow conspirators[19] in 1957 were less savage than those received by Johann Burianek or Günter Stempel in 1952,[20] and the propaganda accompanying the show trials in 1957 was less shrill than it had been earlier in the decade. Nevertheless, there was nothing in the government's domestic policy to suggest that the Communist regime was about to apply the radical reformist thinking advocated by Khrushchev the previous year. Meanwhile, Moscow was increasingly preoccupied with events in Hungary, where the fast moving aftermath of the Secret Speech had culminated in a government declaration of intent to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact at the end of October 1956, and a Soviet military intervention with tanks on the streets of Budapest in November. Khrushchev had apparently come into line with the hardline faction headed up by his Kremlin deputy Vyacheslav Molotov. With Khrushchev distracted and possibly losing influence in Moscow, in East Berlin, Walter Ulbricht, backed by senior colleagues who included Erich Mielke and Erich Honecker,[2] felt strong enough to move against Karl Schirdewan.[7] In October 1957, Schirdewan and his fellow reformer Ernst Wollweber resigned from key offices. The climax of the downfall came on 5 February 1958, when Schirdewan was expelled from the Party Central Committee.[1] The expulsion, enacted at the 35th Plenum of the Central Committee, was attributed to "Factionalism" ("Fraktionstätigkeit")[21] and was accompanied by a "stern rebuke" ("strenge Rüge").[8] The expulsion had come despite a plea from Khrushchev at a meeting in Moscow a couple of weeks earlier (to which, as minutes of the meeting indicate, Ulbricht had agreed) that Schirdewan should at least retain his Central Committee membership.[21] Karl Schirdewan was placed in charge of the National Archives at Potsdam, which, from the perspective of the national leadership team, was seen as a "punishment job".[22]

Long retirement

Little was heard of Karl Schirdewan for the next thirty years. He retired from the national archives in 1964 or 1965. Sources differ as to which.

German Democratic Republic
itself.

During the events that culminated in German reunification (October 1990) East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) reinvented itself in preparation for East Germany's first (and last) democratic general election, emerging, at that time to an uncertain future, rebranded as the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). In 1990 the PDS formally rehabilitated Schirdewan,[3] more than three decades after its predecessor had expelled him, and recruited him into its "Council of elders" ("Ältestenrat"): his widow is still (2015) one of its (approximately 20) members.[23]

Schirdewan also lived long enough to contribute to the historiography of East Germany, giving at least one substantial interview.[7] In 1994 he published a book that focused on his personal nemesis, Walter Ulbricht.[18][24] A second autobiographical volume, "Ein Jahrhundert Leben: Erinnerungen und Visionen : Autobiographie", was published in 1998 which was the year in which he died.[25]

Personal life

Schirdewan had already been married for some time to his wife, Gisela, at the time in February 1956 when she collected him from the airport on his return from hearing Khrushchev delivering his Moscow speech, "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences".[17] At that stage there are hints that the couple were deferring having children because of the political uncertainties surrounding them.[17] Many years later, addressing mourners at his funeral in 1998, the pioneering PDS leader Michael Schumann addressed Schirdevan's wife Gisela, his four children, his grand children and other relatives.[5] The number of his grandchildren was not given, and sources focused on his political career are silent on his private life, which is usual with East German politicians.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Bernd-Rainer Barth; Helmut Müller-Enbergs. "Schirdewan, Karl (eigtl.: Aretz) * 14.5.1907, † 14.7.1998 Mitglied des Politbüros des ZK der SED". Wer war wer in der DDR?. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin & Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Berlin. Retrieved 15 December 2015.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h David Childs (10 August 1998). "Parteifeinde und Philosophen: Im Brandt-Bericht erwähnte DDR-Prominente". The Independent. Retrieved 15 December 2015.
  3. ^ a b c "Gestorben - Karl Schirdewan .... das seltene Beispiel eines lernfähigen Kommunisten in der DDR-Führung.". Der Spiegel (online). 20 July 1998. Retrieved 15 December 2015.
  4. ^ a b c "Parteifeinde und Philosophen: Im Brandt-Bericht erwähnte DDR-Prominente". Der Spiegel. Der Spiegel (online). 2 February 1967. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
  5. ^ a b c d e Michael Schumann, Mitglied des [PDS] Parteivorstandes (5 August 1998). "Karl Schirdewan - Worte des Gedenkens ... Aus der Trauerrede". Die Linke / PDS. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
  6. ^ Certain English language obituaries give his birth place as Königsberg. However, earlier and later sources - most sources - including the oration given at his funeral, give his birth place as Stettin.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Jens-Fietje Dwars (as interviewer and compiler of accompanying biographical introduction and marginalia on Karl Schirdewan) [in German]; Karl Schirdewan (as interviewee) (May 2002). ""... in der elitären Ebene". Ein Gespräch mit Karl Schirdewan (an interview with Karl Schirdewan)" (PDF). published here in May 2002, based on an interview that took place at Schirdevan's family home on 11 July 1994. Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (Utopie kreativ), Berlin. pp. 428–438. Retrieved 15 December 2015. {{cite web}}: |author1= has generic name (help)
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h "Karl Schirdewan, Karl". Biographische Angaben aus dem Handbuch der Deutschen Kommunisten. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin & Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Berlin. Retrieved 15 December 2015.
  9. ^
    ISBN 0-674-01045-0. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help
    )
  10. ^ a b c d Herbert Mayer (1999). "Der zweite Mann hinter Ulbricht: Karl Schirdewan: Ein Jahrhundert Leben ... Erinnerungen und Visionen". Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein e.V. , Berlin. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
  11. ^ "Karl Schirdewan ... deutscher Politiker (DDR); SED; PDS ... Geburtstag: 14. Mai 1907 Stettin ... Todestag: 14. Juli 1998 Potsdam". Munzinger-Archiv GmbH, Ravensburg. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
  12. ISBN 978-3-525-35018-8. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help
    )
  13. ^
    ISBN 0-19-820693-3. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help
    )
  14. ISBN 3-412-14200-X. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help
    )
  15. ISBN 3-412-14200-X. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help
    )
  16. ISBN 978-3406638381
    .
  17. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Jochen Arntz (1 August 1998). "Die Zäsur". Gekürzter Vorabdruck aus ('"Shortened preview from"'): Karl Schirdewan. Ein Jahrhundert Leben. Erinnerungen und Visionen. Autobiographie. Edition Ost, Berlin 1998. Berliner Zeitung (online). Archived from the original on 22 December 2015. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
  18. ^ a b Maurice Vos, Western Illinois University (1995). "Schirdewan, Karl. Aufstand gegen Ulbricht. Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag(book review)". GDR Bulletin. New Prairie Press. pp. 37–38. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
  19. ^ Karl Wilhelm Fricke (9 March 2007). "Anklage: Staatsverrat: Vor 50 Jahren: Der Harich-Prozess in Ostberlin". Deutschlandfunk, Köln. Retrieved 17 December 2015.
  20. ISBN 978-3-934085-09-1. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 July 2015. Retrieved 17 December 2015. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help
    )
  21. ^
    ISBN 978-388-680720-8. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help
    )
  22. ISBN 978-3-412-20598-0. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help
    )
  23. ^ "Die Mitglieder des Ältestenrates der PDS". Die Linke / PDS. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
  24. ISBN 3-7466-8008-5
    .
  25. ISBN 978-3-929-16134-2
    .
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