Peter Florin
Peter Florin | |
---|---|
President of the United Nations General Assembly | |
In office 1987–1988 | |
Preceded by | Humayun Rashid Choudhury |
Succeeded by | Dante Caputo |
Personal details | |
Born | Second World War | 2 October 1921
Peter Florin (2 October 1921 – 17 February 2014) was an East German politician and diplomat.
Early life
Florin was born in Cologne on 2 October 1921.[1]
His father, Wilhelm Florin (1894 - 1944), was a leading figure in the pre-war Communist Party of Germany.[2] and, between 1924 and 1933, a member of the Reichstag (national parliament).[3]
Florin left Germany with his parents in 1933, when Adolf Hitler came to power and began persecuting Communists,[2] moving first to France and then to the Soviet Union, where he attended the Karl Liebknecht School. There, he studied chemistry at the D. Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology.[1]
During the
Career
Following the war, Florin entered politics in the
From 1967 to 1969, Florin was East Germany's ambassador to Czechoslovakia.[1] He supported the Soviet crushing of the Prague Spring uprising in 1968.[2] In 1969, he was named secretary of state and first deputy foreign minister.[1]
From 1973 to 1982, Florin was the German Democratic Republic's permanent representative to the United Nations. In 1982, he became president of the national commission for UNESCO in East Germany. In 1987 and 1988, he presided over the forty-second session of the United Nations General Assembly.[1]
Personal life
Peter Florin was married, and had three children.
Florin spoke fluent German, Russian and English, and good French. During his presidency of the United Nations General Assembly, he was, according to the New York Times, "nicknamed 'Comrade Glasnost' by delegates, who s[aw] him as him a symbol of the modern Communist of the Gorbachev era."[2]
He died aged 92 in 2014.[5]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h Biography on the website of the United Nations
- ^ a b c d e "MAN IN THE NEWS; A German In Charge: Peter Florin", New York Times, 22 September 1987
- ^ "Florin, Wilhelm * 16.3.1894, † 5.7.1944". Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur: Biographische Datenbanken. Retrieved 19 November 2014.
- ^ "Namensliste der drei KPD-Einsatzgruppen vom 27. April 1945" Archived 2014-12-15 at the Wayback Machine German Federal Archives. BArch NY 4036/517. Retrieved November 22, 2011 (in German)
- ^ "DDR-Diplomat Peter Florin gestorben (German)". Die Welt. 17 February 2014. Retrieved 18 February 2014.
External links
- "Forty-second General Assembly opens in hopeful atmosphere of increasing multilateral co-operation", UN Chronicle, November 1987