Walter Ulbricht
Walter Ulbricht | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Chairman of the National Defense Council | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In office 11 February 1960 – 3 May 1971 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Secretary |
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Preceded by | Office established | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Succeeded by | Erich Honecker | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers[b] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In office 7 October 1949 – 12 September 1960 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chairman | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Preceded by | Position established | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Succeeded by | Willi Stoph (1962) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Central Committee Secretariat[c] responsibilities | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1952–1966 | International Relations | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1949–1957 | Church Affairs | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1949–1956 | Cadre Affairs | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1946–1958 | State and Legal Affairs | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1946–1956 | Security Affairs | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
1946–1950 | Economics | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Personal details | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Born | Walter Ernst Paul Ulbricht 30 June 1893 German Army | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Years of service | 1915–1918 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Rank | Gefreiter | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Battles/wars | World War I | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Central institution membership
Other offices held
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Leader of East Germany
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Early political career
First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party Government and policies
Legacy Family |
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Walter Ernst Paul Ulbricht (German:
Ulbricht began his political life during the
After the end of
The nationalization of East German industry under Ulbricht failed to raise the standard of living to a level comparable to that of West Germany. The result was massive emigration, with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the country to the west every year in the 1950s. When Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev gave permission for a wall to stop the outflow in Berlin, Ulbricht had the Berlin Wall built in 1961, which triggered a diplomatic crisis but succeeded in curtailing emigration. The failures of Ulbricht's New Economic System and Economic System of Socialism from 1963 to 1970 led to his forcible retirement for "health reasons" and replacement as First Secretary in 1971 by Erich Honecker with Soviet approval. Ulbricht suffered a stroke and died in 1973.
Early years
Ulbricht was born in 1893 in
First World War and the German Revolution
Ulbricht served in the
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.[7]
The Weimar years
Along with the bulk of the USPD, he joined the KPD in 1920 and became one of its active organizers.
In the years before the 1933
At an event arranged by the Nazi Party on 22 January 1931, Ulbricht was allowed by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Party's Gauleiter of Berlin and Brandenburg, to give a speech. Subsequently, Goebbels delivered his own speech. The attempt at a friendly discussion turned hostile and became a debate.[9][10] A struggle between Nazis and Communists began: police officers divided them. Both sides had tried to use this event for their election propaganda.[11] The brawl took two hours to disperse and over a hundred were injured in the melee.[10]
The Bülowplatz murders
During the last days of the
On 2 August 1931, KPD members of the
Enraged by Ulbricht's words, Kippenberger and Neumann decided to assassinate
According to John Koehler, "Of all the policemen in strife-torn Berlin, the reds hated Anlauf the most. His precinct included the area around KPD headquarters, which made it the most dangerous in the city. The captain almost always led the riot squads that broke up illegal rallies of the Communist Party."[14]
Nazi and war years
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.
Ulbricht lived in exile in Paris and
At the time of the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, in August 1939, Ulbricht and the rest of the German Communist Party had supported the treaty.
Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Ulbricht was active in a group of German communists under NKVD supervision called the National Committee for a Free Germany (a group including, among others, the poet Erich Weinert and the writer Willi Bredel) which, among other things, translated propaganda material into German,[17] 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.
Post-war political career
Role in communist takeover of East Germany
In April 1945, Ulbricht led a group of party functionaries ("
Rise to power
After the founding of the
Leadership of East Germany
Consolidation of authority
After the death of Stalin (whose funeral was attended by Ulbricht, Grotewohl and other German communists) in March of that year, Ulbricht's position was in danger because Moscow was considering taking a soft line regarding Germany.
The June
Ulbricht managed to rise to power despite having a peculiarly squeaky falsetto voice, the result of a bout of diphtheria in his youth. His Upper Saxon accent, combined with the high register of his voice, made his speeches sound incomprehensible at times.[24]
Construction of a socialist society in GDR
At the third congress of the SED in 1950, Ulbricht announced a
The
Ulbricht uncritically followed the orthodox Stalinist model of industrialization: concentration on the development of heavy industry.
In 1957, Ulbricht arranged a visit to an
The Berlin Wall
Despite economic gains, emigration still continued. By 1961, 1.65 million people had fled to the west.[26] Fearful of the possible consequences of this continued outflow of refugees, and aware of the dangers an East German collapse would present to the Eastern Bloc, Ulbricht pressured Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in early 1961 to stop the outflow and resolve the status of Berlin.[27] During this time, the refugees' mood was rarely expressed in words, though East German laborer Kurt Wismach did so effectively by shouting for free elections during one of Ulbricht's speeches.[28]
When Khrushchev approved the building of a wall as a means to resolve this situation, Ulbricht threw himself into the project with abandon. Delegating different tasks in the process while maintaining overall supervision and careful control of the project, Ulbricht managed to keep secret the purchase of vast amounts of building materials, including barbed wire, concrete pillars, timber, and mesh wire.[29] On 13 August 1961, work began on what was to become the Berlin Wall, only two months after Ulbricht had emphatically denied that there were such plans ("Nobody has the intention of building a wall"),[30] thereby mentioning the word "wall" for the very first time. Ulbricht deployed GDR soldiers and police to seal the border with West Berlin overnight. The mobilization included 8,200 members of the People's Police, 3,700 members of the mobile police, 12,000 factory militia members, and 4,500 State Security officers. Ulbricht also dispersed 40,000 East German soldiers across the country to suppress any potential protests.[31] Once the wall was in place, Berlin went from being the easiest place to cross the border between East and West Germany to being the most difficult.[32]
The 1968 invasion by Warsaw Pact troops of Czechoslovakia and the suppression of the
The New Economic System
From 1963, Ulbricht and his economic adviser
The New Economic System, which involved measures to end price hikes and increase access to consumer goods,[20] was not very popular within the party, however, and from 1965 onwards opposition grew, mainly under the direction of Erich Honecker and with tacit support of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Ulbricht's preoccupation with science meant that more and more control of the economy was being relegated from the party to specialists. The ideological hardliners of the party also accused Ulbricht of having motivations that were at odds with the communist ideals.
Cultural and architectural policy
The communist regime demolished large numbers of important historical buildings. The
Ulbricht attempted to shield the GDR from the cultural and social influences of the capitalist parts of the Western world, particularly its youth culture. He intended to create the most comprehensive youth culture of the GDR, which should be largely independent of capitalist influences.[33]
In 1965 at the 11th Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the SED, he made a critical speech about copying culture from the Western world by referring to the "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" of the Beatles song: "Is it truly the case that we have to copy every dirt that comes from the West? I think, comrades, with the monotony of the yeah, yeah, yeah and whatever it is all called, yes, we should put an end to it".[34][35]
Dismissal and death
By the late 1960s, Ulbricht was finding himself increasingly isolated both at home and abroad. The construction of the Berlin Wall became a public relations disaster for him, not only in the West, but even with the Eastern Bloc. This became gradually critical as East Germany faced increasing economic problems due to his failed reforms, and other countries refused to offer any kind of assistance. His refusal to seek rapprochement with West Germany on Soviet terms, and his rejection of détente infuriated Soviet leader Brezhnev who, by that time, found Ulbricht's demands for greater independence from Moscow increasingly intolerable (especially in the aftermath of the Prague Spring). One of his few victories during this time was the replacement of the GDR's original superficially liberal democratic constitution with a completely Communist document in 1968. The document formally declared East Germany to be a socialist state under the leadership of the SED, thus codifying the de facto state of affairs since 1949.
During his later years, Ulbricht became increasingly stubborn and tried to assert dominance vis-a-vis other Eastern bloc countries, and even the Soviet Union. He declared at economic conferences that post-war times when East Germany had to offer other socialist countries free patents, were over once and for all and everything actually had to be paid for. Ulbricht began to believe that he had achieved something special, like Lenin and Stalin had. At the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution in Moscow, he untactfully boasted about having personally known Lenin and having been an active communist in the USSR already 45 years ago. In 1969 Ulbricht's Soviet guests at the State Council (Staatsrat) showed clear signs of dissatisfaction when he lectured them heavily on East Germany's supposed economic successes.[36]
On 3 May 1971 Ulbricht was forced to resign from virtually all of his public functions "due to reasons of poor health" and was replaced, with the consent of the Soviets,[37] by Erich Honecker. Ulbricht was allowed to remain as Chairman of the State Council, the effective head of state, and held on to this post for the rest of his life. Additionally, the honorary position of Chairman of the SED was created especially for him. Ulbricht died at a government guesthouse in Groß Dölln near Templin, north of East Berlin, on 1 August 1973, during the World Festival of Youth and Students, having suffered a stroke two weeks earlier. He was honoured with a state funeral, cremated and buried at the Memorial to the Socialists (German: Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten) in the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery, Berlin.
Legacy
Ulbricht remained loyal to
Despite stabilising the GDR to some extent, and making improvements in the national economy which were unimaginable in many other Warsaw Pact states, he never succeeded in raising East Germany's standard of living to a level comparable to that in the West. Nikita Khrushchev observed, "A disparity quickly developed between the living conditions of Germans in East Germany and those in West Germany."[39]
German historian Jürgen Kocka in 2010 summarized the consensus of scholars about the state that Ulbricht headed for its first two decades:
Conceptualizing the GDR as a dictatorship has become widely accepted, while the meaning of the concept dictatorship varies. Massive evidence has been collected that proves the repressive, undemocratic, illiberal, nonpluralistic character of the GDR regime and its ruling party.[40]
Personal life
Ulbricht lived in Majakowskiring, Pankow, East Berlin. He married twice: in 1920 to Martha Schmellinsky and from 1953 until his death to Lotte Ulbricht née Kühn (1903–2002). Ulbricht and Schmelinsky had a daughter in 1920, who grew up and lived separated from Ulbricht for almost her entire life. After the failure of this first marriage, he was in a relationship with Rosa Michel (born Marie Wacziarg, 1901–1990). With Michel, Ulbricht had another daughter, Rose (1931–1995).
His marriage with Lotte Kühn, his partner for most of his life (they had been together since 1935), remained childless. The couple adopted a daughter whom they named Beate. She was born in 1944 to a Ukrainian forced laborer in Leipzig. Although Beate Ulbricht remembered her father warmly, she referred to her mother in an extensive interview given to a tabloid in 1991 as "the hag," adding that she was "cold-hearted and egoistic." She also said that Walter Ulbricht was ordered to marry Lotte by Stalin.[41]
Decorations
In 1956, Ulbricht was awarded the
See also
- Ivan Konev
- New Economic System
- Lotte Ulbricht
- Wilhelm Zaisser – tried to depose Ulbricht in 1953
Notes
- ^ Hope M. Harrison, Driving the Soviets Up the Wall: Soviet–East German Relations, 1953–1961. (2003) ch 4.
- ^ ISBN 0893563234.
- ^ ISBN 0415260388.
- ^ Frank, Mario, Walter Ulbricht. Eine Deutsche Biographie (Berlin 2001) 52–53.
- ^ Applebaum, Anne, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944–56 (USA 2012)
- ^ Mario Frank: Walter Ulbricht. Siedler, Berlin 2001, S. 52, 53.
- ^ ISBN 978-1884964442.
- ^ ISBN 9780815340584.
- ISBN 9781450240208.
- ^ ISBN 9780199547784.
- ^ Was geschah in Friedrichshain, Die Zeit, 1969/40
- ^ Koehler (1999), page 33.
- ^ John Koehler, The Stasi, p. 36.
- ^ The Stasi, p. 36.
- ^ Frank, Mario, Walter Ulbricht. Eine Deutsche Biographie (Berlin 2001), 124–139.
- ^ Robert Solomon Wistrich, Who's Who in Nazi Germany, Routledge, 2001; John Fuegi, Brecht and Company: Sex, Politics and the Making of the Modern Drama, Grove Press, 2002, p.354; Noel Annan, Changing Enemies: The Defeat and Regeneration of Germany, Cornell University Press, 1997, p.176
- ISBN 9781473833869.
- ISBN 9780719054983.
- ^ Rudolf Augstein (4 December 1948). "Deine Lippen rauchen Kippen". Der Spiegel (online). Retrieved 26 October 2014.
...Ulbricht ist geriebener als der dicke Paul [Merker]. So harte Weisheiten wie den Killbefehl für die Betriebsräte sächselt der "deutsche Lenin" nicht selber über den Aether, dazu schickt er Paul Merker.
- ^ ISBN 0844408530.
- ISBN 9781137403513.
- ^ Jonathan R. Zatlin, "The vehicle of desire: The Trabant, the Wartburg, and the end of the GDR." German History 15.3 (1997): 358–380.
- ^ Martin Kitchen, A History Of Modern Germany 1800–2000, Blackwell, 2006, p.329
- ISBN 978-0-399-15729-5.
- ^ Martin Kitchen, A History Of Modern Germany 1800–2000, Blackwell, 2006, p.328
- ^ Steven Ozment, A Mighty Fortress, Granta, London, 2005 p.294, quoting Lothar Kettenacker, Germany Since 1945 (Oxford, 1997), pp 18–20 and 50–51, and Hagen Shulze, Modern Germany, p. 316
- ISBN 978-0-399-15729-5.
- ISBN 978-0-399-15729-5.
- ISBN 978-0-399-15729-5.
- ^ In response to a question by Annamarie Doherr, Berlin correspondent of the Frankfurter Rundschau, during a press conference on 15 June 1961.
- ISBN 978-0-399-15729-5.
- ^ Keeling, Drew (2014), "Berlin Wall and Migration," Migration as a travel business
- ISBN 9780739178232.
- ISBN 9781443822077.
- ^ Walter Ulbricht – Yeah Yeah Yeah (in German). YouTube. Archived from the original on 22 December 2021. Retrieved 29 December 2012.
- ^ Mario Frank "Walter Ulbricht: Eine deutsche Biografie", 2001. S. 447
- ^ "Walter Ulbricht: Herausgegeben von Egon Krenz," Publisher Das Neue Berlin (The New Berlin), 2013.
- ^ Antony Beevor, The fall of Berlin 1945, Penguin Books, London, 2003 p.418
- ISBN 978-0271029351.
- ISBN 9781584658665.
- ISBN 978-1551642918.
- ^ Josie McLellan, Anti-Fascism and Memory in East Germany: Remembering the International Brigades, 1945–1989, p.67
- ^ "Biography" (in Russian). at the website on Heroes of the Soviet Union and Russia
- ^ "Watch on the Nile". Time. 5 March 1965. Archived from the original on 20 February 2009. Retrieved 4 December 2016.
- ^ "TITO I ULBRICHT ZAVRŠILI prvi dio službenih razgovora". Slobodna Dalmacija (6312): 1. 10 June 1965.
Further reading
- Baras, Victor. “Beria’s Fall and Ulbricht’s Survival.” Soviet Studies 27, no. 3 (1975): 381–95. http://www.jstor.org/stable/150443.
- Brinks, J. H. “Political Anti-Fascism in the German Democratic Republic.” Journal of Contemporary History 32, no. 2 (1997): 207–17. http://www.jstor.org/stable/261241.
- Connelly, John. “Ulbricht and the Intellectuals.” Contemporary European History 6, no. 3 (1997): 329–59. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20081638.
- Granville, Johanna. "The Last of the Mohicans: How Walter Ulbricht Endured the Hungarian Crisis of 1956." German Politics & Society 22.4 (73) (2004): 88–121.
- Granville, Johanna. "East Germany in 1956: Walter Ulbricht's Tenacity in the Face of Opposition." Australian Journal of Politics & History 52.3 (2006): 417–438.
- Harrison, Hope M. Driving the Soviets Up the Wall: Soviet–East German Relations, 1953–1961. (Princeton UP, 2003)
- Kopstein, Jeffrey. The politics of economic decline in East Germany, 1945–1989 (U of North Carolina Press, 2000).
- Long, Andrew. Berlin in the Cold War: Volume 2: The Berlin Wall 1959–1961 (2021)
- Major, Patrick, and Jonathan Osmond, eds. The workers' and peasants' state: communism and society in East Germany under Ulbricht 1945–71 ( Manchester UP, 2002).
- Stern, Carola. Ulbricht, A Political Biography. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965. Pp. xi, 231
- Sandford, Gregory W. From Hitler to Ulbricht. The Communist Reconstruction of East Germany 1945–46. Princeton, 1983
- Spilker, Dirk (2006). The East German leadership and the division of Germany : patriotism and propaganda; 1945–1953. Oxford Univ. Press.
- Ulbricht, Walter. Whither Germany? Speeches and Essays on the National Question (Dresden: Zeit im Bild Publishing House, 1967). 440 pp in English translation; a primary source.
In German
- Norbert Podewin, Walter Ulbricht: Eine neue Biographie. Dietz, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-320-01886-8.
- ISBN 3-88680-720-7
- ISBN 978-3-9859500-3-4
- "Der meistgehaßte, meistunterschätzte Mann", Der Spiegel, 13 September, no. 20, p. 34, 1971
External links
- ^ Party Executive Committee until 1950