Willy Sägebrecht
Willy Sägebrecht | |||||||||||||||||||||
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First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party in Brandenburg | |||||||||||||||||||||
In office 21 April 1946 – 23 July 1952 | |||||||||||||||||||||
Preceded by | Position established | ||||||||||||||||||||
Succeeded by | Kurt Seibt (Bezirk Potsdam) Gerhard Grüneberg (Bezirk Frankfurt) Franz Bruk (Bezirk Cottbus) | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Personal details | |||||||||||||||||||||
Born | Groß Schönebeck, Province of Brandenburg, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire (now Schorfheide-Groß Schönebeck, Brandenburg, Germany) | 21 February 1904||||||||||||||||||||
Died | 8 April 1981 East Berlin, East Germany | (aged 77)||||||||||||||||||||
Political party | Socialist Unity Party (1946–1981) | ||||||||||||||||||||
Other political affiliations | Communist Party of Germany (1925–1946) | ||||||||||||||||||||
Spouse | Hedwig _____ (1904-1974) | ||||||||||||||||||||
Children | Ursula Diehl (1924-2007) | ||||||||||||||||||||
Occupation |
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Awards |
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Central institution membership
Other offices held
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Willy Sägebrecht (21 February 1904 – 8 April 1981) was a political activist and politician from the
Life
Provenance and early years
Willy Sägebrecht was born in Groß Schönebeck (Barnim), a short distance to the north of Berlin. His father is described variously as a farmworker, a factory worker and a brick maker. After leaving school in 1918 Sägebrecht worked in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors in Groß Schönebeck and Liebenwalde. In 1920 he joined the Free German wood workers' union and the Young Socialists. In 1923 he switched to the Young Communists and in 1925, having reached his twenty-first birthday six months earlier, he joined the Communist Party itself. Within the party he was initially drawn to the extremist Weddinger Opposition faction, but after a couple of years he turned back to the Communist mainstream of the time, becoming a member of the party's local leadership team ("Bezirksleitung") for Berlin-Brandenburg in 1927.[1]
In November 1929 Sägebrecht was elected a local councillor for Liebenwalde and a district councillor for Lower Barnim. During 1929/30 he worked as an instructor in Berlin-Brandenburg with the party's "Military Policy" department ("Abteilung Militärpolitik"), the cover name used for what was in effect the party's intelligence service. During 1930/31 he visited Moscow where he attended a course for party officials at the "Military Academy" of the Communist International (Comintern).[1] On his return he became a party instructor for Berlin-Brandenburg, a role he retained till 1933.[1] He was also employed as a policy leader ("Polleiter ") in the party's "sub-region north" ("Unterbezirk Nord"), in which capacity he worked closely with Walter Ulbricht.[2] On 24 April 1932 Willy Sägebrecht was elected to membership of the Prussian regional parliament ("Landtag"). He was involved in a significant brawl in the parliament between Communist and Nazi members on 21 May 1932.[1]
Nazi years
The
In January 1936 Sägebrecht faced the special people's court and was convicted on the relatively unusual charge of "intellectual activism" ("intellektuelle Willenstäterschaft"). He was sentenced to a five-year jail term,[3] but in the event he spent the rest of the Nazi period in a succession of prisons and concentration camps, released only in April 1945.[1] His final transfer came in March 1941 and saw him sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp.[1] With other "political detainees" he created a "party group". Observing the divisions among the Nazi camp administrators they were able to identify which guards might prove helpful if cultivated, and by this method they managed to receive regular newspapers and other snippets of news about Germany from outside the camp.[4] There were times when prisoners were sent to work outside the camp, and on one of these occasions the "party group" around Sägebrecht managed to throw from the truck a number of anti-Hitler leaflets that they had managed to produce inside the concentration camp.[4]
During the early months of 1945 the
Soviet occupation zone
Directly following the
At the party conference of 2/3 March 1946 Willy Sägebrecht was one of 19 party officials co-opted onto the
Under the Leninist power structure implemented in the Soviet Occupation Zone after 1946, political power was centralised on the
Between 1946 and 1950 he sat as a member of the
German Democratic Republic
In July 1952 Sagebrecht was appointed a secretary of state and first deputy chairman at the State Planning Commission ("Staatliche Plankommission").[1] He might have seemed at this point to be on the verge of a stellar political career. However, the State Planning Commission was also where the ambitions and promises of ambitious party leaders all too often came face to face with inconvenient economic realities. Willy Sägebrecht was not the first, and he certainly would not be the last East German politician for whom involvement with the State Planning Commission broke the trajectory of a hitherto promising career in the political mainstream. In 1954 he was diverted into the quasi-military "Kasernierte Volkspolizei" (KVP) police service, appointed a KVP colonel in October 1954. He was responsible for "Administration Co-ordination" which according to at least one source was a "camouglage designation" for Military Intelligence.[1]
In 1945 the
Sägebrecht himself was retired from his military intelligence responsibilities in August 1959, officially on health grounds. In the words of one source "he was not successful".
There is no indication that Sägebrecht's own loyalty to the regime was ever in question: he remained a Party Central Committee member till 1963.[1] However, after September 1959 he lived as a pensioner in East Berlin. In 1968 he published his memoires under the title "Nicht Amboß, sondern Hammer sein" (loosely "Not an anvil but a hammer").[12] When he died, in 1981, his ashes were placed at the Friedrichsfelde Cemetery in the Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten ("Socialists' Memorial Garden"), alongside those of others whose memories the government celebrated and revered.[13]
Awards and celebration
- 1955 Patriotic Order of Merit in silver
- 1964 Patriotic Order of Merit in gold
- 1979 Order of Karl Marx
- 1979 Patriotic Order of Merit gold clasp
- 1981 The VEB Wälzlagerwerk (Rolling-element bearing factory at Luckenwalde was renamed to include the name "Willy Sägebrecht" in its full name
- 1987 The "Artillerieabteilung 1 in Beelitz" artillery company was renamed as the "Willy Sägebrecht" artillery company
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Bernd-Rainer Barth (www); Helmut Müller-Enbergs (www); Hermann Weber (HDK); Andreas Herbst (HDK). "Sägebrecht, Willy * 21.2.1904, † 8.4.1981 SED-Funktionär". "Wer war wer in der DDR?" (www - first entry on the page) & Handbuch der Deutschen Kommunisten (HDK - second entry on the page). Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Berlin, Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin (www) & Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin (HDK). Retrieved 25 March 2018.
- ^ Berliner Zeitung, 21 April 1971, p.8
- ISBN 978-3-936872-94-1.
- ^ ISBN 978-3-406-52963-4.
- ^ Neues Deutschland, 4 February 1950, p.2
- ^ Dieter Pohl: Justiz in Brandenburg 1945–1955. Gleichschaltung und Anpassung. München, 2001 p.102
- ^ Helmut Müller-Enbergs. "Linke, Karl * 10.1.1900, † 16.5.1961 Chef der DDR-Militärspionage". Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur: Biographische Datenbanken. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
- ^ a b Michael Wala (18 June 1999). "The Last Fifty Years in Review (Deutschland und die Rolle der Nachrichtendienste: Rückblick auf ein halbes Jahrhundert)" (PDF). Akademie fuer Politische Bildung – Tutzing & International Intelligence History Association (IIHA), Würzburg. p. 5. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
- ^ Dieter Krüger, Armin Wagner: Im Spannungsfeld von Demokratie und Diktatur. Deutsche Geheimdienstchefs im Kalten Krieg. In:Konspiration als Beruf.: Deutsche Geheimdienstchefs im Kalten Krieg. Berlin, 2003 p. 21
- ^ "Siegfried Dombrowski". Der Spiegel (online). 4 February 1959. Retrieved 28 March 2018.
- ^ Klaus Behling: Der Nachrichtendienst der NVA, p.28.
- ^ Willy Sägebrecht & Fanny Rosner (1968). Nicht Amboss, sondern Hammer sein. Karl Dietz Verlag, Berlin.
- ^ Neues Deutschland, 24. April 1981, Sp.2.
- ^ Party Executive Committee until 1950