Anton Ackermann

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Anton Ackermann (on May 1, 1950 in Leipzig)

Anton Ackermann (actually: Eugen Hanisch ; * December 25, 1905 in Thalheim / Erzgeb. , † May 4, 1973 in East Berlin ) was a German politician ( KPD , SED ) and candidate for the Politburo of the SED Central Committee .

Life

Weimar Republic

Ackermann, the son of a stocking knitter , was an unskilled worker and stocking knitter after attending elementary school. At the same time he was active in the Free Socialist Youth (FSJ) and from 1920-28 a functionary of the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD). In 1926 he joined the KPD .

From 1929 to 1931 he attended the International Lenin School in Moscow , where he was an aspirant until 1933. He then worked at the Germany department of the Communist International . He was a personal assistant to Fritz Heckert and Wilhelm Pieck . Here he met Elli Schmidt , who he was considered to be her husband until they separated in 1949.

time of the nationalsocialism

After the Nazi takeover of power , Ackermann worked illegally for the KPD in Berlin between 1933 and 1935. a. as secretary to John Schehr . In 1935 he emigrated to Prague and lived there until 1937. At the “Brussels Conference” of the KPD in October 1935, Ackermann was elected to the party's central committee and as a candidate for the Politburo. During the Spanish Civil War in 1937 he was head of a political school of the International Brigades in Benicàssim . After a stay in Paris , he went to Moscow in 1940. There he was editor of the newspaper The Free Word . In 1941 he worked among German prisoners of war and was a co-founder of the National Committee Free Germany (NKFD). From 1941 to 1945 he headed the station “Free Germany” . In 1945 he was awarded the Order of the Red Star .

Soviet occupation zone

In May 1945, Ackermann traveled to Germany in the wake of the 1st Ukrainian Front at the same time as the Ulbricht group . He headed an initiative group of the KPD to re-establish the party in Saxony . In the following years he wrote several programmatic documents for the KPD and SED. He was the author of the draft and co-signer of the KPD's appeal of June 11, 1945 . In the essay, published in spring 1946, Is there a special German way to socialism? he advocated the thesis that socialism in Germany could be built without a preceding “ dictatorship of the proletariat ”. Ackermann played an important role in the forced unification of the SPD and KPD to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany in spring 1946 and formulated the principles and goals of the SED together with Social Democrats . At the 15th party congress of the KPD on 19./20. April 1946, which immediately preceded the unification, Ackermann took on the task of a critical review of the “ideological struggle” of the KPD since 1933. He mentioned some fatal misjudgments of National Socialism by the communists.

At the unification party congress in April 1946, Ackermann was elected to the party executive and central secretariat of the SED, and in the same year he became a member of the Saxon state parliament . After Yugoslavia, under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito , renounced Stalin in 1948 , Ackermann had to revoke his thesis of the “special German path to socialism”.

GDR

In 1949 he became a candidate for the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED. 1950-1954 he was a deputy of the People's Chamber and 1949-1953 in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the GDR as state secretary and worked from 1951 to 1952 at the same time head of the Institute for economic research designated foreign intelligence service of the GDR. From the spring of 1953, Ackermann served briefly as Foreign Minister, succeeding Georg Dertinger . In addition, Ackermann was also director of the Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin Institute for a short time in 1953 . Because he supported Wilhelm Zaisser , he was removed from office when he was overthrown in September 1953 and expelled from the Central Committee of the SED in 1954. In 1956 he was rehabilitated.

From 1954 to 1958 Ackermann headed the main film administration in the Ministry of Culture , after which he was head of department from 1958 and from 1960 until his invalidity in 1961 deputy chairman for culture and education in the state planning commission .

tomb

In May 1973, Ackermann, who was seriously ill with cancer, committed suicide. His urn was buried in the curtain wall of the socialist memorial in the central cemetery in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde .

Honors

In 1957 he received the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver and in 1965 in gold. In 1970 he was awarded the Medal of Honor for the Patriotic Order of Merit.

In 1979, in his hometown Thalheim, the 10-class Polytechnic Oberschule was named Anton-Ackermann-Oberschule . After the German reunification, it became a secondary school in Thalheim again .

In 1991 Günter Jordan shot a full-length film portrait of Ackermann at DEFA-Studio für Dokumentarfilme GmbH with the title Lost Time based on the open archives of the GDR. It tells the role of Ackermann in the history of the KPD and SED and the story of a man who contradicts the party, but cannot give it up and ultimately breaks down because of it.

Publications

  • The struggle of the KPD and the young generation , Moscow 1936
  • with Walter Hähnel, The Young Generation , Prague 1936
  • To the learning and searching German youth. Germany's path to recovery and unity , Berlin 1946
  • Questions and Answers , Berlin 1946
  • Religion and politics. Open words of a Marxist to all Christians , Berlin 1946
  • Where is the SPD and where is it going , Berlin 1947
  • Marxist cultural policy , Berlin 1948
  • Working class and culture , Weimar 1948
  • On the rebirth of German imperialism and the national character of our struggle , Berlin 1951
  • Edited by Frank Schumann , The German Way to Socialism. Testimonials and documents of a patriot , Berlin 2005

literature

Web links

Commons : Anton Ackermann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Report on the negotiations of the XV. Congress of the Communist Party of Germany, 19./20. April 1946 in Berlin. Berlin 1946, p. 106
  2. ↑ DEFA Foundation film database: The lost time. In: Günter Jordan. DEFA Foundation, accessed on February 17, 2019 (German).
  3. ^ Ines Walk: Günter Jordan. In: DEFA foundation DEFA artist. DEFA Foundation, January 2015, accessed on February 17, 2019 (German).
personal data
SURNAME Ackermann, Anton
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hanisch, Eugen (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SED), MdV, SED functionary and candidate of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED
DATE OF BIRTH December 25, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Thalheim / Erzgeb.
DATE OF DEATH May 4th 1973
Place of death East Berlin