Egon Winkelmann

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Egon Winkelmann (born January 1, 1928 in Lichtenstein-Callnberg ; † April 12, 2015 in Berlin ) was a German diplomat and SED functionary.

Life

After the death of his father, the son of a farmer grew up with his mother, an employee, as well as the foster father, a lathe operator and conveyor machinist and became a member of the Hitler Youth in 1938 while attending elementary school . After leaving school he first attended from 1941 to 1944, the Commercial College in Zwickau and then completed for a short time to study at the interpreter - Hochschule in Leipzig , before 1944-1945 as Hartverchromer in Chemnitz worked.

After the Second World War , he joined the KPD in 1945 and worked as an office worker and auxiliary fitter in his hometown. In 1946 he became a member of the LDPD and attended the technical college for economics and transport until 1947. In 1947 he finally joined the SED and worked for some time as a trainee for the daily newspaper Volksstimme in Glauchau , before he was subsequently clerk, assistant editor and then editor at Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk in Leipzig until 1948 . He then earned a degree in social sciences at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig, he awarded the degree in 1950 a graduate economist graduated. In the following years he was a clerk, main clerk and then a consultant at the German domestic and foreign trade company DIA Maschinen Berlin, before he was editor, proofreader and finally editor- in- chief at Dietz Verlag from 1952 to 1962 .

In 1962 he joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the GDR (MfAA) as a political assistant and also completed a distance learning course at the Humboldt University in Berlin , which he completed as a historian. From 1962 to 1964 he was 1st secretary at the embassy in North Korea and then until 1965 section head in the 4th non-European department of the MfAA. He then graduated from the diplomatic college of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR in Moscow .

After his return to the GDR in 1967 he became Deputy Head of the International Relations Department at the Central Committee of the SED . In 1972 he was at the Institute of International Relations in Moscow for Dr. oec. PhD . In addition, from 1974 to 1981 he was a member of the leadership of the party organization at the SED Central Committee and from 1976 to 1981 a member of the Central Revision Commission of the SED.

After the sudden death of Paul Markowski in a helicopter crash in Libya on March 6, 1978, he succeeded him as head of the International Relations Department at the Central Committee of the SED. In this function he was also the contact person for the basic organizations of the SED at the diplomatic missions abroad. In June 1978 he was on a working visit to the Central Committee of the CPSU and received an assessment of the current situation from the Central Committee Secretaries Boris Nikolajewitsch Ponomarjow , Konstantin Viktorovich Russakow and the 1st Deputy Head of the Central Committee Department for International Relations, Vadim Valentinovich Sagladin . after the US announced a ten-year arms program in May 1978.

He was also a member of the People's Chamber from December 1978 to 1981 .

In January 1981 he was finally appointed ambassador of the GDR to the USSR. When he took office, he was briefed by Erich Honecker in a lengthy conversation about the presentation of the position of the GDR towards the Soviet Union. The tenor of the speech by the Chairman of the State Council and Secretary General of the SED was that “the task of the Soviet Union cannot be to disintegrate the GDR”. This also made Honecker's leading role in the GDR's foreign policy clear. Shortly after starting this activity, in February 1981 he received an order from Erich Honecker to find out from North Korean head of state Kim Il-sung in Pyongyang what was behind his reunification offer to his South Korean neighbor. However, as one of the last Stalinists , Kim had nothing to do with a reunification of his country without socialism . Winkelmann himself later felt sympathy for the reform course of glasnost and perestroika initiated under Mikhail Gorbachev . He held the office of ambassador until January 1987.

He was also a member of the SED Central Committee from 1981 to 1989 from the 10th  Party Congress of the SED . After his return to the GDR, he succeeded Horst Brasch from February 1987 to 1990 as 1st Vice President and Secretary General of the League for Friendship between Nations , the umbrella organization of friendship societies in the GDR. 

At the 10th meeting of the Central Committee on November 8, 1989, he spoke out in favor of the election of Hans-Joachim Willerding as Secretary of the Central Committee for International Relations.

Awards

For his services to the SED and for relations with the USSR, he was awarded the Order of Friendship of the Nations of the Soviet Union in 1986 and the Patriotic Order of Merit in 1973 (bronze), 1976 (silver) and 1988 (gold).

Publications

  • In 1997 his autobiography Moscow was published, that's it. Memories of the GDR ambassador to the Soviet Union 1981–1987 . Edition Ost, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-929161-86-9 . The book also provides a summary of the conversations between Honecker and the general secretary of the CPSU, Leonid Brezhnev , in 1981 and 1982 and testifies to the tense relationship between East Berlin and Moscow.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Foreign policy of the GDR and party work of the SED on the international stage ( Memento of the original from July 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in the Federal Archives @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bundesarchiv.de
  2. ↑ Michael Ploetz, Hans-Peter Müller: Ferngelenkte Friedensbewegung ?: GDR and USSR in the fight against the NATO double resolution , 2004, ISBN 3-8258-7235-1 , p. 195 f.
  3. ^ Tilo Prase, Judith Kretzschmar: Propagandist and Heimatfilmer: the documentary films of Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler , 2003, ISBN 3-937209-28-X , p. 191
  4. ↑ Tips from the Far East . In: Der Spiegel . No. 34 , 1981 ( online ).
  5. ↑ Hans-Georg Golz: Ordained friendship between the nations: the work of the friendship society , 2004, ISBN 3-937209-25-5 , p. 21
  6. ↑ Hans-Georg Golz: Ordained friendship between the nations: the work of the friendship society , 2004, ISBN 3-937209-25-5 , p. 47
  7. ↑ Hans-Georg Golz: Ordained friendship between the nations: the work of the friendship society , 2004, ISBN 3-937209-25-5 , p. 283
  8. ↑ Congratulations to Egon Winkelmann . In: Neues Deutschland , January 5, 1988, p. 2
  9. ↑ Egon Winkelmann: Moscow, that's it at openlibrary.org
  10. ↑ Hans-Hermann Hertle, Konrad Hugo Jarausch (ed.): Cracks in the brother union. The talks between Honecker and Breshnew from 1974 to 1982 . Ch.links, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-86153-419-3 , p. 65.


personal data
SURNAME Winkelmann, Egon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German diplomat and SED functionary., MdV
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Lichtenstein-Callnberg
DATE OF DEATH April 12, 2015
Place of death Berlin