Erich Apel

Erich Apel, 1963

Erich Hans Apel (born October 3, 1917 in Judenbach , Thuringia ; † December 3, 1965 in East Berlin ) was a mechanical engineer , SED functionary and from 1963 to 1965 chairman of the GDR's State Planning Commission .

Life

As the son of a master locksmith and a seamstress, Erich Apel completed an apprenticeship as a toolmaker and locksmith after attending elementary and secondary school from 1932 to 1935 in Neuhaus am Rennweg . From 1935 to 1937 he worked as a designer and toolmaker in the porcelain factory in Neuhaus. From 1937 to 1939 he studied at the Ilmenau engineering school, graduating as a mechanical engineer.

In 1939 Apel was drafted into the Wehrmacht . From September to December 1939 as a recruit in the Infantry Replacement Battalion 451 in Gotha , he was assigned to the Army Research Center Peenemünde of the Army Weapons Office on December 20 , where he worked with the rocket designer Wernher von Braun . His specialty was the hydraulics on the rocket engines. After his discharge from the Wehrmacht after completing his military service in August 1940, Apel was obliged to work there from November as a production engineer and assistant to the operations director. On his birthday in 1942, he watched the world's first successful launch of a long-range rocket , the unit 4 (A4). From 1943 Apel was head of a development laboratory at the Army Research Institute.

Shortly before the laboratory was destroyed by British bombers in Operation Hydra , he was assigned to the Linke Hofmann Works (LHW) in Breslau . At the request of the LHW, which manufactured parts for the A4, Apel was released by the Army Weapons Office in 1944 and hired as chief engineer and assistant to the technical director of the LHW. With the outsourcing of LHW production facilities, he took on the position of technical manager at Peterbau GmbH in Kleinbodungen near Nordhausen in January 1945 . At the end of the war he managed to find his way into his native Judenbach. There Apel initially worked in agriculture, from January 1946 as a new teacher . At the same time he learned and taught at the Steinach company vocational school until May 1946 . In January 1946 Erich Apel became a member of the SPD , which was forcibly united with the KPD to form the SED in April , but did not convert to the SED.

On June 23, 1946, the special technical commission of the Soviet military administration in Germany engaged Apel because of his knowledge of German rocket technology, initially as chief engineer for engine construction in the Montania facility (plant no.2 in Nordhausen ) of the Nordhausen Institute in Bleicherode under the direction of Helmut Gröttrup , then from October 1946 to June 1952 as part of the Ossawakim campaign in the Soviet Union as head of the test workshop on the island of Gorodomlja (today the Solnetschny settlement ) in Lake Seliger.

After his return to Germany, Apel worked in the GDR Ministry of Mechanical Engineering and the Ministry of Heavy Machinery. From 1953 he was Deputy Minister under Heinrich Rau and from 1955 to March 1958 Minister for Heavy Engineering.

Apel became a candidate in 1954 and a member of the SED in 1957. From 1958 he was head of the Economic Commission at the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED and in the same year, as a member of the People's Chamber, became Chairman of its Economic Committee. At the fifth party congress of the SED in July 1958 he was elected a candidate for the SED Central Committee and a member at the 9th Central Committee meeting in July 1960. In July 1961 he was promoted to candidate for the Politburo and Secretary of the Central Committee of the SED. In 1960 he was promoted to Dr. rer. oec. PhD.

As a member of the Presidium (later Deputy Chairman) of the Council of Ministers and Chairman of the State Planning Commission (succeeding Karl Mewis ), he was decisive in the implementation of the " New Economic System " developed by him and his successor Günter Mittag as Central Committee Secretary in the early 1960s the planning and management (NÖSPL) ”involved. The “New Economic System” was an attempt to introduce a socialist achievement principle. At the side of Walter Ulbricht , he was involved in the controversial disputes over further economic policy and the economic negotiations with the Soviet Union after Nikita Khrushchev's disempowerment in 1964. Shortly before the signing of the economic agreement for the period from 1966 to 1970, Apel was found shot in the head from a pistol in his office in the House of Ministries .

The successor to Apels as chairman of the State Planning Commission was Gerhard Schürer .

tomb

Apel's urn was buried in the " Memorial of the Socialists " at the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery in Berlin-Lichtenberg .

Awards

1959 Patriotic Order of Merit in silver
1963 Order Banner of Labor
1964 Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold

Publications

Through socialist reconstruction and increasing labor productivity to meet the seven-year plan , Berlin 1959
The chemistry program of the German Democratic Republic. An important factor in the economic competition between socialism and capitalism , Berlin 1960
Current tasks to increase the quality of the management of the national economy by improving the complex planning, in particular by paying attention to the interaction between organization and technology and drawing up the "New Technology" plans , Berlin 1961
New planning questions. On the role and tasks of central state planning in the new economic system of planning and management of the national economy , Berlin 1963
Current questions in economic research , Berlin 1964
with Günter Mittag : Scientific leadership - new role of the VVB , Berlin 1964
with Günter Mittag: Economic Laws of Socialism and the New Economic System of Planning and Management of the National Economy , Berlin 1964
with Günter Mittag: Planned economic management and economic levers , Berlin 1964
with Günter Mittag: Questions of the application of the new economic system of planning and management of the national economy in the preparation and implementation of investments , Berlin 1965

literature

Monika Kaiser, Helmut Müller-Enbergs : Apel, Erich Hans . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
Handbook of the People's Chamber , 3rd electoral period, 1959
Handbook of the People's Chamber , 4th electoral period, 1964
The suicide of Erich Apels . In: The Red Flag. Central organ of the Independent Socialist Unity Party of Germany (USED) .
GDR: Apel. Shot in the office. (PDF; 652 kB) In: Der Spiegel. December 15, 1965, accessed July 18, 2020 .
Why did Erich Apel die? In: Berliner Zeitung
Jan Eik , Klaus Behling: Assassination attempt on Honecker and other special incidents . 1st edition. Jaron, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-89773-814-0 , Makarow last resort : The death of Erich Apels on December 3, 1965, p. 99-142 .
Matthias Eckoldt: A shot was fired in the Politburo: Erich Apel - Why the leading GDR economic strategist passed away, Production MDR5, 2015. Editor: Katrin Wenzel. In: Doc 5 - The Feature . Broadcast on October 1, 2017, WDR5, online , manuscript as PDF (This feature expresses doubts about Apel's suicide, so a number of indications point towards murder. Investigations by the historian Monika Kaiser led to an investigation in 2000, which was discontinued without result. As early as 1994 there was another preliminary investigation into a photo that allegedly shows the murderer Apels, a Stasi major.)

Web links

Commons : Erich Apel - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Literature by and about Erich Apel in the catalog of the German National Library
Biography Erich Apels at LeMO

Individual evidence

^ ^A ^b Matthias Uhl : Stalin's V-2. The technology transfer of German radio controlled weapons technology to the USSR and the development of the Soviet missile industry from 1945 to 1959 . Dissertation with reproduction of many original documents. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Bonn 2001, ISBN 978-3-7637-6214-9 (304 pages).
↑ Kurt Magnus : Rocket Slaves. German researchers behind red barbed wire . Elbe-Dnjepr-Verlag, Klitzschen 1993, ISBN 3-933395-61-5 (359 pages, Apel is referred to as Balke in this work ).
^ New Germany , March 20, 1958.
^ New Germany , July 17, 1958.
^ New Germany , July 24, 1960.
^ New Germany , July 5, 1961.
^ The publisher was the Bundeswehr . Psychological Warfare, 1966. Newspaper disguised as an opposition newspaper against the GDR government. Berlin State Library - Prussian Cultural Heritage House Potsdamer Strasse. Signature: Einbl. 1948/72, 1720. 7070-1966.03 kl.

personal data
SURNAME	Apel, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Apel, Erich Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German SED functionary, politician, Member of the Bundestag, Chairman of the State Planning Commission (1963–1965)
DATE OF BIRTH	October 3, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH	Judenbach
DATE OF DEATH	December 3, 1965
Place of death	East Berlin

[Uhl-1] A ^b Matthias Uhl : Stalin's V-2. The technology transfer of German radio controlled weapons technology to the USSR and the development of the Soviet missile industry from 1945 to 1959 . Dissertation with reproduction of many original documents. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Bonn 2001, ISBN 978-3-7637-6214-9 (304 pages).

[2] Kurt Magnus : Rocket Slaves. German researchers behind red barbed wire . Elbe-Dnjepr-Verlag, Klitzschen 1993, ISBN 3-933395-61-5 (359 pages, Apel is referred to as Balke in this work ).

[3] New Germany , March 20, 1958.

[4] New Germany , July 17, 1958.

[5] New Germany , July 24, 1960.

[6] New Germany , July 5, 1961.

[7] The publisher was the Bundeswehr . Psychological Warfare, 1966. Newspaper disguised as an opposition newspaper against the GDR government. Berlin State Library - Prussian Cultural Heritage House Potsdamer Strasse. Signature: Einbl. 1948/72, 1720. 7070-1966.03 kl.