Erich Jungmann

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Erich Jungmann (born July 31, 1907 in Reichenberg ; †  March 29, 1986 in East Berlin ) was a German politician (KPD, SED).

Erich Jungmann, 1982

Live and act

Youth and Weimar Republic (1907–1933)

Jungmann was born in 1907 as the son of a factory worker. The mother was a horticultural worker. Jungmann attended elementary school from 1914 to 1922 . From 1922 to 1925 he completed a commercial apprenticeship. He then earned his living as an employee (travel agent) in Radebeul and Dresden, later as a horticultural worker.

Jungmann joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1929 , after having been a member of the Communist Youth Association (KJVD) since 1928 . In 1930 he traveled to the Soviet Union . After his return he became secretary of the Reich pioneer leadership at the Central Committee of the KJVD and in 1932 a member of the party's central committee. At the beginning of 1932 Jungmann was appointed youth secretary of the KJVD-BL Niederrhein. After the Neumann - Remmele supporters around Kurt Müller and Alfred Hiller were ousted , he was appointed organ leader of the KJVD ZK in August 1932.

After the Reichstag elections of November 1932 , Jungmann entered the Berlin Reichstag as his party's proposal for a Reich election , of which he was a member until March 1933.

National Socialism and Emigration (1933 to 1945)

During the first months of National Socialist rule, Jungmann belonged to the illegal KJVD leadership in Germany. As a well-known communist, he was eventually taken into custody. After his release in 1934, Jungmann, who was stigmatized in the National Socialist state because of his communist attitude, emigrated to the Soviet Union. There he initially worked as a consultant in the Western European country secretariat of the Communist Youth International (KJI). He then acted from 1935 to 1937 as youth leader of the KPD foreign organization West in Amsterdam. Jungmann took part in the VII. World Congress of the Comintern (1935), on the VI. World Congress of the KJI as well as the Brussels (1935) and Bern (1939) conferences of the KPD. He was co-chairman of the KJVD and a member of the KJVD secretariat and the KPD foreign leadership in Paris . From 1937 to 1939 he was an employee of the KPD foreign leadership in Paris.

When war broke out in September 1939, Jungmann was arrested by the French authorities. He was interned first in Le Vernet , then until January 1942 in Les Milles near Marseille . In March 1942 he was able to leave for Mexico. He owed his release from the internment camp and his departure from an intervention by the first lady Eleanor Roosevelt , whom he had met as a KJVD representative at the 1938 World Youth Conference for Peace in New York City . In Mexico, Jungmann was a member and secretary of the local KPD regional group as well as secretary of the movement “Free Germany” and editor of the German-language monthly magazine of the same name for South America Free Germany . Alongside Paul Merker and Alexander Abusch , he was one of the most important functionaries of the German communist emigration in Mexico.

Soviet Zone and GDR (1945 to 1986)

In 1946 Jungmann returned from exile in Mexico via Moscow to the Soviet occupation zone (SBZ) in Germany. In July he settled in Berlin. In December 1946 he moved to the western zones on behalf of the party, where he was first 2nd and then 1st secretary of the KPD state leadership of Lower Saxony in Hanover . From 1949 to 1951 he was responsible for the department of mass organizations in the secretariat of the KPD party executive. From 1949 to 1950 he was also head of the secretariat of the party executive of the KPD. As the main consultant in the advertising and training department, he was responsible for returning prisoners of war.

In March 1951, in the course of the party purges, he was removed from the KPD party executive committee, recalled to the GDR and released from all party offices. After his return to the GDR he became deputy editor-in-chief of the “ Märkische Volksstimme ”, then from 1952 to 1953 editor-in-chief of the “ Volkswacht ” in Gera. In connection with the Slansky trial in Prague, he was accused in December 1952 of " Zionist deviations in Mexican exile". On January 22, 1953, Jungmann was arrested and taken to Berlin. There he was held in the house of the escaped Leo Zuckermann and interrogated by the secret service, which recruited him for the MfS. Jungmann's wife Rosl Liner, a sister-in-law of Egon Erwin Kisch (who was married to her sister Gisl Liner), despaired of the situation and attempted suicide, which she survived.

On April 4, 1953, Jungmann was released to Gera after he had previously been induced to make incriminating statements against other comrades, e.g. B. About Adolf Buchholz . As a result, he was released from all functions and transferred to industrial production for "probation". Most recently he was head of the labor department in East Berlin's HO administration . In 1956 he was rehabilitated non-publicly by the SED leadership . From 1956 to 1959 Jungmann was deputy editor-in-chief of the Berliner Zeitung . In September 1959 he began to work again in the Western work of the SED. He became a member of the Central Committee, candidate of the Politburo and Secretary of the Central Committee of the illegal KPD in West Germany, which operated from the GDR. With the constitution of the DKP in 1968 this work came to an end.

tomb

In November 1971 Jungmann was re-admitted to the SED. At the same time he became head of the foreign station " Radio Berlin International " and remained director of the station until 1976. At an earlier point in time he had already headed the radio station Deutscher Freiheitssender 904 , which, after the Communist Party was banned in West Germany, broadcast anti-Western programs from the GDR to the Federal Republic. In 1959 he received the Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze. In 1977 he was awarded the Karl Marx Order and in 1982 the Gold Star of Friendship of Nations . After his death, Jungmann was in the grave conditioning Pergolenweg the memorial of the socialists at the Berlin Central Cemetery Friedrichsfelde buried.

estate

Jungmann's estate is now stored in the Foundation Archive of Parties and Mass Organizations of the GDR (SAPMO) in Potsdam. It has 0.75 linear meters of shelf space and includes materials from the years 1915 to 1986. In terms of content, it contains materials on Jungmann's biography, article manuscripts, correspondence with family members and political friends as well as working materials from professional and political activities.

literature

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karin Hartewig: Returned. The History of the Jewish Communists in East Germany , 2000.
  2. ↑ * December 19, 1905; † May 21, 1974
  3. ↑ Angelika Timm assumes Jungmann's Jewish descent as another reason: In her opinion, he was a member of the Central Committee of the SED and was relieved of all his functions as editor of the Berliner Zeitung and the "Volkswacht" in March 1953 . In: Hammer, Zirkel, Star of David, pp. 158f., With reference to Jerry E. Thompson: Jews, Zionism and Israel. The story of the jews in the German Democratic Republic since 1945. Ann Arbor 1978.
  4. ^ BZ editors honored , In: Berliner Zeitung , October 7, 1959, p. 2
  5. ↑ Neues Deutschland , June 28, 1977, p. 5
  6. ↑ Neues Deutschland, June 29, 1982, p. 2
personal data
SURNAME Jungmann, Erich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (KPD, SED), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH July 31, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Reichenberg
DATE OF DEATH March 29, 1986
Place of death Berlin