Ernst Goldenbaum

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Ernst Goldenbaum Visits a Unit of the People's Police that Secures the Brandenburg Gate After the Wall is Built (August 22, 1961)

Ernst Goldenbaum (born December 15, 1898 in Parchim , † March 13, 1990 in Berlin ) was chairman of the GDR block party DBD and minister for agriculture and forestry of the GDR .

Life

Childhood and youth

Ernst Goldenbaum was born as the sixth of eight children to a working-class family in 1898 in the small Mecklenburg town of Parchim. In 1905 he started school and attended elementary school in Parchim up to eighth grade. In 1913 he was first a cowherd and then a servant. When his brother Willi fell during World War I , he tried to evade the threat of being called up, but was arrested in Schleswig-Holstein on the way to Denmark and initially imprisoned. He was released for a fine of 20 marks and returned to Parchim. There he was drafted into the 1st Grand Ducal Mecklenburg Grenadier Regiment No. 89 on September 17, 1917 . After only three days on the Western Front, he was wounded in March 1918 and was sent to the military hospital in Schwerin , where he later joined the November Revolution.

Weimar Republic

In the spring of 1919 Goldenbaum returned to Parchim. There he first worked as a civilian security guard in a prisoner-of-war camp for Russian soldiers, but then as a factory worker in the Parchim marble works and the Neustadt leather factory in Mecklenburg . In 1919 Goldenbaum joined the USPD , and in December 1920, with most of Mecklenburg's party members, joined the KPD . In 1920 he was elected to the local board of the factory workers' union and as a delegate of the union cartel. In the same year he became the local chairman of the General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB).

During the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch in March 1920, Goldenbaum led the local USPD strike leadership and played a leading role in a workers' army that fought against members of the Roßbach Freikorps . In 1922 and 1923 Goldenbaum was punished with imprisonment for “ breach of the peace ” and “ ringleadership ”.

As early as 1921, Ernst Goldenbaum became a member of the extended, from 1923 the closer district leadership of the KPD of Mecklenburg. From 1923 to 1925 he was a city councilor for Parchim and from 1924 to 1926 and 1929 to 1932 a member of the state parliament of Mecklenburg-Schwerin .

From 1927 to 1932 he was the chief editor of the KPD newspaper Volkswacht in Rostock . In 1927 he moved with his family to Wismar and in 1931 to Rostock. He also worked as a course director at the district party school. There he was responsible for Leninism , Hermann Duncker for Marxism . Due to political differences with the district party leadership, Goldenbaum was replaced in 1932 as editor of the “ People's Watch ”. In September 1932, Goldenbaum had to serve another prison sentence after he had been tried several times for his political work for the KPD and for press violations. Due to an amnesty, however, he was released before the end of the year.

National Socialism

During the wave of arrests following the Reichstag fire in February 1933, the National Socialists arrested Ernst Goldenbaum and did not release him until June. In 1935 he retired to Parchim as a farmer. In July 1944 he was arrested along with other communists, but managed to escape from Parchim official prison. He then hid on haylofts and in barns in the arable town for several weeks until he was caught again and deported to Neuengamme concentration camp . He was one of the few survivors of the sinking of the Cap Arcona , on which the SS had driven the prisoners at the end of the war.

post war period

After the sinking of the Cap Arcona in the Lübeck Bay , Ernst Goldenbaum made his way to his hometown. The Soviet city commandant immediately installed him as mayor , and he also became head of the KPD in the Parchim district . In September 1945 he changed to the post of managing director of the state commission for land reform , which was headed by Johannes Warnke . From January 1946 he was a member of the KPD state leadership. Until 1949 he worked as a department head in the Mecklenburg Ministry of Agriculture. With the forced unification of the KPD and SPD , Goldenbaum became a member of the SED . He was a member of the SED state executive. In 1946/47 Goldenbaum acted as state chairman of the VdgB . From 1946 to 1952 he was a member of the state parliament in the Mecklenburg state parliament for the VdgB.

Functionary of the farmers' party

In February 1948, SED chairman Wilhelm Pieck met with Goldenbaum to win him over to lead a peasant party that was to be founded. A week later he agreed. Ultimately, however, at the end of the Soviet Military Administration (SMA), on April 18, 1948, the starting signal for the formation of the Democratic Peasant Party of Germany (DBD) was given in Wismar, at which Goldenbaum was also present. The SMA and the SED endeavored not to let the controlled character of the party formation become clear. As a result, the establishment of the DBD presented itself to the outside world as an endeavor from below. The goals were to win the rural population for socialism and to weaken the potential of the bourgeois parties CDU and LDP . The founding meeting took place in Schwerin on April 29, 1948. Goldenbaum became chairman of the DBD Mecklenburgs. On June 2, 1948, he applied to the SMA for approval of the party for the Soviet zone of occupation. Goldenbaum was now also pro forma elected the first chairman of the Peasant Party, as he had acted as such before.

With the founding of the GDR, Goldenbaum took on one of the most important offices of his career, he became Minister for Agriculture and Forestry of the GDR. In mid-1950 the SED overthrew Paul Merker , State Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, who was accused of "sectarianism" in the Weimar KPD and later in the SED. It is in this context that Goldenbaum's dismissal from his position as Minister of Agriculture on November 15, 1950 can be seen. The replacement took place at the direct instigation of SED General Secretary Walter Ulbricht and Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl . For Goldenbaum, the replacement meant a severe personal loss of power and the DBD members felt it was the party's defeat. Although Paul Scholz , a DBD colleague, also succeeded the minister, he was not Goldenbaum's preferred candidate.

After his resignation as Minister of Agriculture, power struggles within the party became noticeable in the DBD, which flared up again and again until the end of his 37-year term as chairman. Other leadership cadres of the Peasant Party criticized his leadership style. However, Goldenbaum was considered popular among the population, so that the SED supported him despite some reservations. The DBD also left no doubt that it was unconditionally devoted to the SED, which came to fruition, for example, with the compulsory completion of the collectivization of agriculture and when the Peasant Party took over the SED program at its party congress in 1963.

Due to increasing age, Ernst Goldenbaum had to hand over the chairmanship of the farmers' party to Ernst Mecklenburg in 1982 , but was rewarded with the honorary chairmanship. He did not live to see the end of his party in October 1990. Ernst Goldenbaum died on March 13, 1990, five days before the first and only free Volkskammer election in the GDR.

Further functions in the GDR

Goldenbaum was a member of the provisional People's Chamber from October 7, 1949 and, after the first election on October 15, 1950, also a member of the People's Chamber of the GDR. From 1950 to 1958 he led the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. From 1950 to 1963, Goldenbaum was also Vice President and from 1963 to 1976 a member of the Presidium of the People's Chamber. He was a member of the People's Chamber until December 1989.

From 1950 Goldenbaum served as a member of the Presidium of the National Council of the National Front , from 1952 as a member of the Presidium of the German Peace Council . From 1954 to 1984 Goldenbaum was deputy chairman of the VdgB / BHG, from 1955 to 1983 a member of the Presidium of the Central Board of German-Soviet Friendship (DSF) , from 1956 a member of the Presidium of the Central Management of the Committee of Antifascist Resistance Fighters and from 1961 Vice President of the German-Nordic Association Society . From 1976 to 1982 Goldenbaum held the position of deputy chairman of the State Council.

Private

Ernst Goldenbaum married for the first time in Parchim in 1925. From this marriage with Margarete Goldenbaum (1906–1973) came Klaus Goldenbaum . The marriage ended in divorce in 1951. His second marriage to Käte Goldenbaum (1919–1994) had two daughters, including the philosopher Ursula Goldenbaum .

Awards and honors

Goldenbaum was awarded the German Peace Medal in 1955 and on May 6, 1955 with the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver and 1958 in gold, in 1964 with the Order of Labor Banner , in 1969 with the Great Star of Friendship of Nations and in 1973 with the Karl Marx Order . In 1958 the city of Parchim made Goldenbaum its honorary citizen. In 1959 he received the medal for fighters against fascism and on September 11, 1959 he inaugurated a memorial for the victims of the sinking of the Cap Arcona in Grevesmühlen . In 1965 he received the gold medal for the Patriotic Order of Merit and in 1968 the honorary title of Labor Hero .

Fonts

  • The German farmers in the past and present . Deutscher Bauernverlag, Berlin 1950; 3rd edition, 1954.
  • Loyal comrades in arms and co-creators on the path of socialism. From speeches and essays . DBD, Berlin 1978.

literature

  • Theresia Bauer: Block Party and Agrarian Revolution from Above. The Democratic Peasant Party of Germany 1948–1963 (=  Studies on Contemporary History. Vol. 64). Oldenbourg, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-486-56703-9 .
  • Michael Heinz: Ernst Goldenbaum. In: Andreas Röpcke u. a. (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for Mecklenburg. Volume 8. Schwerin 2016, pp. 102-109.
  • Siegfried Kuntsche, Helmut Müller-Enbergs :  Goldenbaum, Ernst . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German communists . Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 ( online ).
  • Christoph Wunnicke: Ernst Goldenbaum. In: The block parties of the GDR. Continuities and Transformation 1945–1990. Berlin 2014, series of publications by the Berlin State Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR, Volume 34. pp. 95-104. ( PDF; 434 kB )

Web links

Commons : Ernst Goldenbaum  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Heinz: Ernst Goldenbaum. In: Andreas Röpcke u. a. (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for Mecklenburg. Volume 8. Schwerin 2016, pp. 102–109, here p. 102.
  2. ↑ Michael Heinz: Ernst Goldenbaum. In: Andreas Röpcke u. a. (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for Mecklenburg . Volume 8. Schwerin 2016, pp. 102-109, here pp. 102 f.
  3. ↑ Michael Heinz: Ernst Goldenbaum. In: Andreas Röpcke u. a. (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for Mecklenburg. Volume 8. Schwerin 2016, pp. 102-109, here p. 104.
  4. ↑ Michael Heinz: Ernst Goldenbaum. In: Andreas Röpcke u. a. (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for Mecklenburg. Volume 8. Schwerin 2016, pp. 102-109, here pp. 104 f.
  5. ^ Theresia Bauer: Block Party and Agrarian Revolution from Above. The Democratic Peasant Party of Germany 1948–1963 (=  Studies on Contemporary History. Vol. 64). Oldenbourg, Munich 2003.
  6. ↑ Michael Heinz: Ernst Goldenbaum. In: Andreas Röpcke u. a. (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for Mecklenburg. Volume 8. Schwerin 2016, pp. 102-109, here p. 106.
  7. ↑ Michael Heinz: Ernst Goldenbaum. In: Andreas Röpcke u. a. (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for Mecklenburg. Volume 8. Schwerin 2016, pp. 102-109, here pp. 103-106.
  8. ↑ Michael Heinz: Ernst Goldenbaum. In: Andreas Röpcke u. a. (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for Mecklenburg. Volume 8. Schwerin 2016, pp. 102-109, here pp. 105 ff.
  9. ^ Obituary notice in Neues Deutschland from August 18, 1973.
  10. ↑ Michael Heinz: Ernst Goldenbaum. In: Andreas Röpcke u. a. (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for Mecklenburg. Volume 8. Schwerin 2016, pp. 102–109, here p. 102.
  11. ^ Hermann Weber, Andreas Herbst (ed.): German Communists: Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945 . Berlin 2004, p. 254.
    Michael Heinz: Ernst Goldenbaum. In: Andreas Röpcke u. a. (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for Mecklenburg. Volume 8. Schwerin 2016, pp. 102–109, here pp. 102 and 106.
personal data
SURNAME Goldenbaum, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician and functionary, MdV, Chairman of the DBD and Minister for Agriculture and Forestry of the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH December 15, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Parchim
DATE OF DEATH March 13, 1990
Place of death Berlin