Ernst Lange (politician, 1905)

Ernst Lange (born November 30, 1905 in Berlin ; † February 2, 1971 there ) was a German communist resistance fighter against National Socialism and a politician ( SED ).

Life

Lange, the son of a worker, born in Berlin-Moabit , attended elementary school and completed an apprenticeship as a carpenter . In 1921 he became a member of the Socialist Workers' Youth and in 1923 of the Communist Youth Association of Germany , joined the German Woodworkers Association in 1925 and in 1927 the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). From 1928 he was a courier and instructor in the organizational department of the Central Committee of the KPD. From 1929 to 1932 he was in Münzenberg Group as head of the universe library operates. In 1932/33 he held the position of political director of the Berlin KPD sub-district southeast. From February 1933 he did illegal resistance work and was in “ protective custody ” in Plötzensee and in the Berlin-Spandau prison from February to July 1933 . After his release, he resumed illegal work and was appointed by the Berlin political director Hans Jendretzky as an instructor for the KPD district leadership in Berlin. After the arrest of leading Berlin employees (Jendretzky, Schlegel, Sasse) in February 1934, he was responsible for the “Reichsorganization Sport”, the International Workers Aid , the Friends of the Soviet Union and the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition . A fortnight before his departure for Moscow , where the party decided that he should attend the International Lenin School , he was arrested on the street on December 17, 1934. He spent difficult weeks in Gestapo custody on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse . Although his position remained undetected, after 13 months of pre-trial detention, he was sentenced to five years in prison in January 1936 by the Second Senate of the People's Court for “preparing for high treason”. He served his imprisonment in Luckau prison, in the Sonnenburg concentration camp and in the Emsländer Moor penal camp . In 1943 he was pressed into the penalty battalion 999 and forced to join the Todt organization in France. Here, too, he was doing illegal work. Before the end of the war he reached Munich on foot and then always before the American troops to the Mulde and from there to Berlin.

He became political leader of the KPD sub-district and first secretary of the KPD district leadership in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg . From 1946 a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), he became first chairman of the SED district executive committee Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg and a member of the SED state executive committee Greater Berlin. After completing a course at the party college in Liebenwalde , he served from 1946 to 1948 as head of commission 5 in the German Administration of the Interior (DVdI). Affected with the "flaw" of a western emigrant, he was replaced in 1948 and replaced by Erich Jamin . Only about ten percent of the K 5 employees were transferred to the main administration in 1949 to protect the economy . Lange was then deputy chairman of the Central Commission for State Control from July 1948 to 1952 . In January 1953 the party appointed him to leading positions in the central party apparatus. He worked as an employee in the secretariat of the Central Committee of the SED , initially as head of the planning and finance department (successor to Adalbert Hengst ). From 1953 to 1966 he held the position of head of the Trade and Supply and Foreign Trade Department of the SED Central Committee and was a candidate for the SED Central Committee from January 1963 (VIth Party Congress) to April 1967. He then left his full-time job and was a member and deputy chairman of the Central Revision Commission of the SED from April 1967 (7th Party Congress) until his death in 1971.

Lange was married and has two children. He died at the age of 65 and was buried in the central cemetery in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde , Pergolenweg.

Awards

• 1955 Patriotic Order of Merit in silver and 1965 in gold
• 1958 Order of the " Labor Banner "
• 1958 medal for fighters against fascism 1933 to 1945
• 1970 Gold medal for the Patriotic Order of Merit

literature

• Federal Ministry for all German issues (ed.): SBZ biography. A biographical reference book on the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany . Deutscher Bundes-Verlag, Bonn 1964, p. 204.
• Andreas Herbst u. a. (Ed.): This is how the GDR worked , Volume 3: Lexicon of Functionaries . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-499-16350-0 , p. 198.
• Hans-Rainer Sandvoss : The “other” capital of the Reich. Resistance from the labor movement in Berlin from 1933 to 1945 , Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 3-936872-94-5 , p. 312.
• Andreas Herbst:  Lange, Ernst . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk : Stasi specifically. Surveillance and repression in the GDR . CH Beck, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-406-63838-1 , p. 1955.

Web links

• Ernst Lange's gravestone in the Friedrichsfelde central cemetery at www.billiongraves.com (accessed on July 30, 2018).

See also

• List of the Central Committee departments and their department heads
• List of members and candidates of the Central Committee of the SED after VI. Party congress

Individual evidence

1. ^ A comrade from Berlin . In: Berliner Zeitung , November 30, 1965, p. 4.
2. ^ Burial of Ernst Lange's urn . In: Neues Deutschland , February 24, 1971, p. 2.