Ernst Timm

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Ernst Timm (back) with the admirals Wilhelm Ehm (middle) and Gustav Hesse on the occasion of a fleet parade on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the GDR in 1979

Ernst Timm (born October 16, 1926 in Brandenburg an der Havel ; † December 15, 2005 ) was a GDR politician and, as the first secretary of the SED district leadership, a member of the SED - nomenklatura . From the 7th electoral term in 1976 until November 16, 1989, he was a member of the People's Chamber .

Life

He was born in 1926 in Brandenburg an der Havel in a working-class family. After attending elementary school, he completed an apprenticeship as a metal aircraft manufacturer from 1941 to 1944 in the branch of Arado Flugzeugwerke in Brandenburg / Neuendorf. From 1944 he did voluntary military service in the Navy . From 1945 to 1949 he was a Soviet prisoner of war. There he attended several Antifa schools .

After the end of the Second World War , the parts and machines of the Arado works that had not been destroyed by the air raids were brought to the Soviet Union as reparations and the company was liquidated. Timm was therefore no longer able to work in his profession after his release from captivity in 1949.

Political career in the SED

From 1950 he was active in political youth work in the Free German Youth (FDJ), the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and the Free German Trade Union Federation (FDGB). As a full-time FDJ functionary, he headed a department in the Central Council of the FDJ in Berlin from 1952 to 1953 and was first secretary in the Rostock district until the beginning of 1954.

From 1954 to 1957 he studied at the central party college of the CPSU "VI Lenin" in Moscow and graduated with a diploma as a social scientist. After his return from Moscow he worked from 1958 to 1960 as a secretary for agitation and propaganda at the SED city administration in Rostock . In 1960 he moved to the SED district leadership in Rostock as a department head and was there from 1961 to 1966 secretary for organization and management and second secretary of the SED district leadership. From 1966 he was 1st secretary of the SED city leadership in Rostock and from 1975 to 1989 the 1st secretary of the SED district leadership in the Rostock district. and from 1976 member of the Central Committee of the SED . At the same time he was from 1975 to 1989 a member of the FDGB federal executive committee. While he was a member of the People's Chamber, he was a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs from 1982.

During the supply crisis and the clearly recognizable problems in the GDR in the early 1980s, the German magazine Der Spiegel quoted him :

“There is no reason to doubt the good and correct politics of the party when we call for the economical use of everything that is available to us, even if we have to make certain changes in the range of goods for everyday use and not always to be able to fulfill every wish in supply issues at any time.

- Ernst Timm in DER SPIEGEL 44/1982

In June 1989 he gained attention when, as a member of the People's Chamber , he affirmed the SED leadership's approval of the Tian'anmen massacre of the Chinese People's Liberation Army on the protesters of the popular uprising on June 3rd and 4th, 1989 and the protesting students as "anti-constitutional Elements ”.

“The MPs of the People's Chamber state that in the current situation the political solution of internal problems, which the party and state leadership of the People's Republic of China is persistently striving for, has been prevented as a result of the violent, bloody excesses of anti-constitutional elements. As a result, the people's power was forced to restore order and security using armed forces. Unfortunately, numerous injuries and deaths are to be mourned. "

- Ernst Timm, on June 8, 1989, in his speech to the People's Chamber

At one of the numerous meetings in autumn 1989, he was asked what the dictatorship of the proletariat actually was . His answer, he had to look up Lenin first, caused a roar of laughter and revealed the state of the SED nomenclature in autumn 1989 in the GDR.

Awards in the GDR

Post-turnaround time

After the reunification and peaceful revolution in the GDR , he was removed from all his offices and expelled from the SED-PDS and the FDGB. After he had already been charged with abuse of office and corruption in August 1990, he was sentenced on February 16, 1993 by the Rostock Regional Court for abuse of confidence to a prison term of 15 months because he withdrew 80,000 GDR Marks from a fund for representatives of the people to expand his house . The sentence has been suspended.

Fonts

literature

  • Helmut Müller-Enbergs :  Timm, Ernst (Otto) . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Ernst Timm , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 07/1990 from February 5, 1990, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
  • Nikolaus Werz , Hans Jörg Hennecke : Parties and politics in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Olzog, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-7892-8047-X .
  • Lena Gürtler. The state commissioner for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania for the documents of the state security service of the former GDR (ed.): Past in the mirror of justice. An exemplary documentation of the criminal law processing of GDR injustice in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2010, ISBN 978-3-86108-979-7 .
  • Christian Jung: History of the Losers. Historical self-reflection by high-ranking members of the SED after 1989 (= Heidelberg Treatises on Middle and Modern History - New Series , Volume 16). Universitätsverlag Winter Heidelberg, Heidelberg 2007, ISBN 978-3-8253-5308-7 (Dissertation University Heidelberg 2006 under the title: From my life - poetry and truth , 387 pages).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ SED and FDGB archives, Rostock district management of the SED (1952–1990).
  2. ↑ Always only chicken . In: Der Spiegel . No. 44 , 1982, pp. 135, 136 ( online ).
  3. ^ Suppression of the protest movement on Tiananmen Square in Beijing 1989 - The GDR shows solidarity with the PR China. in the German Broadcasting Archive.
  4. ↑ First Gorbachev came, then the tanks rolled. In: Hamburger Abendblatt. June 2, 2009, accessed October 24, 2010
  5. ^ Joachim Gauck : Winter in Summer - Spring in Autumn. Memories . Siedler Verlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-88680-935-6 , p. 198.
  6. ^ Joachim Gauck: Winter in Summer - Spring in Autumn. Memories . Siedler Verlag, Munich 2009, pp. 215–216.
  7. ↑ Alexander Cammann: The Heroes of the Province: Twenty years after the fall of 1989, German historians tell of the turn of the epoch. In: The time. 41/2009.
  8. ↑ Monika Zimmermann: What is actually doing-- ?: 100 GDR celebrities today. Ch. Links Verlag, 1994, ISBN 3-86153-064-3 , pp. 271-275ff.
  9. ↑ Klaus Marxen , Gerhard Werle : Criminal justice and GDR injustice: abuse of office and corruption. Verlag deGruyter, 2002, ISBN 3-11-017440-5 , pp. 191-194ff.
  10. ↑ Lena Gürtler ( memento from July 31, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) on the homepage of the Körber Foundation .
personal data
SURNAME OK, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SED functionary, MdV
DATE OF BIRTH October 16, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Brandenburg on the Havel
DATE OF DEATH December 15, 2005