Franz Dahlem

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Franz Dahlem (born January 14, 1892 in Rohrbach , Lorraine , † December 17, 1981 in Berlin ) was a German politician ( KPD , SED ). He was a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee and chief executive of the SED.

Life

Dahlem trained as an export merchant in Saarbrücken from 1911 to 1913 and was a soldier in the First World War from 1914 to 1918 . He was active in the Catholic youth movement before becoming a member of the SPD from 1913 and the USPD from 1917 . From 1919 to 1921 he was editor of the USPD newspaper he co-founded, Socialist Republic, and city councilor of Cologne . In 1919 he married Käthe Weber (born March 20, 1899 in Berlin; † December 25, 1974 in Berlin).

Since 1920 he was a member of the VKPD / KPD , in whose central committee he had various functions, including a. he was also a teacher at the Reichsparteischule of the KPD "Rosa Luxemburg" . From the beginning of November 1930 to July 1932 Dahlem took over the function of Reich Leader of the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition (RGO). From 1921 to 1924 he was a member of the Prussian Landtag and from 1928 to 1933 of the Reichstag . On February 7, 1933, Dahlem took part in the last illegal meeting of the Central Committee of the KPD in the sports store Ziegenhals near Berlin.

exile

In 1933 Dahlem emigrated to Paris (French citizen 1934–1943). In the Lutetia district (1935/36) he was involved in the attempt to create a popular front against the Hitler dictatorship. He was one of the signatories of the appeal to the German people . In the following years he worked illegally in Berlin and Prague . In 1935 Dahlem took part in the KPD's Brussels conference . In 1936 he was expatriated from Germany. From 1937 to 1939 he was head of the Central Political Commission of the International Brigades in Spain .

From 1933 to 1943 Dahlem was a candidate for the Executive Committee of the Communist International and until 1939 a member of the KPD leadership in Paris, most recently as the successor to Walter Ulbricht as Chairman of the Central Committee.

From 1939 to 1942 Dahlem was interned in Le Vernet in France, from there to the Castres secret prison and then handed over to the Gestapo . He survived the years up to 1945 in Mauthausen concentration camp only thanks to the solidarity of former Spain fighters from numerous nations. In the spring of 1942, 350 people in Great Britain, including 98 members of parliament and 40 members of the House of Lords, signed a petition for the release of Franz Dahlem, Luigi Longo and other opponents of the National Socialists imprisoned in Castres.

return

After the war, Dahlem was a member of the People's Chamber and was active in the Central Committee and Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED, including a. as head of the cadre and organization department and the office for “party intelligence”. As deputy head of the special commission for the formation of defense forces, he played a key role in the rearmament of the GDR.

Dahlem was considered Ulbricht's rival within the SED. In 1953, in connection with the Slansky trial in Prague, an investigation was carried out by the Central Party Control Commission because of his contacts with Noel H. Field , as a result of which he was excluded from the SED Central Committee as a “Zionist”, released from all party and state functions was arrested. The already planned show trial in which he u. a. should be indicted together with Paul Merker , but did not take place; after Stalin's death, all charges of being a “Zionist agent” were immediately dropped. In 1956 he was politically rehabilitated.

From 1955 he worked in the Ministry of Higher Education, since 1957 as Deputy Minister. In the same year he became a co-opted member of the Central Committee of the SED and the Research Council of the GDR and in 1963 he was again a member of the People's Chamber. In addition, since 1964 he was President of the Franco-German Society of the GDR and a member of the Presidium of the Committee of Antifascist Resistance Fighters.

tomb

Dahlem has received numerous awards, including a. 1956 the Hans Beimler Medal , 1962 the Artur Becker Medal and the Karl Marx Order , 1964 the Patriotic Order of Merit (VVO) in gold, 1967 the VVO medal in gold, 1965 and 1972 the NVA Medal of Merit , 1970 the Star of Friendship of Nations and 1977 the Great Star of Friendship of Nations . In 1970 he became an honorary citizen of Ivry-sur-Seine . His urn was buried in the memorial of the socialists in the central cemetery Friedrichsfelde in Berlin-Lichtenberg .

Works

  • Way and goal of the anti-fascist struggle. Berlin 1952
  • On the eve of the Second World War. Memories. 2nd volumes. Berlin 1977
  • Adolescent years. From Catholic worker boy to proletarian revolutionary. Dietz, Berlin 1982

literature

  • Heinz Bergschicker: German Chronicle 1933–1945. A picture of the times of the fascist dictatorship . Knowledge Advice: Olaf Groehler . Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1981, 2nd dgs. 1982 edition (ill. P. 19)
  • Ulrich Pfeil : Le genre biographique dans l'historiographie de la RDA , in: Revue d'Allemagne et des pays de langue allemande 33 (2001) 4, pp. 487-500
  • Ulrich Pfeil: The Paris Foreign Secretariat of the KPD in August / September 1939. A neuralgic point in the history of German communism , in: Anne Saint Sauveur-Henn (Ed.): Fluchtziel Paris. The German-speaking Emigration 1933–1940 , Berlin, Metropol, 2002, pp. 137–152
  • Ulrich Pfeil: The fate of the French emigrants in the GDR using the example of Franz Dahlem (1892–1981), in: Corine Defrance, Michael Kißener, Pia Nordblom (eds.), Ways of Understanding Between Germans and French After 1945. Civil Society Approaches , Tübingen , Narr, 2010, pp. 101-117
  • Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. Dietz, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-320-02044-7 , pp. 141-143.
  • Bernd-Rainer Barth , Helmut Müller-Enbergs :  Dahlem, Franz . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

Commons : Franz Dahlem  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Back then in Fichtenau. Memories of the central party school of the KPD . Schöneiche-Fichtenau Memorial and Educational Center 1980, pp. 13–18.
  2. ↑ See details Stefan Heinz : Moscow's mercenaries? The “Unified Association of Metal Workers in Berlin”: Development and failure of a communist union . Hamburg 2010, pp. 113 f., 139, 143 ff., 156 ff., 211 ff., 277 ff.
  3. ↑ List of participants
  4. ^ Gerhard Leo: Germans in the French Resistance - A Way to Europe , DRAFD-Information, August 1999, drafd.org
  5. ↑ Jonny Granzow: The breakout of the Spanish fighters from the secret prison: A historical report . edition bodoni, 2012, ISBN 978-3-940781-27-7 , p. 62
personal data
SURNAME Dahlem, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (KPD, SED), MdR, MdV, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee and head of the SED
DATE OF BIRTH January 14, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Rohrbach , Lorraine
DATE OF DEATH 17th December 1981
Place of death Berlin