Friedrich Macher

Friedrich Macher (born February 27, 1922 in Münzesheim ) is a former German trade union official and politician ( SED ). He was Minister for Labor and Vocational Training in the GDR .

Life

Macher, son of a boilermaker, learned the trade of a telegraph construction craftsman at Deutsche Post after attending primary school and then worked in this profession. From 1940 to 1941 he was an electrician at AEG Berlin. In 1941 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and later became a Soviet prisoner of war , where he attended the Antifa Central School from 1947 to 1948 .

After his return in 1948 he became a member of the SED and the FDGB . He became deputy head of the Berlin remote office of the Deutsche Post and then chairman of the state board of Saxony-Anhalt of the Post and Telecommunications Union. After studying at the SED party college in 1950/51, he was first deputy chairman in 1951 and then from April 1952 to 1953 chairman of the central board of the industrial union (IG) Post and Telecommunications. At the same time he was a member of the presidium of the FDGB federal executive committee.

On December 9, 1953, at the age of 31, he was appointed Minister of Labor by the incumbent Prime Minister of the GDR, Walter Ulbricht, to succeed Roman Chwalek . On August 4, 1954, as Minister for Labor, at a meeting of the People's Chamber, he established the law on the foundation of the order “ Banner of Labor ”. When the GDR Council of Ministers was re-established under Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl on November 19, 1954, he became Minister of Labor and Vocational Training and remained in this position until February 1958.

On February 19, 1958 Macher became a member of the State Planning Commission (SPK) and was intended to chair the newly formed committee for work and wages. The committee was finally formed on July 1, 1958. At the constituent meeting of the committee on July 22, 1958, however, Walter Heinicke became chairman and doer - in the function of a member of the SPK and head of the SPK's workforce, university and technical school management department - his deputy. Later he was secretary of the SPK and from 1961 to 1964 in East Germany's Office for economic and scientific- technical cooperation with foreign countries or Head of CMEA of Ministers of the GDR.

1964 makers at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig Dr. rer. oec. PhD. Subsequently, from 1964 to 1968, he was head of the Post and Telecommunications Economics department at the Institute for Post and Telecommunications. In 1969 he became a full professor for ergonomics at the Technical University of Dresden , where he was director of the ergonomics section from 1971 to 1981.

Private

He is married and has four kids.

Awards

• Order Banner of Labor (1958 and 1980)
• Fritz Heckert Medal (1959)
• Patriotic Order of Merit in Bronze (1977)

literature

• Andreas Herbst (eds.), Winfried Ranke, Jürgen Winkler: This is how the GDR worked. Volume 3: Lexicon of functionaries (= rororo manual. Vol. 6350). Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-499-16350-0 , p. 215.
• Andreas Herbst:  Doer, Friedrich . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

• Friedrich Macher. Minister for Labor (and Vocational Training) of the GDR 1953–1958 . Biography on the website of the Independent Commission of Historians to review the history of the Reich Ministry of Labor in the time of National Socialism .

Individual evidence

1. ^ New Germany of December 10, 1953.
2. ^ New Germany of February 20, 1958.
3. ^ New Germany of July 31, 1958.
4. ↑ Biographical in Tribüne from July 22, 1977.