Friedrich Heilmann

Friedrich Wilhelm Heilmann (born March 1, 1892 in Berlin ; † June 30, 1963 there ) was a German politician ( KPD / SED ) and journalist .

Life

Friedrich Wilhelm Heilmann was the son of a shoemaker, attended elementary school (1898–1906) after graduating from school and trained as a gilder and modeller, which he completed in 1910.

In 1907 he joined the "Association of Apprentices and Young Workers Berlin" and the "German Woodworkers Association". As a functionary of the working class youth, he met Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg personally in 1908 . In 1910 Heilmann became a member of the SPD in Weimar . As a youth functionary he was in Hanover from 1911 to 1913 . In March 1915, he was arrested for distributing publications from the Internationale group and sentenced to nine months in prison. During his military service from May 1916 to December 1918 he became a member of the Spartakusbund and founding member of the Communist Party of Germany. He was the first chairman of the Free Socialist Youth and from 1922 secretary of the Central Committee of the KPD. Then he was editor-in-chief of the KPD press in Mannheim, Düsseldorf, Solingen and Gotha.

In 1929 and 1932 he was elected to the Thuringian state parliament, where he became chairman of the KPD parliamentary group. With the seizure of power by the National Socialists in 1933 to his seat in Parliament unlawfully took him. From April to August 1933 he was responsible for the illegal work of the KPD in northern Bavaria. He emigrated to the Soviet Union in September 1933 . Since October 1933 was the employee of the Executive Committee of the Communist International . From 1936 he was the spokesman for the program for German listeners of the Moscow Radio and from 1938 to 1942 he was the editor of the publishing house for foreign language literature . After Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union , he compiled agitation materials for German soldiers, was editor of the German newspaper Das Freie Wort and from July 1943 to September 1945 spokesperson and editor for the NKFD's “Free Germany” station .

In 1945 he returned to Thuringia and worked on rebuilding the KPD. When the SPD and KPD were forced to form the SED , he became a member of the SED. In 1946 he was a member of the appointed advisory state assembly of Thuringia .

In the state elections in the Soviet Zone in 1946 , he was elected to the Thuringian state parliament for the SED . There he was chairman of the finance committee and from March 1947 third vice-chairman. He was also elected to the state parliament in the regional elections in the GDR in 1950 .

1950 to 1952 he was the first chairwoman of the Society for German-Soviet Friendship (DSF) in Thuringia. From 1952 he held the same function for the Erfurt district and was a member of the SED district leadership in Erfurt.

From 1954 to 1957 he was editor-in-chief of the magazine Freie Welt . Since 1957 he was deputy editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper Sonntag of the Kulturbund .

His urn was in the grave conditioning Pergolenweg the memorial of the socialists at the Berlin Central Cemetery Friedrichsfelde buried.

Awards

• 1946 medal "For heroic work in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945"
• 1956 Patriotic Order of Merit in silver
• 1962 Karl Marx Order

Works

• On the role of the broadcaster “Free Germany” in guiding and orienting the anti-fascist German resistance movement. In: Institute for German Military History (Ed.): The National Committee “Free Germany” and its military-political significance. Potsdam 1963.

literature

• SBZ biography . Edited by the Federal Ministry for Internal German Relations , Bonn 1961, pp. 133-134.
• I. Heidler: Heilmann, Friedrich Wilhelm. In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, pp. 194-195.
• Gottfried Hamacher . With the assistance of André Lohmar: Against Hitler - Germans in the Resistance, in the armed forces of the anti-Hitler coalition and the "Free Germany" movement: short biographies. Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Berlin. Volume 53. ISBN 3-320-02941-X ( PDF ).
• Steffen Kachel : A red-red special path? Social Democrats and Communists in Thuringia 1919 to 1949. (Publications of the Historical Commission for Thuringia, Kleine Reihe Bd. 29) p. 551.
• Peter Erler:  Heilmann, Friedrich Wilhelm . 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. Biographical Handbook 1918 to 1945 . 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 ( online ).