Fritz Müller (trade unionist)

Fritz Müller (born January 7, 1919 in Salpkeim , Sensburg district ) was a German trade unionist. Between 1962 and 1984 he was chairman of the central board of the Land, Food and Forestry union in the GDR . He was also a candidate for the Central Committee of the SED from 1963 to 1981 .

Life

Müller was born shortly after the beginning of 1919 in the East Prussian Salpkeim (today Salpik) (not far from Rastenburg ) as the son of a farm worker who was an SPD member. After attending primary school, Müller initially worked as a farm worker in his native Salpkeim from 1934 to 1938. He then completed his compulsory time as a worker at the RAD until he was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1939 at the age of 20, in which he served until 1944, most recently as a non-commissioned officer. He was then first taken into Polish and later into Soviet captivity, from which he was released in 1946 to the Soviet occupation zone .

There, Müller initially found a job as a farm worker again. He then found work at Waggonbau Weimar , where he was initially retrained as an electric welder and then worked in this profession until April 1947. Müller had already joined the SED in 1946 and the party delegated him to the Kranichfeld district party school in April 1947 for an initial brief training session . There he was obviously so noticed that he got a job as an assistant and was employed there until February 1948. This was followed by a visit to the state party school from April to June 1948. Subsequently, the SED entrusted Müller initially with the management of the MAS -Landesschule Thuringia in Bad Frankenhausen , later with the management of the Thuringia area management of the Association of Nationally Owned Goods in Erfurt . When the districts emerged as a new administrative unit as a result of the change in the administrative structures in the GDR in July 1952 , 15 new SED district leaderships were formed that had corresponding personnel requirements. Müller was then appointed Secretary for Agriculture of the SED district leadership in Erfurt . He remained in this position until October 1962, this activity was interrupted by studying at the party college "Karl Marx" , which he completed from 1955 to 1958 and graduated as a social scientist.

After the chairman of the Land and Forestry Union, Karl Svihalek , was released from chairmanship in October 1961 because of, according to the official account, behavior that was damaging to the party , Horst Meinhardt, who had been deputy chairman of the union up until then, initially led the union on a temporary basis, but apparently proved himself from the point of view of the FDGB not as the right man. At the 11th central board meeting of the Land and Forestry Union on 16./17. In October 1962, the agriculturally experienced miller was elected as the new union chairman. Thereupon he was at the 15th meeting of the FDGB federal executive committee on 14./15. November co-opted as a member of the FDGB federal executive committee and its presidium. At the same time, Müller was appointed to head the newly established Office for Agriculture on the Federal Board of the FDGB. The office was set up in connection with the introduction of the NÖSPL . However, the office only existed in this form until the end of February 1963, so barely three and a half months. Through this management function, Müller was also appointed to the secretariat of the FDGB federal executive, but only stayed there until 1964. After that, he was a member of the presidium of the FDGB federal executive until 1977. Due to its not insignificant trade union function, Müller was on the VI. Party congress 1963 elected as candidate of the Central Committee, this function was on the VII. (1967), VIII. (1971) and IX. 1976 congress confirmed. At the 10th Party Congress in 1981, Müller was removed from the Central Committee. In 1984, at the 10th meeting of the central executive committee of the Land, Food and Forestry union, which took place on April 26th of that year, FDGB chairman Harry Tisch resigned from his union function after Müller asked for it due to health reasons and since he was also reaching retirement age would have. Horst Zimmermann became the new union chairman .

Honors

• 1965 Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze
• 1969 Patriotic Order of Merit in silver
• 1974 Work banner I. Stage
• 1984 Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold
• 1989 Gold Medal for the Patriotic Order of Merit

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on the union in the FDGB lexicon
2. ^ Entry on the Office for Agriculture at the FDGB Lexicon
3. ↑ Neue Zeit of May 7, 1965 p. 4
4. ↑ Neues Deutschland from February 21, 1969 p. 3
5. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of October 4, 1974 p. 6
6. ↑ Neues Deutschland from March 6, 1984 p. 2
7. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of February 25, 1989 p. 4

Web links

• Siegfried Kuntsche , Andreas Herbst :  Fritz Müller . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Fritz Müller in the FDGB Lexicon

literature

• Andreas Herbst, Gerd-Rüdiger Stephan, Jürgen Winkler: The SED History-Organization-Politics A manual 1st edition. dietz berlin 1997 ISBN 3-320-01951-1 p. 1035
• Mario Niemann , Andreas Herbst: SED cadre. The middle level. Biographical lexicon of the secretaries of the state and district managements, the prime ministers and the chairmen of the district councils from 1946 to 1989 (= Schöningh collection on history and the present ). Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-76977-0 . P. 354