Gerhard Desczyk

Candidate poster for the 12th party congress of the CDU in Erfurt 1968

Gerhard Desczyk (born June 3, 1899 in Kreuzburg (Upper Silesia) , † March 18, 1983 in Berlin ) was a German writer, CDU functionary in the GDR and chief editor of Union Verlag Berlin.

Live and act

Deszyk was called up for military service after graduating from high school in 1917 and studied German , history and philosophy in Munich and Leipzig from 1919 to 1923 . In 1923 he received his doctorate in philosophy. From 1924 to 1933 he was first state secretary of the Center Party in Saxony and in 1924 editor and from 1927 editor-in-chief of its organ Sächsische Volkszeitung . In 1928 he founded the St. Benno-Blatt for the Catholic diocese of Meißen , of which he was responsible editor until his arrest in 1935. He was taken into “ protective custody ” in November 1935 because of the publication of an article directed against an attack by the SS weekly Das Schwarze Korps on Catholic moral theology. He then worked for various newspapers, from 1941 to 1945 for pictures and studies , of which he was the editor.

On July 22, 1945 Desczyk became a member of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU). From 1945 to 1949 he was a lecturer at the Volkshochschule Pankow , 1945 also in the new teacher training. At the same time he was a CDU functionary and secretary of the CDU main administration for culture, assistant general secretary, member of the political committee and finally president of the main administration. From 1956 he was the chief editor of the two CDU book publishers, Union Verlag Berlin and Koehler & Amelang Leipzig, and a member of the editorial board of the magazine encounter . Deszyk was a member of the presidium of the main board of the CDU.

Private

Desczyk lived in Berlin-Pankow-Niederschönhausen from 1959 to 1983 and has two daughters with his wife Hertha (née Fischer) (born March 28, 1910 ; † July 11, 2001 ).

Honors

• Patriotic Order of Merit of the GDR (bronze 1956, silver 1959, gold 1974, bar of honor 1979)
• Medal of Merit of the GDR
• Banner of Labor (1969)
• Medal for excellent performance
• Otto Nuschke Decoration of Honor (in gold)
• Badge of Honor of the National Front
• Ernst Moritz Arndt Medal
• Johannes R. Becher Medal (in gold)

Works (selection)

• A present basket of my cheerful stories. Union Verlag, Berlin 1982.
• Ludwig Kirsch. Union Verlag, Berlin 1977.
• Incidents on the journey of life. Berlin 1974.
• The chat bag. Berlin, Union Verlag, 1973.
• An old man's childhood memories. Leipzig 1954.
• Untold stories. Berlin, Leipzig 1956.
• The peace mandate of the Catholics. Castle divisions, Berlin 1962.

literature

• Short biography for:  Desczyk, Gerhard . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Gerhard Desczyk in the catalog of the German National Library