Ulbricht group

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Ulbricht group was a group of German politicians controlled by the Soviet Union and flown into occupied Germany towards the end of World War II . It consisted of KPD officials and ten "anti-fascist prisoners of war" who returned to Germany on April 30, 1945 from the Soviet Union. It was supposed to support the Political Headquarters of the 1st Belarusian Front in the reorganization of public life and the administration of Berlin and to prepare the founding of parties, trade unions and organizations. The group was named after its leader Walter Ulbrichtnamed. In parallel there were two other regional groups . The Ackermann group was mainly deployed in Saxony and the Sobottka group was deployed in Mecklenburg .

activity

On April 5, 1945, the Moscow KPD leadership defined the tasks for the Ulbricht group and the other communist cadres who were to travel to Germany. They would have to work to ensure that the people followed the instructions of the Soviet military administration . To this end, the people should be pacified and the legend that the Red Army wanted to destroy or enslave them should be fought . It was about destroying the Hitler state . The German people want and should live, but must understand that this can only be done peacefully and not at the expense of others. Therefore, the population should be made to hand over all "Hitler bandits" to the occupation authorities. The catastrophe was brought about by Hitler's policy, the German people bear great responsibility for it. The communists had warned of this catastrophe. The cadres should help the German people in their need and at the same time lay a basis for the future of the KPD.

The Ulbricht group flew from Moscow to Minsk and then on to Kalau near Meseritz . She drove on in the truck to the headquarters of the political staff of Marshal Zhukov's army , which was located in Bruchmühle about 30 kilometers east of Berlin . They were quartered there at Buchholzer Strasse 8. The Ulbricht group began their work in Berlin on May 2, 1945, and worked from Bruchmühle until May 8. Subsequently, the group's headquarters were in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde in a well-preserved multi-story house at Prinzenallee 80 (today Einbecker Strasse 41 ). Ulbricht took u. a. Contact the doctor Ferdinand Sauerbruch and the actor Heinz Rühmann , who, along with others, are helping to set up the new administration, d. H. should primarily repute people who were eligible for office.

The group members were active in many areas. For example, Hans Mahle took care of the food supply in Berlin immediately after the end of the war, but was commissioned by Nikolai Bersarin and Ulbricht on May 12, 1945 to set up radio in the Soviet zone of occupation.

On May 6, 1945, Ulbricht handed the Soviet city commandant Bersarin the first list of names with suggestions for filling important administrative posts in Berlin. In the appointments of district mayors and city councilors, which he made from May 12 to 19, 1945, Bersarin complied without deviating from Ulbricht's list of proposals. Obviously Paul Markgraf , who was one of the ten “anti-fascist prisoners of war”, was appointed police president in Berlin on Ulbricht's initiative.

At the beginning of June Ulbricht, Ackermann and Sobottka traveled back to Moscow to give an initial report and to receive further instructions. On June 4, 1945, they met Pieck, Josef Stalin and Andrei Schdanow . Stalin instructed them to found a party of the working people, open to proletarians, peasants and intellectuals. This party should work throughout Germany and help to secure the unity of Germany, since in his opinion the Western powers were aiming at a division of the country. Therefore, the goal is the “completion of the bourgeois [I] -democr [atic] revolution” by a “bourgeois [I] -democr [atic] government”. The call to found the KPD was written by Anton Ackermann. In it the new party openly spoke out against the Sovietization of Germany. Instead, it is a matter of "bringing the matter of bourgeois-democratic reshuffle that began in 1848 to an end" and removing the "remnants of feudalism " through land reform . The party called the “establishment of an anti-fascist , democratic republic with all democratic rights and freedoms for the people” as its goal. With the re-establishment of the KPD on June 11, 1945, the group had achieved its first goal. On July 10th, she moved to the building of the Central Committee of the KPD.

Historical classification

Until 1955 the existence of the Ulbricht group in the GDR was concealed, according to Wolfgang Leonhard , in order not to emphasize the role of the communist emigrants from Moscow. After 1955, different representations appeared regarding the composition of the members and the order in which they were named.

In historical research it is controversial whether Stalin's and Ackermann's confessions to parliamentary democracy and basic rights were meant seriously or not. Wolfgang Leonhard passed on Ulbricht's much-quoted saying from these weeks: “It's very clear. It has to look democratic, but we have to have everything in our hands. ” Manfred Wilke and Klaus Schroeder , for example, follow the interpretation that the aim in the spring of 1945 was the establishment of communist rule and that the proclaimed democracy was only a transitional stage . Wilfried Loth , on the other hand, takes the view that Stalin was seriously striving for a Germany that was democratic in the western sense. Only in this way could he secure the four-power responsibility for Germany, without which the western powers could easily deny him access to the resources of the Ruhr area , which he needed as reparations for the rebuilding of the western areas of the Soviet Union devastated in World War II . (In fact, the Americans were supposed to interrupt deliveries of reparations to the Soviet Union from their zone as early as May 1946.) A renouncement of the Sovietization of his zone of occupation was a low price for this goal, but this project was due to the revolutionary zeal of Walter Ulbricht and the tendency towards isolation of the West has been foiled.

Members of the Ulbricht group

Regional groups

A group headed by Ackermann was set up for the Saxony region:

A group led by Sobottka was set up for the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania region :

literature

  • Wolfgang Leonhard: The revolution dismisses its children . Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 1955, Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1985.
  • Wolfgang Leonhard: Searching for traces. 40 years after 'The Revolution releases its children'. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 1992/94.
  • Gerhard Keiderling (Ed.): "Gruppe Ulbricht" in Berlin April to June 1945. From the preparations in the summer of 1944 to the re-establishment of the KPD in June 1945. Documentation. With a foreword by Wolfgang Leonhard and introduced by Gerhard Keiderling , Berlin-Verlag Spitz, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-87061-398-X

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Erler, Horst Laude and Manfred Wilke (eds.): After Hitler we come : Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-05-002554-9 , pp. 380–386
  2. ^ Foundation archive of the parties and mass organizations of the GDR: SAPMO-BArch, NY 4036/500, p. 109 (original), p. 39–40 (plain text)
  3. ↑ Cay Rademacher: Die Männer aus Berlin, in: GEO Epoche: Die DDR, p. 26, ISBN 978-3-652-00237-0
  4. ^ The street was renamed Einbecker Strasse in 1951, see information from luise-berlin.de/gedenkafeln with further evidence
  5. ↑ cf. Franz Josef Görtz: The Heinz Rühmann file, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung from October 14, 2000; Source: http://www.ruehmann-heinz.de/News.htm - accessed on February 10, 2012; see. also documents and photographs of the Ulbricht group in the Federal Archives; Reference: - ( Memento from May 8, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) - accessed on February 10, 2012
  6. ↑ The Ulbricht group members Fritz Erpenbeck and Otto Fischer were also involved in setting up the transmitter in Berlin-Tegel. See State Broadcasting Committee, minutes of the 1st conference, German Broadcasting Archive .
  7. ↑ On the ten "anti-fascist prisoners of war" and Ulbricht's list of names see: Jochen Staadt: We are helping to create order , in: Forschungsverbund SED-Staat der Freie Universität Berlin (Ed.): Journal of the Research Association SED-Staat , issue no 28/2010, pp. 90-117, here pp. 92-94
  8. ↑ Pieck's notes from June 4, 1945, cited above. with Wilfried Loth , Stalin's unloved child. Why Moscow did not want the GDR , Rowohlt Berlin, 1994, p. 24
  9. ^ Rolf Steininger, German History 1945–1961. Presentation and documents in two volumes , Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1983, vol. 1, p. 159
  10. ↑ Wolfgang Leonhardt, The Revolution dismisses her children , Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 1955, p. 440
  11. ↑ Manfred Wilke (Ed.): Anatomy of the party headquarters. The KPD / SED on the way to power , Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1998, p. 45
  12. ↑ Klaus Schroeder, The SED State. History and structures of the GDR , Bavarian State Center for Political Education, Munich 1998, p. 81f
  13. ↑ Wilfried Loth, Stalin's Unloved Child. Why Moscow did not want the GDR , Rowohlt, Berlin 1994, passim, the quotations p. 10
  14. ↑ see Kerstin Decker: The 416 pages of her father , Der Tagesspiegel, March 15, 2008

Web links