Hans Mahle

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Hans Mahle (actually Heinrich August Ludwig Mahlmann ; born September 22, 1911 in Hamburg ; † May 18, 1999 in Berlin ) was a German politician ( KPD / SED or SEW ), a founding member of the NKFD and a member of the Ulbricht group . After 1945, he was primarily responsible for building up broadcasting in the Soviet Zone and later, at times, general director of the GDR broadcasting .

Life

From pioneer to child and youth functionary

Mahle grew up in a communist working-class family in Hamburg-Eppendorf . His father Adolf Mahlmann was one of the co-founders of the Hamburg KPD and was murdered in the Buchenwald concentration camp in February 1945 . Mahle was a member of the communist children's organization “Young Pioneers” early on in his elementary school days. During this time Mahle already got to know Ernst Thälmann , as his daughter Irma was also one of the "Young Pioneers" in Mahles district. Joined the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD) in 1926 , two years later, after completing a commercial apprenticeship, at the age of 17, he became head of the “Young Pioneers” throughout Hamburg. In 1931 he became a member of the "Reichs-Pionier -leitung", in which he was responsible for the newspaper drum , and at the same time co-opted into the central committee of the KJVD. From 1932 to 1935 Mahle was finally a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth Association of Germany.

In 1932 he joined the KPD and became first secretary of the pioneer leadership in Germany. From October 1932, Hans Mahle represented Germany in this function in the Comintern's “International Children's Office” in Moscow .

After Hitler “ seized power ” he was ordered back to Germany in August 1933 to work illegally for the Communist Youth Association. He was illegally active in Berlin, Saxony and the Ruhr area . In 1935 he fled via Paris to Prague in order to head youth work in West Germany from there. A little later, however, he was arrested in Amsterdam while working as a foreign courier and temporarily arrested. In 1936 he was able to emigrate to the Soviet Union via Czechoslovakia .

Exile in the Soviet Union

In Moscow he first worked for the Communist Youth International , where he was a member of its executive committee. At the same time he worked as a youth editor at Moscow Radio between 1938 and 1941 . In 1941 Mahle was the representative of the German Anti-Fascist Youth in the Anti-Fascist Committee of the Soviet Youth.

After the German attack on the Soviet Union, Mahle was evacuated to Kuibyshev at the end of October 1941 . There he was commissioned by the Comintern to begin re-educating prisoners of war. This assignment took him in December 1941 with other German communists, including Walter Ulbricht , to Karaganda in the "Spaski Sawod" prisoner-of-war camp.

As a result of the positive evaluation of his work in Karaganda, after a Comintern meeting in Ufa , Mahle was commissioned to take over the management of the youth channel “Storm Eagle”. This station was aimed directly at the Hitler Youth and young soldiers and was de facto the youth program of the " German People's Broadcasting ". From spring 1943 Mahle took an active part in the preparation of the NKFD by visiting prisoner-of-war camps. He took part in the founding conference of the NKFD in Krasnogorsk on June 12 and 13, 1943 and became chairman of the NKFD's youth commission. From August of the same year he was entrusted with new tasks. Hans Mahle became the technical director of the station “Free Germany” . As part of his work, he was deployed to the front near Kiev in November 1943 .

As chairman of the youth commission of the central committee of the KPD, Mahle continued to deal with youth issues and the development of working materials for the future activities of youth in post-war Germany. This led Wolfgang Leonhard to conclude that Hans Mahle was initially intended as chairman of a youth movement or organization and not, as later happened, Erich Honecker . In 1944 Mahle attended Party School No. 12 of the KPD near Moscow. From February to August 1944 he was a member of a working committee to develop the KPD's post-war program.

In 1937 Mahle was stripped of his German citizenship and later even sentenced to death in absentia by the Reich Court Martial for his anti-fascist activities .

Ulbricht group

Hans Mahle was one of the nine members of the Ulbricht group that took off from Moscow on April 30th by plane. It was initially used in the Berlin districts of Tiergarten and Moabit . On Ulbricht's instructions, he contacted Ferdinand Sauerbruch , who, after some discussions, was won over as the first head of the Berlin magistrate's health department. Also Andreas Hermes , the first CDU chairman in the later Soviet occupation zone was, was by Hans Mahle as head of the department of Food won beings. During his explorations in Berlin, Mahle came across the buildings of the Berliner Rundfunk in Charlottenburg's Masurenallee. As a radio editor, the restoration of a functioning radio was of great interest to him. He left the Ulbricht group on May 11th to organize radio broadcasts on behalf of General Bersarin , who had issued an order on May 10th, 1945. According to Mahler's notes, Ulbricht said to him:

"Comrade Mahle, you have experience in radio work, you gained experience at the station 'Free Germany' and previously at the Moscow radio station, you know the policy of the National Committee 'Free Germany', this policy of the National Committee 'Free Germany' must be implemented on the radio . "

rise and fall

Only a few days later, a complete program of the station, which was currently still called Radio Berlin, was offered, with Hans Mahle as editor-in-chief. Despite concerns from leading KPD comrades, Mahle soon introduced programs in which politicians from other parties had their say. The best known of these was the series “Tribune of Democracy”. Furthermore, he pursued the restoration of further radio stations in 1945/46.

From June 1945 to September 1947 Mahle was a member of the Central Committee of the KPD and the executive committee of the SED, from August 1945 to May 1947 he was also a member of the Presidential Council of the Kulturbund . From 1946 he was head of the radio department and the department for cultural education of the Central Administration for Popular Education. In August 1946 he was appointed general manager of broadcasting in the Soviet occupation zone. After the GDR was founded in 1949, the community of all radio stations in the Soviet Zone was known as the German Democratic Radio . This is seen by some historians today as a degradation. A controversy with Ulbricht in late autumn 1946 about his place of residence, which was in the western part of Berlin, further reduced Mahle's reputation with the SED leadership. Finally, in September 1947, at the Second Party Congress of the SED, he was replaced by Heinz Keßler in the Central Committee.

More and more leading comrades distanced themselves from him. In West Berlin , "with the class enemy", living, against the advice of the SED leadership, increasingly concerned with the development of television, Hans Mahle was deposed as general manager on July 14, 1951 on charges of espionage. Nevertheless, until May 1953 he remained head of the central laboratory responsible for the development of television in Berlin-Adlershof. Then he was sent to Schwerin for "probation" . Initially employed in a consumer business, Hans Mahle later became a board member of the Schwerin consumer cooperatives and editor of the magazine Der Genossenschaftler .

Rehabilitation and functionary of SEW

As part of the de-Stalinization he became editor-in-chief of the SED district organ, the Schweriner People's Newspaper , and a member of the SED district leadership in Schwerin from May 1956 . His final rehabilitation took place on February 24, 1959, when Mahle was appointed editor-in-chief of the newspaper Die Truth , the SED organ for West Berlin . He was also co-opted into the SED district leadership in Berlin and was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in 1961.

In 1962 he became a member of the party executive committee (PV) of the SED West Berlin or SEW, from May 1970 a member of the office of the PV of the SEW. Mahle was also honorary chairman of the Society for German-Soviet Friendship West Berlin . His autobiography , completed in 1974, was not published in the GDR and is still unpublished. In 2003 the historian Katharina Riege, the daughter of Gerhard Riege , published a biography about him.

In 1995 he stood as a PDS top candidate in the local and federal elections in Berlin-Steglitz.

His estate is located in SAPMO - archive .

He was born with Elsa Mahle (1912–1986). Penner married and had a daughter and a son.

Further awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Minutes of the State Broadcasting Committee of the 1st conference of the Lektorat Rundfunkgeschichte on April 25, 1966. Quoted from Klaus Arnold: Kalter Krieg im Äther. The German broadcaster and the GDR's western propaganda . Lit, Münster 2002, ISBN 3-8258-6180-5 , p. 218.
  2. ↑ New Germany . August 17, 1946, p. 3.
personal data
SURNAME Mahle, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mahlmann, Heinrich August Ludwig (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (KPD, SED)
DATE OF BIRTH September 22, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH May 18, 1999
Place of death Berlin