Heinz Friedrich (journalist)

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Heinz Friedrich (born June 28, 1914 in Reichenhain (today part of Chemnitz ), † October 5, 1977 in Berlin ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism and later journalist, publishing director and functionary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in the early Germans Democratic Republic (GDR). In the 1950s he was editor-in-chief of various national daily newspapers, including New Germany .

Resistance fighters against National Socialism

Friedrich, the son of a stocking weaver and a lathe operator, learned the trade of printer after graduating from elementary school. In 1928 he joined the Association of German Book Printers and in 1932 became a member and functionary of the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD) in Chemnitz. He worked as a printer in Chemnitz until 1932 and then became unemployed.

In March 1933 he was elected head of the Chemnitz subdistrict of the KJVD. After the National Socialists came to power and communist activities were banned, Friedrich went into exile in Moscow in January 1934 . In 1934/35 he attended a Lenin school there and in 1935 became a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). From December 1935 to 1937 Friedrich stayed in Prague on behalf of the party and from there headed the KPD's illegal youth work in Berlin.

In 1937 the KPD delegated him to the World Youth Congress in New York City . In November and December 1937, Friedrich was imprisoned in Switzerland for violating a passport. In 1938 he went to Paris, where he worked for the central committee of the KJVD, their newspaper Junge Garde and the German freedom broadcaster 29.8 . In June 1938 he was expatriated from Germany in absentia and expelled from France in August. After a few weeks of illegal residence in Paris, he went to the Netherlands and took the code name Jan Vermeulen . He remained undiscovered in Amsterdam until the end of the Second World War in 1945 and was active as a liaison for the KPD in the Dutch resistance movement. At times he had the code name Wim Freund .

Journalist and functionary in the GDR

In October 1945 Friedrich returned to Germany and worked for the Sächsische Zeitung in Chemnitz. From 1947 to 1951 he was a member of the state executive committee of the SED in Saxony and in 1949/50 a member of the district party control commission in Chemnitz.

During a three-year correspondence course at the SED's “Karl Marx” party college , Friedrich became head of the information office at the state government of Saxony in 1950 and, as the successor to Johannes König , editor-in-chief of the Sächsische Zeitung . In 1950 he switched to the daily newspaper Neues Deutschland (ND) in East Berlin and became its deputy editor-in-chief. After Rudolf Herrnstadt was overthrown as a result of the popular uprising on June 17, 1953 , Friedrich took over his position and became editor-in-chief of the ND.

In 1955 Friedrich took over the management of the publishing house Die Wirtschaft as the successor to Gerhard Kegel . In April 1956 he returned to the Sächsische Zeitung and became its editor-in-chief and at the same time a member of the SED district leadership in Karl-Marx-Stadt. In addition, Friedrich was a member of the central board of the Association of Journalists of the GDR .

In December 1961 Friedrich came into conflict with the party and state leadership and was expelled from the district management and dismissed as editor-in-chief because of “opportunism and wrong management policy”. In 1962/63 he was deputy head of the Freiheit publishing house in Halle (Saale) and from 1963 to 1974 he was department head for publishing development at the Central Printing, Purchasing and Auditing Company of the SED (Zentrag) in Berlin.

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literature

personal data
SURNAME Friedrich, Heinz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vermeulen, Jan (alias); Friend, Wim (alias)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and editor-in-chief in the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH June 28, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Chemnitz
DATE OF DEATH 5th October 1977
Place of death Berlin