Hermann Axen

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Hermann Axen (1946)

Hermann Axen (born March 6, 1916 in Leipzig ; died February 15, 1992 in Berlin ) was a German communist resistance fighter and later GDR politician. He was imprisoned from 1935 to 1937 and 1940 to 1945 and survived the Holocaust .

Axen was secretary of the Central Council of the FDJ from 1946 to 1949 , from 1950 to 1953 and from 1966 to 1989 secretary of the Central Committee of the SED . From 1956 to 1966, Axen was editor-in-chief of the SED central organ New Germany . From 1970 to 1989 he was a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED and headed its foreign policy commission.

Life

Origin and youth

Hermann Axen was born in Leipzig in 1916 and came from a lower middle-class Jewish family. At the age of 14, Axen resigned from the Jewish community. His older brother Rolf was killed in September 1933 in Dresden police headquarters . According to Axen's own résumé, his parents were killed by the National Socialists after 1939/1940 either in the Lemberg ghetto in the Galicia district or in another concentration camp assembly camp.

From 1922 to 1926 Axen attended elementary school and the secondary school . From March to November 1934, he completed a commercial apprenticeship at the fur shop Hoffner, Moses & Co .

Resistance activity

At the age of 16 he joined the Communist Youth Association and from 1933 worked as an instructor and liaison officer in Saxony for illegal resistance work. In June 1934 he was responsible for the sub-district management of the KJVD Leipzig-West under the code names Max and Friedrich Agitprop , and from September 1934 he was a member of the KJVD district management in Leipzig.

Axen tried to rebuild the Leipzig Communist Youth Association with the young communist Heinz Misslitz and, until his arrest on November 3, 1934, passed himself off as a Polish citizen and member of the “Mosaic religious community”, which resulted in diplomatic intervention by the Polish consulate in Leipzig. On 20 June 1935 he was the Higher Regional Court Dresden because of "preparation for high treason accused" and to three years in prison convicted, he in prison Zwickau was serving.

In November 1937 he was expelled from Germany as a stateless person , whereupon he emigrated via Poland to Vienna with the consent of the KPD , from where he fled to Paris in January 1938 , where he hired himself as a casual and unskilled worker in various companies until 1940 worked in communist youth work and carried out courier services for the illegal KPD leadership. From April 1938 he worked on behalf of the KJVD for the Red Aid and did translation work for the " German freedom broadcaster 29.8 ". In Paris he was not interned as an enemy alien after the German occupation. He managed to escape to the unoccupied zone of southern France . In May 1940 he was arrested and taken to the French internment camp Le Vernet . In August 1942 he and Kurt Goldstein and other Jewish communists were handed over to the Gestapo . He was sent to Auschwitz III Monowitz concentration camp , where he joined the leadership of the illegal camp committee. From there he was transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp , where he was a member of the illegal KPD leadership.

SED functionary

Axen (far left) at the press conference on the “ West Berlin Problem ” on June 15, 1961

After 1945 he became a youth functionary in Saxony and co-founder of the Antifa youth committees on behalf of the KPD and SED . He built up the FDJ with Paul Verner and Honecker and was secretary of the central council of the FDJ from 1946 to 1949. In 1948/49 Axen was a member of the German People's Council . From 1949 he was a member of the Secretariat of the Politburo of the SED and headed the agitation and propaganda department . In this function, Axen rebuilt radio in the Soviet occupation zone by bringing it to the SED line and dismissing a large part of the management staff of the broadcasting houses in Berlin and replacing them with comrades who were loyal to the line.

From July 1950, Axen was secretary of the Central Committee (ZK) of the SED , responsible for mass agitation and the press. In the course of the reassignment of posts after the popular uprising of June 17, 1953 , Axen became the second secretary of the SED district leadership in Berlin in August 1953. From 1954 to 1989 he was a member of the People's Chamber .

Hermann Axen (left) with Pietro Ingrao , 1967

In 1956, Axen was succeeded Georg Stibi as editor-in-chief of the SED central organ Neues Deutschland (ND), which he headed provisionally for three years and then as regular editor-in-chief until 1966. Axen's role at ND must be seen against the background of the rift between Walter Ulbricht and ND co-founder and former editor-in-chief Rudolf Herrnstadt , who was expelled from the SED in 1953 as a “party enemy”. From 1963 Axen was a candidate for the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED. From 1966 he became the main architect of GDR foreign policy as the Central Committee secretary for international relations.

Axen (middle) with Erich Honecker and the Cuban Communist Party functionary Carlos Rafael Rodríguez (1987)

Axen was elected a full member of the Politburo in 1970. He was an educated member of the party leadership, spoke fluent Russian, English and French and headed the foreign affairs commission for many years. From 1971 he was also chairman of the People's Chamber Committee for Foreign Affairs. Under Erich Honecker (General Secretary of the Central Committee of the SED from 1971), however, he had little influence on foreign policy, because Honecker attracted it himself. Axen prepared Honecker's state visits to the West and accompanied him on trips abroad, from 1975 to the CSCE Final Conference in Helsinki . From 1979 to 1989 he was a member of the "Working Group BRD", from 1981 also responsible for relations with the countries of Africa, Asia and the Arab region. From 1986 to 1989 he was officially responsible for the SED's “ work in the West ”, but according to the historian Heike Amos only “pro forma and without much influence”. The international party relations as well as the discussions on disarmament issues between the SED and the SPD , for which Axen was particularly committed , remained as a kind of "playground" . On November 8, 1989, Axen resigned from the SED Politburo.

Outside of the SED, Axen was a member of the Presidium of the Committee of Antifascist Resistance Fighters from 1979 and of the General Council of the Fédération Internationale des Résistants from 1982 and from 1982 to 1989 of the Presidium of the GDR Peace Council .

Criminal proceedings after the turnaround

From November 1989 to January 1990 he was in Moscow , where he underwent eye surgery. Meanwhile, an investigation was initiated against him in Germany for the offense of "abuse of trust" (Section 165 of the GDR Criminal Code ) and the Axen couple's bank accounts were arrested by the GDR Public Prosecutor . On his return on January 16, 1990, Axen was arrested at the airport on suspicion of abuse of office and corruption . The warrant was overturned on January 31, 1990 because of his poor health. On June 27, 1991, the Berlin Regional Court refused to open the main proceedings . The public prosecutor's office at the Supreme Court , Working Group on Government Crime, lodged a complaint by return of post, but a decision by the Supreme Court was superfluous because Axen died on February 15, 1992 in Berlin. A party proceeding against Axen, now renamed PDS , was initiated in 1990, but also not concluded because of his illness.

Since Axen's activities in the SED Politburo were incompatible with the principles of humanity and the rule of law, the widow, Sonja Axen , was denied the compensation pension of 800 DM per month , which she received after her deceased husband, in 1992. She was the daughter of the anti-fascist resistance fighter Harry Kuhn .

Awards

Fonts

  • About the questions of progressive German film art. Berlin 1952.
  • Current issues of international relations between the Socialist Unity Party of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. Dietz-Verlag, Berlin 1965.
  • To ideological problems of the XXIII. Party congress of the CPSU. Dietz-Verlag, Berlin 1966.
  • On the international situation and the development of the balance of power. Dietz-Verlag, Berlin 1967.
  • From the report on the results of the International Consultation of the Communist and Workers' Parties in Moscow. Dietz-Verlag, Berlin 1969.
  • Socialism and the world revolutionary process. Selected speeches and essays. Dietz-Verlag, Berlin 1976
  • Strong socialism - secure peace. Selected speeches and essays. Dietz-Verlag, Berlin 1981
  • From the report of the Politburo to the 5th session of the Central Committee of the SED. Dietz-Verlag, Berlin 1982
  • Struggle for peace - a key issue of the present. Selected speeches and essays. Dietz-Verlag, Berlin 1986
  • I was a servant of the party. Autobiographical Conversations. Editor: Harald Neubert . Edition Ost, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-92916-161-3 .

literature

Web links

Commons : Hermann Axen  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hermann Axen (SED) - a Jewish German and communist. In: Jüdische Rundschau , April 6, 2018.
  2. ^ A b Heike Amos: The SED policy on Germany 1961 to 1989: Aims, activities and conflicts. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015, p. 31 and p. 34.
  3. ↑ a b c Bernd-Rainer Barth , Helmut Müller-Enbergs :  Axen, Hermann . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  4. ↑ a b Karin Hartewig: Returned: the history of the Jewish communists in the GDR. Böhlau, Cologne 2000, pp. 55, 266.
  5. ↑ a b c Heike Amos: The SED policy on Germany 1961 to 1989: goals, activities and conflicts. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015, p. 34.
  6. ↑ Karin Hartewig: Returned: the history of the Jewish communists in the GDR. Böhlau Cologne 2000. p. 396.
  7. ↑ Karin Hartewig: Returned: the history of the Jewish communists in the GDR. Böhlau, Cologne 2000, pp. 248, 251.
  8. ↑ Friedrich Wolff: Lost processes: My defenses in political proceedings. Section Court on Hermann Axen (1989–1998).
  9. ↑ Neue Zeit of October 7, 1956, p. 4.
  10. ^ New Germany of September 4, 1958, p. 3.
  11. ↑ Neues Deutschland, May 8, 1960, p. 2.
  12. ↑ Neue Zeit of May 7, 1965, p. 4.
  13. ↑ Neues Deutschland, March 7, 1966, p. 2.
  14. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of October 5, 1969, p. 3.
  15. ↑ Neues Deutschland, March 6, 1976, p. 1.
  16. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of March 6, 1986, p. 1.
  17. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of March 6, 1986, p. 2.
personal data
SURNAME Axen, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SED), MdV, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig , German Empire
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1992
Place of death Berlin , Germany