John Peet

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John Scott Peet (born November 27, 1915 in London , † July 26, 1988 in East Berlin ) was a British journalist who lived in the GDR for a long time . Among other things, he was editor-in-chief of the magazine Democratic German Report .

Life

John Peet was born the son of a journalist and a teacher. He received private lessons from 1920 to 1927 and then from 1927 to 1934 a school education in York . From 1934 he worked as a local reporter. In 1935 he was recruited to the Royal Guard Regiment, which he soon left at his own request. From 1935 to 1936 he worked as an English teacher and freelance journalist in Vienna . He then went to Prague , where he again worked as an English teacher. In August 1937 he drove from London via Paris to Spain and took part in the Spanish Civil War from September 1937 to December 1938 as a soldier in the 15th Brigade of the British Battalion of the International Brigades . In December 1938 he returned to London. There he was initially unemployed. From 1939 to 1942 he was a soldier in the British Army in Palestine . From 1942 to 1945 he was editor-in-chief of Radio Jerusalem and from 1945 chief correspondent of the Reuters agency , first in Vienna, from 1946 in Prague and from 1947 to 1950 in West Berlin .

Transfer to the GDR

At the beginning of June 1950 he transferred to the GDR. In preparing for this step, he was helped by his acquaintances from his time in Vienna, Georg Honigmann and Walter Hollitscher . On June 12, 1950, at an international press conference, at which Gerhart Eisler was also present, he made a statement that he “could no longer serve the Anglo-American warmongers”. This defector came in very handy for the GDR peace movement, and Peet was presented as a key witness: “We heard from the mouth of an Englishman how this Reuter agency works, how it only sends the 5000 newspapers that are affiliated to it the news that war-lusting ones Circles are comfortable. "

He worked as a journalist in the GDR capital Berlin and joined the Association of German Journalists (VDJ). From 1952 he was publisher and editor-in-chief of the fortnightly Democratic German Report , a journal for GDR foreign propaganda. In 1952 he married the Bulgarian Ravensbrück survivor Georgia Tanewa (1923–2012) and has two children with her.

Since Peet knew several of the defendants in the Slansky Trial in Prague , he was questioned several times by the Central Party Control Commission in 1953 . In December 1975 the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED decided to discontinue the journal Democratic German Report because the publisher was "no longer able to guarantee a politically incontestable line of the journal for objective and subjective reasons". The background to this was the increasingly critical portrayal of GDR society, including the reprint of an article by Stefan Heym from the New York Times Magazine . From 1976 Peet was retired. He also worked as a translator, mainly translating works by Marx and Engels into English.

Honors

Works

  • The Long Engagement: Memoirs of a Cold War Legend . London, 1989 (German: The Spy Who Wasn't . Europaverlag, Vienna, Zurich, 1991, ISBN 3-203-51098-7 ).

Filmography

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Paul Moor : But where is the omelette? In: The time . February 17, 1989, accessed January 6, 2013 .
  2. ↑ Worth is John Peet? In: The engine. Company newspaper for the workforce of the state stock corporation AWTOWELO plant BMW-Eisenach, No. 9 1950 p. 4
  3. ↑ "Stark naked and emaciated - trembling with hunger and fear." Federal Agency for Civic Education , April 15, 2005, accessed on January 6, 2013 .
personal data
SURNAME Peet, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Peet, John Scott (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British journalist
DATE OF BIRTH November 27, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH July 26, 1988
Place of death East Berlin