Kurt Böhme (politician)

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Kurt Böhme (born May 6, 1913 in Deuben , † June 4, 1991 in Chemnitz ) was a German KPD and SED functionary and officer in the barracked People's Police and National People's Army of the GDR. He was the first 1st secretary of the SED area leadership in Wismut and temporarily military attaché in the USSR.

Life

Böhme was born the son of a worker. He has been a member of the Young Red Pioneers since school. After elementary school, he initially trained as a carpenter from 1927. A year later, Böhme had to break off the apprenticeship due to differences with his master. In 1928 he switched to the Communist Youth Association of Germany and after his dismissal worked as an unskilled worker in a Freital glass factory. From the summer of 1929 Böhme acted for some time as the political director of the KJVD sub-district Freital. In this function he belonged to a delegation of the KJVD that stayed from November 1929 to February 1930 on the occasion of the celebrations for the 10th anniversary of the Communist Youth International in the Soviet Union. After his return he was accepted into the Communist Party of Germany in March 1930 and from April / May of the same year until September 1932 belonged to the inner circle of the KPD district leadership in Saxony. During this time he worked from March to June 1930 as an unskilled worker in the Hainsberg metal works, after which he repeatedly took short-term jobs in various construction companies, interrupted by lengthy periods of unemployment.

Between September and December 1932, Böhme was imprisoned for the first time for being a ringlead in an unemployment campaign. With the ban on the KPD and its organizations in 1933, Böhme could now only be politically active illegally. He distributed illegal publications, collected membership fees and broadcast news on Moscow Radio. As head of the KVJD in Freital, he was arrested and ill-treated on May 1, 1933, and held in protective custody in the Hohnstein concentration camp until July 13, 1933 . He was then committed to voluntary labor service for three months. After years of unemployment, Böhme worked as an unskilled worker for the Deutsche Reichsbahn from September to November 1936 , but continued to take part in illegal political activities. For this reason he was arrested again on November 30, 1936 and initially held in custody for six months. On June 8, 1937, he was sentenced to 4 years in prison by the 3rd Criminal Senate of the Dresden Higher Regional Court in the trial against judges and others for preparing high treason. Böhme served the sentence in Zwickau prison . After his release in December 1940, Böhme worked as a furniture polisher and assistant carpenter again in Freital until April 1944, interrupted by brief imprisonment in police custody between February and March 1941. From April 1944 until the end of the war, Böhme, who was actually unworthy of defense, had to serve in the organization's probation battalion Todt perform in France, among other places.

After the end of the war, in May 1945, Böhme was initially appointed head of the Freital employment office by the Soviet occupying forces. As early as July 1945 he received a full-time party function in the KPD district leadership in Freital, initially as a department head, later as a secretary. In November 1945 the KPD delegated him to the State Party School of Saxony, where he attended a course until February 1946. Then worked until the end of April 1946 in the personnel policy department of the KPD district leadership in Saxony. With the compulsory unification of the SPD and KPD, this was called the SED State Executive Committee of Saxony. In this Böhme worked in the important management department until October 1947. In October 1947 Kurt Böhme, together with the three other Saxon communists Ernst Wabra , Herbert Pomp and Robert Kessler, Heinz Keßler's father, was appointed special representative of the Saxon SED state executive at the Wismut AG , which was founded in early summer 1947 . After the SED had initially looked at the development of the Soviet uranium mining in the Ore Mountains rather cautiously, its members were now to lead the Wismut miners as a kind of elite among the miners. In order to lead these party members, the four special plenipotentiaries founded the Erzgebirge company party organization, which was renamed the Aue II district party organization at the end of 1947 and existed alongside the regular Aue SED district leadership. Since it was only founded after the SED's unification congress in April 1946, the organizational unit was not staffed equally, but only with former KPD members. Kurt Böhme was appointed chairman of this district party organization. As a result, not inconsiderable difficulties developed, as the Wismut functionaries on the one hand limited contact with the local SED organs to a minimum and on the other hand, at the expense of a rapid increase in the number of SED members within the Wismut buddies, increased numbers of former NSDAP members. Members were admitted to the SED. In addition, the top party functionaries, especially in the form of Böhme, increasingly developed an elite mindset to which they felt they were more or less called to in the Soviet enterprise. They were distinguished by their particular loyalty to the line, decisions of the Soviet leadership were rigorously implemented and critics from the more social democratic milieu were relentlessly fought. In the course of the years the special position of the Wismut led to a foreclosure from other party organizations and thus to increasing discontent in the Saxon SED. Böhme had to put up with allegations from the state executive that he led the district leadership Aue II, which is now based in the Chemnitz district of Siegmar-Schönau, like a chairman of a brother party or even a party in the party. Nevertheless, this criticism initially bounced off Böhme through the support of the Wismut General Directorate, the end justified the means. It even went so far that the independence efforts were granted insofar as the district leadership Aue II was removed from subordination to the state boards of Saxony and Thuringia at the beginning of 1950 and directly subordinated to the party board of the SED. Now it had the same status as an SED state executive or later an SED district leadership, which put its 1st secretary Kurt Böhme on a par with much more important SED functionaries such as Kurt Bürger or Erich Mückenberger . Logically, Böhme was on the III. SED party congress in 1950 also elected as a candidate for the SED Central Committee, of which he was a member until 1954. Under Boehme's leadership, the Stalinization of Wismut was advanced and the waves of cleansing initiated by the Central Committee of the SED were rigorously implemented in Wismut. Nevertheless, Boehme's doings aroused increasing displeasure. After Ernst Wabra began distance learning at a party college in 1950 and Herbert Pomp received a party penalty in July 1951, Böhme was also relieved of his position in March 1951. He was then delegated to a one-year course at the party college of the CPSU in Moscow. After his return, the SED Central Committee initially appointed him from April to June 1952 as an instructor for the Central Committee in the SED city leadership of Rostock. Subsequently, Böhme was delegated to the newly established Barracked People's Police (KVP). With the rank of colonel, he initially held the position of deputy to the head of the political administration for ideological questions. What is remarkable is the immediate classification of the previously unserved Böhme as Colonel of the CIP. It was not until 1955 that he attended a one-year course at the College for Officers in Dresden , where he was taught basic military knowledge. After the end of this course, now the NVA had been created, Böhme occupied the post of head of the political administration of the newly created military district V , based in Neubrandenburg, for two years . In September 1958 Böhme changed the military district, he became Deputy Chief of Staff for Organization in Military District III , a rather unusual staff assignment for political officers . In 1959 Böhme was transferred to the main staff of the NVA in Strausberg , where he acted as the deputy head of the main staff of the NVA for general questions. With effect from August 1, 1961, Böhme was appointed military attaché at the GDR embassy in Moscow. He replaced Gottfried Grünberg in this function. This position is to be regarded as the high point of Boehme's NVA career and would normally have resulted in an appointment as major general in the subsequent period. However, Böhme was recalled in the autumn of 1962, as there had been massive criticism of him from the embassy management. On October 31, 1962, the 49-year-old was transferred from active military service to the reserve. A position was found for him at the council of the Karl-Marx-Stadt district, and until 1967 he held the position of deputy for the interior of the chairman of the council of the Karl-Marx-Stadt district. He then resumed a job at Wismut until his retirement in 1976; he worked there as a department head. Even during this time, but also as a pensioner, Böhme worked for over 20 years as chairman of the commission for the care of old, deserving party members of the SED's Wismut area leadership.

Honors

literature

  • Mario Niemann , Andreas Herbst : SED squad: The middle level. Biographical encyclopedia of the secretaries of the state and district managements, the prime ministers and the chairmen of the district councils 1946 to 1989 . 1st edition. Ferdinand Schöningh, 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-76977-0 . P. 121f
  • Rainer Karlsch: Urangecrets. The Ore Mountains in the focus of world politics 1933–1960 . 2nd Edition. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-86153-276-X , p. 156ff

Web link

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Neues Deutschland, May 6, 1988 p. 2
  2. ^ New Germany of October 7, 1957, p. 5
  3. ↑ Neues Deutschland from July 2, 1971 p. 2
  4. ↑ Neues Deutschland from March 1, 1978 p. 3
  5. ↑ Neues Deutschland, April 30, 1983, p. 3
  6. ↑ Neues Deutschland from October 6, 1988 p. 4
personal data
SURNAME Böhme, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION 1. Secretary of the SED area leadership in Wismut, military attaché of the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH May 6, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Deuben
DATE OF DEATH 4th June 1991
Place of death Chemnitz