Lothar Berthold

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Lothar Berthold (born August 30, 1926 in Hindenburg , † September 12, 2007 in Berlin ) was a German Marxist historian , university professor , publisher and functionary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). As a member of the “Ideological Commission” at the Politburo of the Central Committee (ZK) of the SED , he was one of the leading history propagandists in the GDR in the 1960s.

Life

Berthold, the son of a customs officer, was drafted as an air force helper in 1943 , for the Reich Labor Service in 1944 and then drafted into the German armed forces. Until 1945 he fought in World War II with the rank of non-commissioned officer . In 1946 Berthold became a member of the SED and studied history and German at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena until 1950 . After completing the first teacher examination, he became an assistant at the Karl Marx party college of the SED. From 1952 to 1962 he worked there as a lecturer . In 1955 he was charged with a thesis on the German Communist Party (KPD) in the 1930 doctorate and in 1960 Professor habilitation .

From 1962 to 1968 Berthold was head of the “History of the Labor Movement” department at the Institute for Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the SED (IML). Until 1964 he was also deputy director of the IML. From 1964 to 1968 Berthold was director of the IML and in this function a member of the “Ideological Commission” at the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED . After his daughter, together with Florian Havemann , Thomas Brasch and others , protested in 1968 in East Berlin against the crackdown on the “ Prague Spring ”, Berthold had to leave the IML.

From 1969 to 1972 Berthold was a research assistant and then until 1976 director of the Central Institute for History of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR (AdW). In 1976 he became director of the Akademie-Verlag and director of publishing and printing at the AdW, and in 1979 he was also director of the Hermann Böhlaus successor publishing house in Weimar .

From 1962 to 1968 Berthold was editor-in-chief of the magazine Contributions to the History of the Labor Movement . From 1963 to 1966 he was secretary of the collective of authors led by Walter Ulbricht for the development and publication of the eight-volume history of the German workers' movement . Berthold worked as an author and holder of administrative functions in the SED's history propaganda department in the 1960s . After the turning point and the peaceful revolution in the GDR , Berthold became a disability pensioner after he had been relieved of all functions.

From 1992 he worked actively in the “Marxist Working Group on the History of the German Labor Movement” at the PDS, which emerged from the SED, and was one of the organizers of various conferences. Berthold is the author of numerous articles in various left and communist periodicals . Until his death, Berthold wrote in publications for the Communist Party of Germany, which was re-founded in 1990 .

Honors

Fonts

  • The KPD's program for the national and social liberation of the German people from August 1930 . Berlin 1956.
  • as editor: Unresolved Past . Berlin 1970.
  • Ernst Thalmann . Berlin 1979.
  • History calendar . Berlin 1998, DNB  955631343 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Siegfried Lokatis : The red thread. Communist party history and censorship under Walter Ulbricht (= contemporary historical studies . Volume 25). Böhlau, Cologne a. a. 2003, ISBN 3-412-04603-5 , pp. 349f.
  2. ↑ Obituary for Lothar Berthold in Die Rote Fahne , KPD (PDF; 1.5 MB)
  3. ↑ Berliner Zeitung , October 6, 1963, p. 4.
  4. ↑ Berliner Zeitung , May 7, 1965, p. 4.
  5. ↑ Berliner Zeitung , May 1, 1976, p. 4.
  6. ↑ Neues Deutschland , October 3, 1983, p. 2.
personal data
SURNAME Berthold, Lothar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German historian and SED functionary
DATE OF BIRTH August 30, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Hindenburg
DATE OF DEATH September 12, 2007
Place of death Berlin