Margarete Wittkowski

Margarete Wittkowski

Margarete Wittkowski (born August 18, 1910 in Posen , † October 20, 1974 in Singen ), also Grete Wittkowski , M. Witt , was a communist , economist and German politician . From 1961 to 1967 she was Deputy Chairwoman of the Council of Ministers of the German Democratic Republic and from 1967 to 1974 President of the State Bank .

Life

education and profession

The daughter of a Jewish businessman attended high school in her hometown and studied economics in Berlin from 1929 to 1932 . She was involved in the Zionist movement until 1931 . She emigrated when to power of the Nazis in 1933 in the Switzerland . At the University of Basel she earned her doctorate in 1934 at the philosopher Herman narrow brook with a political science thesis on the links between German banks with industry in the Weimar Republic to the Dr. rer. pole. In November 1938 she was arrested in Zurich and expelled from the country. Wittkowski stayed illegally in Basel until the spring of 1939, before she managed to escape to England.

In the period that followed, Margarete Wittkowski examined the economic policy of the fascist states and, together with Jürgen Kuczynski, published a book in English in 1942 during the Second World War under the title Die Wirtschaftsppolitik der Barbarei, Hitler's new European economic order. It dispelled the political myth that the economy in the National Socialist German Reich was particularly efficient. Rather, the view is that in most branches of industry, labor productivity is lower and the rate of accidents at work is higher than before 1933, and that profits are increased through monopoly , cheap raw materials in conquered countries and the neglect of consumer goods production and the curtailment of workers' rights and extension of their rights Working hours. At a time when German armies had apparently successfully advanced into the Soviet Union and the US had not yet actively intervened in the European theater of war, the authors warned of the difficulties the US economy would face if after a German victory in Europe a fascist European economic bloc produces and exports massively cheap goods.

After the end of the war, Margarete Wittkowski returned to Berlin and initially worked as a business journalist. With Kuczynski she founded the weekly newspaper Die Wirtschaft and temporarily headed the economic department of the SED daily newspaper Neues Deutschland . From 1950 to 1954 she took on leading tasks in the Association of German Consumer Cooperatives , from 1951 as President.

Political party

In 1932 she joined the KPD . Wittkowski commuted between Germany and Switzerland between 1934 and 1938 and always relocated when the situation became too dangerous for her. In Berlin she was involved in the publication of the trade union newspaper of the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition (RGO) . In Switzerland she was involved in the KPD's foreign group. She worked as an editor for the KPD newspapers “Süddeutsche Volksstimme” and “Süddeutsche Informations” and took courier trips to the southern Baden region for their distribution. Until 1939 she supported her party's resistance work against National Socialism as a journalist and as a courier from Switzerland and France , at times under the code name Hilde, while working illegally within Germany. In April 1939 she moved to Great Britain , where she became head of the British organization in exile of her party. In 1946 she became a member of the SED and after a course in 1949/50 at the party college and a subsequent study visit to Moscow, she became a member of the Central Committee of the SED in 1954.

In the conflict over a weakening of the socialist principle of the primacy of politics over the economy, a greater consideration of economic profitability and the needs of the population in planning as well as a decentralization of economic decision-making processes, Margarete Wittkowski took part in the 29th plenum of the Central Committee in November 1956 and thereafter the Position of the reform advocates around Karl Schirdewan and Ernst Wollweber as well as the economic functionaries Gerhart Ziller , Fred Oelßner and Fritz Selbmann . Their political line (Schirdewan-Wollweber faction) was initially subject to the orthodox course of Secretary General Walter Ulbricht in February 1958 at the 35th plenum of the Central Committee . While most of her fellow campaigners then lost their offices, Margarete Wittkowski was only temporarily relegated to the position of candidate for the Central Committee. When, as in the entire Eastern Bloc after 1961, these economic reforms were decided and implemented under the name of the New Economic System of Planning and Management , she became an important representative of the new economic policy in the government. Her partner in the position responsible for economic issues in the party's Politburo was the Kuczynski student Werner Jarowinsky .

Public offices

In the German Economic Commission , the central control authority for the economy in the Soviet zone of occupation set up by the Soviet military administration , Margarete Wittkowski took over the duties of deputy chairman of the planning administration in 1948. From 1952 to 1958 and from 1963 to 1967 she was a member of the People's Chamber of the GDR . From 1954 to 1961 she took on leading tasks in the State Planning Commission as deputy chairwoman, with Bruno Max Leuschner as chairman . In 1953/54 she also served briefly as acting minister for trade and supply.

From February 9, 1961 to July 14, 1967, Margarete Wittkowski was the deputy chairwoman of the Council of Ministers responsible for trade, supply and consumer goods production and deputy to chairmen Otto Grotewohl (until September 24, 1964) and Willi Stoph . From 1967 until her death she was President of the German Central Bank , from January 1, 1968 State Bank of the GDR . From 1972 she was again a member of the Council of Ministers. In these offices she was responsible for determining the supply needs of the population as well as for coordinating the production, purchase and distribution of daily consumer goods and for overseeing foreign debts and the balance of payments .

Final rest

Margarete Wittkowski found her final resting place in the Friedrichsfelde central cemetery at Pergolenweg 3.

Quote

"Dr. Margarete Wittkowski - ideal communist from a German-Jewish bourgeois family, like Professor Liberman studied at Schmalenbach in Basel, later emigrated to England - was twice expelled from the highest bodies: once (around 1950) because of her emigration to the West, the other time (1958) because of her ' revisionist 'attitude in the Schirdewan-Selbmann-Oelssner crisis. They have been brought in again and again, such personalities are needed - just as the Soviets realized in 1962 that they needed Liberman, the man in the desert of dogmatics, whom they criticized in 1956 - but they are reluctant to be allowed into the top advance. "

- Lit .: Richert, p. 65)

Fonts (selection)

• Big banks and industry in Germany 1924 to 1931. Dissertation Basel 1934, Hämeen Kirjapaino Tampere 1937.
• The Economics of Barbarism, Hitler's New Economic Order in Europe. Sternfeld & Tiedemann, London 1942, International Publishers, New York 1942 (under the pseudonym M. Witt, together with Jürgen Kuczynski ).
• German-Russian trade relations over the past 150 years. Verlag Die Wirtschaft, Berlin 1947 (together with Jürgen Kuczynski).
• The development of the mass initiative in the consumer cooperatives in the struggle for peace and unity and the fulfillment of the five-year plan. VDK Association of German Consumer Cooperatives in the GDR, 1952.
• Birthday letter to SK In: Die Weltbühne, weekly for politics, art, economy, issue 38, 69th year, Verlag der Weltbühne, Berlin 1974, (SK: Siegbert Kahn ).

literature

• George Seldes : Profits in Fascism: Germany In: Facts and Fascism In Fact New York 1943 (summary of The Economics of Barbarism ).
• Ernst Richert : The GDR elite or our partners of tomorrow? Rowohlt, Hamburg 1968.
• Bernd-Rainer Barth , Helmut Müller-Enbergs :  Wittkowski, Margarete (Grete) . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

Commons : Margarete Wittkowski  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Margarete Wittkowski in the catalog of the German National Library
• Margarete Wittkowski biography on the website of the University of Basel

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 550 years of the University of Basel. Retrieved November 27, 2019 .