East office of the CDU

The East Bureau of the CDU was the organizational basis of the work of the fugitive party leaders and members of the CDU in the GDR after the DC circuit of the democratic parties . Werner Jöhren was the chairman .

Similar offices in the east also existed with the other democratic parties and the DGB .

CDU in exile and Eastern Bureau

Since free party work in the Soviet occupation zone (SBZ) was no longer possible after the CDU was brought into line, the CDU in exile was formed , an organization of members of the CDU of the SBZ who had fled to the west. This was seen by the Federal CDU as a representative of the Christian Democrats in the GDR and was treated as a regional association.

Of the 14 elected members of the main board of the SBZ CDU alone, ten had gone to the West. They invited the delegates of the 2nd party congress of 1947 to the 1st party congress of the CDU in exile on September 24 and 25, 1950 in Berlin. Over 200 Christian Democrats who had emigrated from the GDR took part.

The CDU in exile existed until reunification .

The operational work of the CDU in exile was carried out by the CDU's east office. It practically formed the general secretariat of the CDU in exile.

Organization and tasks

The East Office emerged from Jakob Kaiser's West Berlin office , in which an East Department was set up under the direction of Fred Sagner . Kaiser kept the office in the Adenauer cabinet even after he joined Adenauer's cabinet as Minister for All-German Issues . In addition to organizing the CDU in exile, a major part of the work consisted of supporting the resistance in the GDR and supporting the democratic forces in the GDR CDU.

The main tasks were

• the coordination of resistance work against undemocratic measures and human rights violations in the Soviet occupation zone and GDR
• the care of political prisoners and their relatives
• Public relations in the west and the attempt to create a counter- public in the east
• looking after refugees from the GDR

From 1949 to 1959 the east office was headed by Werner Jöhren . After the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, the office lost its importance. After Jöhren's death in 1959, the East Office was converted into the CDU's “Department for All-German Issues”.

Work in the GDR

Contacts with the CDU's east office were strictly forbidden in the GDR. A large number of arrests and show trials took place on charges of cooperation with the East Office, including that of the GDR Foreign Minister Georg Dertinger . As a result, the resistance groups that worked with the Eastern Bureau were forced to work conspiratorially .

One of the main tasks was to inform the population of the eastern zone. Since the party newspapers already in the Soviet Zone into line , were this the daily newspaper was founded in early 1948 The day was founded. This was secretly brought to the east zone by couriers from the east office and distributed there. Later, a shortened edition of The Small Day , information sheets under the title Der Wellenbrecher and a monthly magazine Das Deutsche MONTHSHEET were added. The SED responded to this flow of information with increased surveillance and draconian penalties for possession and distribution of these materials. Since 1952, direct distribution had become almost impossible for security reasons. People made do with leaflets that were thrown across the border or blown eastwards by the wind on hydrogen balloons. In 1966 the day was finally set. In 1967 two special issues appeared.

Victims of resistance close to the CDU

A large number of CDU members and supporters had to pay for the democratic resistance against the GDR, which was coordinated by the East Office, with flight, prison or even death.

A total of 146 CDU members were arrested because of contacts with the East Office (another 329 because of other "western contacts"). While Soviet military tribunals (the last verifiable judgments were made in 1954) punished contacts with the East Office once with life imprisonment and sixteen times with 25 years of labor , GDR courts imposed the death penalty three times and imposed prison sentences of more than ten years and forty-four times between 5 and 10 years .

The East Office in SED propaganda

In the propaganda of the SED , the CDU east office was portrayed as the center of espionage and diversion . In particular, the popular uprising of June 17, 1953 was traced back as the result of Western agent activity by the Eastern Bureau, the secret services and civil rights movements such as the Combat Group against Inhumanity or the Investigative Committee of Freedom Lawyers .

Cooperation with and support from the CIA

The US Central Intelligence Agency saw the East Office as part of its close collaboration with the CDU in the field of psychological warfare in East Germany. The CIA participated financially and in operational management. The main contact person and person responsible for the project on the part of the CDU was Bruno Heck .

See also

• East office of the SPD
• East office of the FDP

literature

• Wolfgang Buschfort : Parties in the Cold War. The east offices of the SPD, CDU and FDP . Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-86153-226-3 .
• Günter letter (ed.): Victims of Stalinist party justice: persecuted and disenfranchised; The elimination of Christian Democrats under Soviet occupation and SED rule 1945–1961. A biographical documentation. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1998, ISBN 3-7700-1086-8 .
• Michael Richter: The Eastern CDU 1948–1952. Between resistance and synchronization . 2nd corrected edition, Droste, Düsseldorf 1991 (= research and sources on contemporary history , volume 19) ISBN 3-7700-0917-7 .
• Ehrhart Neubert : A political duel in Germany . Freiburg 2002, ISBN 3-451-28016-7 , pp. 51-61.
• Günter letter: The east offices of the parties in the 50s . (= Series of publications by the Berlin State Commissioner for the Documents of the State Security Service of the former GDR , Volume 7), Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-934085-09-1 Online (PDF; 1.1 MB).

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1. ↑ Ulrich Weissgerber: Poisonous words of the SED dictatorship. LIT Verlag Münster, 2010, ISBN 978-3-643-10429-8 , p. 233. Restricted preview in the Google book search.
2. ↑ The Day (1953-1967) online
3. ↑ Documentation of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e. V. , Sankt Augustin, with 2,283 short biographies of CDU members in the Soviet Zone / GDR who were victims of political justice, online summary .
4. ↑ Items for Director's Discussion with Chancellor Adenauer and / or State-Secretary Globke. Central Intelligence Agency , May 11, 1955, accessed February 4, 2015 .