East office of the SPD

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The east office of the SPD was the organizational basis of the work of refugee party leaders and members of the SPD after the compulsory merger of the SPD and KPD into the SED on April 21, 1946.

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

history

Since free, legal party work in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ) was no longer possible after the forced unification, the so-called East Office was founded in 1946 in order to be able to continue the work in the illegality . The organizational basis was the refugee care centers in Hanover , where the first headquarters of the east office was, and in West Berlin .

On June 1, 1950, the head office was relocated to Bonn . The branch office in Berlin remained essential for operational work.

Stephan G. Thomas was head of the east office from November 1, 1948 until it was renamed in 1966.

At the beginning of 1959, the SPD party executive commissioned Max Kukil with the reorganization of the East Office, a few days later he suddenly died of heart failure at the age of 55. The GDR State Security scattered speculation published in East German newspapers that Kukil had been poisoned by employees of the East Office.

In 1966 the East Office was transformed into the “Unit for All-German Issues” of the SPD. Herbert Wehner, as deputy party chairman of the SPD , who also became Federal Minister for All-German Issues in 1966 , operated the change of course in the direction of détente . Helmut Bärwald was its head until its dissolution in 1971 .

In Berlin, the branch continued to work under Charlotte von Heyden and Käthe Frädrich until 1981 .

Tasks and activities

The main tasks were

  • looking after refugees from the GDR
  • the coordination of the resistance work against undemocratic measures and human rights violations in the Soviet Zone and GDR and support of the remaining members in the GDR to re-establish an SPD
  • the care of political prisoners and their relatives
  • Public relations in the west and the attempt to create a counter- public in the east
  • Propaganda material smuggled into the Soviet occupation zone and the GDR
  • Dropping of leaflets by means of balloons over the SBZ or GDR
  • Obtaining information about people, society and the economy in the Soviet occupation zone and GDR
  • Passing on information about the Soviet occupation zone and GDR to national and foreign government agencies

Work in the GDR

Contacts with the SPD'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 .

people

Known employees

A large number of SPD members and supporters had to pay for the resistance against the GDR dictatorship coordinated by the East Office with flight, prison or even death. The exact number is unknown. It is estimated that between 800 and 1000 members have been detained.

refugees

Known refugees who escaped with the help of the East Office were

The East Office in SED propaganda

In the representation of the propaganda of the SED , the east office of the SPD was a 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 . Members of the SPD East Office were portrayed as " Schumacher agents" in the GDR propaganda .

See also

literature

  • Helmut Bärwald : The east office of the SPD. 1946–1971 Kampf und Niedergang (= Present and Contemporary History series. Volume 14). Sinus, Krefeld 1991, ISBN 3-88289-023-1 .
  • Wolfgang Buschfort: The eastern 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. Vol. 7). 3rd, unchanged edition. The Berlin State Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the Former GDR, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-934085-09-1 Online (PDF; 1 MB) .
  • Wolfgang Buschfort : The East Office of the SPD. From the foundation to the Berlin crisis (= series of the quarterly books for contemporary history. Vol. 63). Oldenbourg, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-486-64563-3 .
  • Wolfgang Buschfort: Parties in the Cold War. The eastern offices of the SPD, CDU and FDP (= analyzes and documents. Vol. 19). Links, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-86153-226-3 .
  • Wolfgang Buschfort: The East Office of the SPD . In: Freedom and Law. No. 1 + 2, April 2011, ISSN  0532-6605 , pp. 9-10.
  • Norbert Pötzl: The struggle of the systems: Foolish and fatal . In: Spiegel Spezial Geschichte. dated July 29, 2008.
  • Bernd Stöver : Liberation from communism. American Liberation Policy in the Cold War 1947–1991 (= Zeithistorische Studien. Vol. 22). Böhlau, Cologne a. a. 2002, ISBN 3-412-03002-3 , p. 250 ff. (Also: Potsdam, Univ., Habil.-Schr.).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Buschfort: Parties in the Cold War. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-86153-226-3 , p. 229. Limited preview in the Google book search.
  2. ↑ 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.
  3. ↑ Buschfort: The East Office of the Parties in the 1950s , 2006.
  4. ↑ a b Bärwald: The East Office of the SPD. 1991, pp. 48-54.
  5. ↑ Armin Fuhrer : "We kept the SPD in line". In: welt.de . April 16, 1996, accessed December 29, 2014 .