Otto Schön (politician)

Otto Schön (left) with Werner Lamberz , 1967

Otto Ernst Schön (born August 9, 1905 in Koenigsberg , † September 15, 1968 in Berlin ) was the office manager of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED in the GDR .

Life

After attending elementary school in Königsberg and secondary school in Berlin, the son of a farm worker and a journeyman potter completed an apprenticeship as an insurance and bank clerk from 1920 to 1923 and worked in Berlin until 1928 . There he joined the Communist Youth Association of Germany in 1922 , the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Red Aid in 1925 . After working as the political head of the Kreuzberg administrative district of the KPD, the Central Committee appointed him a member of the KPD's East Saxony district leadership. From 1929 to 1930 Otto Schön worked as the political director of the Freital sub-district and, after 1930, as the secretary of the Red Aid for Saxony and later for the upper district of Central Germany. During this time he also held the position of chairman of the party court of the Saxon party organization.

From 1933 to 1936 he was imprisoned in Bautzen prison and until 1937 in Sachsenburg concentration camp . He then worked as a metalworker, was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1942 and discharged wounded in 1943. From July 1943 he worked with the group around Georg Schumann . Until 1945 he worked as a commercial clerk in Leipzig and was again illegally politically active.

In 1945 he was secretary of the KPD district leadership in Leipzig, from 1946 to 1947 after the compulsory unification of the SPD and KPD head of the SED district association of Dresden , from 1946 to 1950 city councilor of Dresden and from 1947 to 1950 second secretary of the SED state association of Saxony . On the III. At the 1950 party congress he was elected a member of the Central Committee of the SED and a member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the SED, from which he resigned after June 17, 1953, however, in the course of the reorganization of offices . From 1950 until his death he was office manager of the Politburo and thus became a close associate of Walter Ulbricht . Since 1958 he was a member of the People's Chamber .

Awards and honors

tomb

• 1954 Order of the State Banner of the Korean People's Democratic Republic, Second Class
• 1955 Patriotic Order of Merit in silver
• 1957 Ernst Moritz Arndt Medal
• 1958 medal for fighters against fascism 1933 to 1945
• 1964 Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold
• 1965 Karl Marx Order

His urn was buried in the memorial of the socialists in the central cemetery Friedrichsfelde in Berlin-Lichtenberg . In 1985 a special stamp with his portrait appeared in the GDR.

literature

• Fine, Otto . In: Federal Ministry for All-German Issues (ed.): SBZ biography. A biographical reference book on the Soviet occupation zone , compiled by the investigative committee of freedom lawyers . Deutscher Bundes-Verlag, Bonn 1964, p. 312.
• Fine, Otto . In: Federal Ministry for All-German Issues (ed.): SBZ from A to Z. A pocket and reference book about the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany . 9. revised and exp. Edition Deutscher Bundes-Verlag, Bonn 1965, p. 377.
• H.-P. Schneider: Fine, Otto Ernst . In: History of the German labor movement. Biographical Lexicon . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1970, pp. 406-407.
• Bernd-Rainer Barth , Helmut Müller-Enbergs :  Otto Schön . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

Commons : Otto Schön  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Otto Schön in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ New Germany of September 20, 1968.
2. ↑ Handbook of the People's Chamber, 3rd electoral period, 1959
3. ^ New Germany, October 6, 1964, p. 5