Otto winemaker

Otto Winzer (center) with Egon Bahr (left), and Michael Kohl (right), 1972

Otto Winzer (born April 3, 1902 in Lübars , † March 3, 1975 in East Berlin ) was a German politician ( SED ). From June 1965 to January 1975 he was Minister for Foreign Affairs of the GDR .

Life

Grave in the central cemetery Friedrichsfelde in Berlin

Otto Winzer, the son of a cab driver, completed an apprenticeship as a typesetter from 1916 to 1922 after attending elementary school and an advanced training school for the graphic industry and then worked in this profession.

In 1919 he joined the Free Socialist Youth and the KPD . In 1923 he was a member of the Berlin district management of the Communist Youth Association of Germany and until 1927 head of the Vienna branch of the publishing house of the Communist Youth International (KJI). From 1925 to 1927 he was a member of the Communist Party of Austria .

After returning to Germany in 1927, he became head of the KJI publishing house in Berlin. From 1928 to 1930 he was an employee of the Executive Committee of the KJI in Moscow and a member of the CPSU , then an employee of the Western Office of the Executive Committee of the KJI and head of the KJI publishing house.

From 1933 he did illegal anti-fascist work. In 1934 he emigrated to France and from 1935 worked in the publishing department of the Executive Committee of the Communist International in Moscow. In 1937 he was warned and released by the Internal Control Commission of the Communist International because of his friendship with the arrested Erich Wendt . He then lived as a translator and editor in the publishing house for foreign-language literature . After an internal rehabilitation he was again an employee of the Communist International from 1941, from 1943 a member of the National Committee Free Germany and from 1944 a teacher at the party school of the KPD.

In 1945 he returned to Germany with the Walter Ulbricht group and was a councilor for public education in the Berlin magistrate. In 1946 he joined the SED and in 1947, alongside Richard Weimann, he became head of the main department for culture and education of the central secretariat of the SED. In 1947 he became a member of the party executive or the central committee of the SED and head of the press, radio and information department.

At the beginning of 1949 he was deputy editor-in-chief of New Germany and then, after the founding of the GDR, from October 1949 to 1956 State Secretary and head of the private chancellery of the President of the GDR Wilhelm Pieck . From August 1956 to 1959 he was Deputy Foreign Minister, from 1959 to 1965 State Secretary and first Deputy Foreign Minister and from June 1965 to January 1975 as the successor to Lothar Bolz as Minister for Foreign Affairs of the GDR. Since 1950 he was also a member of the People's Chamber .

His urn is buried in the memorial of the socialists at the Friedrichsfelde central cemetery in Berlin-Lichtenberg .

In allusion to its name, the GDR Foreign Ministry was popularly referred to as the "Winzer-Stuben".

Private

His marriage to Erna Winzer, nee Rumpf (1904–1975), remained childless. His sister Ella Rumpf, born Winzer (1907–2002), whose first marriage was to Rudolf Schwarz, who was murdered in February 1934 , later married his wife's brother, Willy Rumpf .

Awards and honors

• May 6, 1955 Patriotic Order of Merit (VVO) in gold and 1972 Patriotic Order of Merit (VVO)
• 1962 Karl Marx Order
• 1965 Gold Star of Friendship between Nations
• 1969 Gold medal for the VVO
• 1975 Big Star of Friendship between Nations
• Today's Mehrower Allee in Berlin-Marzahn was called Otto-Winzer-Straße from 1978 to 1992.
• Today's street Am Hohen Ufer in Halle-Silberhöhe was called Otto-Winzer-Straße until 1991.
• The officers' college for foreign military cadre of the NVA in Prora on the island of Rügen , which existed from 1981 to 1990, was named after him. A memorial stone was placed under monument protection by the Denk-MAL-Prora initiative (2011). In addition, the boarding school of the GDR MfAA in Königs Wusterhausen bore his name.

Listed memorial stone at the entrance to the former NVA officers' college in Prora

Publications

• with Ernst Wildangel : One year of rebuilding the Berlin school system. Report from the conference of teachers at the public schools in Berlin, September 2, 1946 , Berlin 1946
• Pestalozzi as a contemporary , Berlin 1946
• Socialist politics? A critical opinion on speeches and essays by Dr. Kurt Schumacher , Berlin 1947
• Where does the way lead? The economic decline in western Germany and the two-zone system , Berlin 1947
• The Marshall Plan . What it brings and what it takes , Berlin 1948
• The Rapallo Treaty and its national significance for Germany , Berlin 1952
• The betrayal of the fatherland by Dr. Konrad Adenauer . From separatism to “integration of Europe” , Berlin 1952
• Today's German Social Democracy and Marxism. 2 articles on the Karl Marx Year 1953 , Berlin 1953
• The clashes in the SPD and the struggle for the unity of action of the German working class. Lecture at the scientific conference of the Institute for Social Sciences at the Central Committee of the SED on the subject of "Social Democracy - a Variation of Imperialist Ideology" on March 6th and 7th, 1954 , Berlin 1954
• The big lie about the "free elections" in West Germany. Documentary evidence from official publications of the Bonn party executive of the Social Democratic Party of Germany , Berlin 1954
• About a speech that was not allowed to be given in West Berlin , 1954
• Twelve years of fighting fascism and war. A contribution to the history of the Communist Party of Germany 1933 to 1945 , Berlin 1955
• Wilhelm Pieck . Fellow combatant of the Russian Revolution and friend of the Soviet Union. A lecture on his 80th birthday , Berlin 1956 (Dietz, 83 pp.)
• Revolutionary traditions of the struggle of the German labor movement against militarism and war , Berlin 1956
• Crusader of Neocolonialism. Declaration of an international press conference by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the German Democratic Republic on November 4, 1960 , Berlin 1961
• Problems of peaceful coexistence from a German perspective , Berlin 1963
• The friendship and assistance treaty between the GDR and the USSR. Its national and international importance , Berlin (Dietz) 1964
• The new German people and the United Nations. Lecture on the 20th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations , Berlin 1965
• Heavy blow for Bonn's "Ostpolitik". Report , Berlin 1965
• Constructive German peace policy. Report on questions of the foreign policy of the GDR at the 12th meeting of the Central Committee of the SED, 27./28. April 1966 , Berlin 1966
• The foreign policy of the GDR in the light of the teachings of Karl Marx , Berlin 1968
• German foreign policy of peace and socialism , Berlin (Staatsverlag der DDR) 1969
• On some main questions of the foreign policy of the GDR , Berlin 1972

literature

• Hermann Wentker : Foreign policy within narrow limits. The GDR in the international system (= series of the quarterly books for contemporary history ). Munich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag 2007. ISBN 978-3-486-58345-8
• Bernd-Rainer Barth , Helmut Müller-Enbergs :  Vintner, Otto . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst (ed.): German communists . Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. Second, revised and greatly expanded edition. Karl Dietz Verlag , Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 ( online ).

Web links

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

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

Footnotes

1. ↑ Handbook of the People's Chamber, 4th electoral period, 1964
2. ^ New Germany of January 21, 1975
3. ^ Obituary notice in Neues Deutschland from December 23, 1975
4. ↑ Neues Deutschland, October 5, 1969, p. 5
5. ^ Lecture given on June 26, 1964 at the party college "Karl Marx" at the Central Committee of the SED and on July 8, 1964. 63 pages.