Walter Beling

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Walter Beling (born May 19, 1899 in Berlin ; † May 31, 1988 there ) was a German KPD and SED functionary, resistance fighter against National Socialism and a diplomat of the GDR .

Life

Beling, the son of a tailor , trained as a machine fitter after attending primary school from 1913 to 1917 and at the same time took six semesters of courses at the Berlin mechanical engineering school. He then worked in his profession and as an employee in various trading companies. In 1916 he was drafted into military service. In 1918 he took part in the sailors' uprising in Kiel and at the beginning of 1919 was also involved in the defensive battles in Berlin .

From 1919 Beling was unionized . In 1924 he became a member of the KPD . From 1926 to 1930 he was deputy chairman or chairman of the KPD sub-district leadership in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg . From 1928 he was an employee of the Central Committee of the KPD. From 1928 he worked in the cash department of the Central Committee under the direction of the Reich cashier Artur Golke . In 1930 he took over the finance department and in April 1933 became treasurer of the already “illegal” KPD. From 1929 to 1931 he was also a member of the KPD district leadership in Berlin. In 1932 he completed a six-month course at the Reichsparteischule of the KPD and worked as a teacher at various KPD schools in 1932/33.

As a result of denunciations by Paul Grobis and Werner Kraus , he was arrested by the Gestapo on July 20, 1933 and sentenced by the People's Court to a two-and-a-half-year prison term for his resistance activities, which he spent in Plötzensee prison and in Luckau prison. Since he was still under surveillance by the Gestapo after his release, he fled to Prague in January 1936 , where he became an employee of the secretariat of the Central Committee of the KPD and editor of Germany Information . In November 1936 Beling went to France. In Paris he belonged to the KPD section leadership west and in turn headed the cash desk department. He was also an employee of the newspapers Rote Fahne , Internationale and Rundschau . In 1937 and 1938 he supported the Spanish people's struggle for freedom . During this time he worked, among other things, as an editor for the German freedom broadcaster 29.8 . After returning to France, he was interned there in September 1939. In June 1940 he managed to escape from the internment camp and went to the part of France not yet occupied by the Wehrmacht . In September 1940 he reached an agreement with the representative of the Central Committee of the French Communist Party (FKP) Maurice Tréand , which led to the creation of the section Travail allemand within the immigrant association Main-d'œuvre immigrée (MOI) of the FKP. From 1940 he was Polleiter of the KPD leadership in Toulouse (code names: Claude and Clément ). Beling tried, among other things, to free the interned Franz Dahlem . On December 12, 1941, he was arrested and interned again in Marseille . On September 1, 1942, he was able to flee from this internment and rejoin the Resistance . In 1943/44 he was a member of the Free Germany Committee for the West (CALPO).

In November 1945 Walter Beling returned to Germany and became editor-in-chief of Berliner Rundfunk . In 1946 he was appointed head of the "Organization" department in the SED apparatus . At the Second SED Party Congress in 1947 he was elected to the party executive committee (PV) and the central secretariat of the PV, where he was responsible for the party fund and all business affairs of the SED until 1950. In August 1950 he was deprived of all functions after dubious allegations as part of a campaign by the Central Party Control Commission "because of the connections maintained in exile with Noel H. Field ". As a result of these absurd accusations, he became so ill that he was unable to work until November 1951.

From 1951 to 1955 he was a standards clerk and head of the operational organization department, later deputy or acting labor director at VEB Kranbau Eberswalde . With the beginning of the de-Stalinization of the SED, he was rehabilitated in July 1956 and appointed head of the “Europe” department in the GDR Ministry of Foreign Affairs . From 1959 to 1965 he was permanent representative of the GDR at the UN Economic Commission for Europe in Geneva .

In 1950 he married Thea Saefkow , nee Brey. Both were in the grave conditioning Pergolenweg the memorial of the socialists at the Berlin Central Cemetery Friedrichsfelde buried.

Awards

Fonts

  • Start of work among the German soldiers in France. In: Dora Schaul: Resistance. Memories of German anti-fascists. Dietz, Berlin 1973.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Beling, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German KPD and SED functionary
DATE OF BIRTH May 19, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH May 31, 1988
Place of death Berlin