Walter Hedeler

Walter Hedeler (actually: Bernhard Gehre ; born November 17, 1911 in Leipzig ; † May 11, 1994 in Berlin ) was a German politician ( KPD / SED ) and editor .

Life

Hedeler, the son of a bookbinder , trained at the Waldorf publishing house in Stuttgart from 1928 to 1930 after graduating from high school . In 1928 he joined the KJVD and in 1929 the KPD. In 1931/32 he attended the bookbinding college in Leipzig .

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists in 1933, Hedeler continued to work illegally for the KPD and was head of the KPD district leadership in Württemberg . Hedeler was arrested in 1935. However, he managed to escape and he emigrated to the USSR via Czechoslovakia . Hedeler was sentenced to death in absentia. From 1935 he was a student at the International Lenin School in Moscow and 1937/38 party organizer in its German sector. In 1938/39 he was editor and deputy head of the foreign department of the Deutsche Zentral-Zeitung , which appeared in Moscow . In 1939/40 he was an employee of the KPD's representation in the Executive Committee of the Communist International (EKKI), then an employee of the EKKI's press department. In 1941 he received Soviet citizenship and his passport was issued in the name of "Walter Hedeler", which he had been using since his stay in the USSR. In the same year he was recorded on the special wanted list "USSR". In October 1941 he was evacuated to Ufa and from 1942 was spokesman and editor for the German national broadcaster . At the end of 1942, however, he was dismissed as part of a smear campaign against German Comintern employees and expelled from the KPD. At the beginning of 1943 he was exiled to Tomsk . There he initially did odd jobs, then from 1946 to 1955 he was the main librarian at the university library.

At the end of July 1955 Hedeler returned to Germany ( GDR ) and was rehabilitated and accepted into the SED in November of the same year by a decision of the Central Party Control Commission (ZPKK). From 1956 he was first deputy, then from 1957 to 1959 editor-in-chief of the Leipziger Volkszeitung , as well as a member of the SED district leadership in Leipzig . From 1960 he was editor of the magazine Einheit before he worked for the magazine Problems of Peace and Socialism in Prague from 1961 to 1975 . Then he worked for the unit again.

His son is the German historian and communism researcher Wladislaw Hedeler (* 1953).

Honors

In 1976, Hedeler received the Gold Medal for the Patriotic Order of Merit and in 1982 and 1986 the Star of Friendship of Nations .

literature

• Carola Tischler: Escape into pursuit. German emigrants in Soviet exile 1933 to 1945 (= work on the history of Eastern Europe , Volume 3). Lit, Münster 1996, ISBN 3-8258-3034-9 , p. 204 ff.
• Gottfried Hamacher et al. (Ed.): Against Hitler. Germans in the Resistance, in the armed forces of the anti-Hitler coalition and the "Free Germany" movement. Short biographies (series: Manuscripts / Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, vol. 53) (PDF; 894 kB). Dietz, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-320-02941-X , p. 78
• Peter Erler :  Hedeler, Walter . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .