Walter Vesper
Walter Vesper (born June 26, 1897 in Barmen , † December 17, 1978 in Berlin ) was a German politician of the KPD .
Life
Vesper was born into a working class family. After elementary school, he completed an apprenticeship as a bricklayer from 1911 to 1914. He joined the Socialist Youth Workers in 1912 , became a member of the Free Trade Union Movement in 1914 and took part in World War I as a soldier from 1915 to 1918. In 1918 he became a member of the Spartakusbund and took part in communist uprisings against the Weimar Republic in Berlin and the Ruhr area.
After the National Socialists came to power he was arrested and was imprisoned in the Börgermoor concentration camp from 1933 to 1934 . In 1935 he emigrated first to the ČSR and then to the USSR. In 1935/36 he worked in the International Sailors' Club in Leningrad for the International of Seafarers and Dock Workers (ISH). From 1937 to 1939 Vesper was a member of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War , carried the code name Peter Nerz and reported directly to Alexander Orlov , the head of the NKVD's foreign department. He participated in the exploration and disintegration of the non-Stalinist Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista . His situation reports ("Informes") are now a rich treasure trove. He lived illegally in Paris since 1939 and was interned there in 1940. After his escape from the camp in Marolles , he lived illegally in France from 1940 and held leading positions in the KPD. From 1942 he fought in the French Resistance against the German occupation. He was head of the Travail allemand for the Lyon area . From 1943 he was a member of the Committee Free Germany for the West (CALPO) .
Party / MP
Walter Vesper was one of the founders of the KPD . From 1928 to 1933 he was secretary and cashier in the KPD district association Niederrhein. In 1930 he attended the party school of the KPD "Rosa Luxemburg" in Fichtenau near Berlin.
After his release from the Börgermoor concentration camp, he worked illegally for the KPD. In 1934/35 he held a central role in the party's AM apparatus . In the Soviet Union he took part in the VII World Congress of the Comintern and the Brussels Conference of the KPD . 1945 organized the return of the KPD cadres to Germany.
Since 1945 he has held leading positions in the party executive of the KPD district of Lower Rhine-Westphalia and was a member of the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia from October 2, 1946 to September 5, 1949 . There he was deputy chairman of the KPD parliamentary group from 1946 to 1947 and headed the transport committee from February to April 1947.
Vesper belonged to the German Bundestag in its first electoral term until June 30, 1952. On June 15, 1950, together with Oskar Müller , Heinz Renner and Friedrich Rische, the President of the Bundestag, Erich Köhler, excluded him from participating in plenary sessions of the Bundestag for 20 days because of unparliamentary behavior. As a KPD member of the Bundestag, Walter Vesper played a central role in the GDR's early espionage activities in the West.
Working in the GDR
In October 1951 he went to the GDR with his wife Elisabeth . From 1951 to 1959 he headed the Western Department and was Deputy Chairman of the Bureau of the Presidium of the National Council of the National Front . His son Karl-Heinz completed his Abitur in 1953 in Düsseldorf and followed his parents to the GDR. From 1959 Walter Vesper worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the GDR and was ambassador to Hungary from 1959 to 1961 and to the ČSSR from 1961 to 1965. He was a member of the Presidium of the League for the United Nations of the GDR.
literature
- Rudolf Vierhaus , Ludolf Herbst (eds.), Bruno Jahn (collaborators): Biographical manual of the members of the German Bundestag. 1949-2002. Vol. 2: N-Z. Attachment. KG Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-23782-0 , pp. 896-897.
- Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. Dietz, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-320-02044-7 , pp. 815-816 ( online ).
- Bernd-Rainer Barth : Vespers, Walter . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
- Karlen Vesper: “It wasn't you yet!” - How a proletarian boy from Barmen experienced the revolution . In: New Germany . Neues Deutschland Druckerei und Verlag GmbH, November 3, 2018, ISSN 0323-3375 , p. 18 ( online ).
Web links
- About Walter Vesper and others in the Spanish Civil War
- Walter Vesper at the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia
- Directory of members of the German Bundestag and directory of persons
Individual evidence
- ^ BStU : The German Bundestag 1949 to 1989 in the files of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) of the GDR. Expert opinion to the German Bundestag in accordance with Section 37 (3) of the Stasi Records Act, Berlin 2013, p. 175 ( PDF ( Memento from November 8, 2013 in the Internet Archive )).
Erich Kops (1949–1951) | Stefan Heymann (1951–1953) | Sepp Schwab (1954–1956) | Rudolf Helmer (1956–1959) | Walter Vesper (1959–1961) | Wilhelm Meißner (1961–1967) | Herbert Plaschke (1967–1973) | Günter Kohrt (1973–1974) | Gerhard Reinert (1974–1979) | Rudolf Rossmeisl (1979–1983) | Karl-Heinz Lugenheim (1983–1988) | Gerd Vehres (1988–1990)
Fritz Große (1949–1952) | Bernard Koenen (1953–1958) | Georg Stibi (1958–1961) | Walter Vesper (1961–1965) | Johannes König (1965–1966) | Heinz Willmann (1966–1967) | Peter Florin (1967–1969) | Herbert Krolikowski (1969–1973) | Gerd König (1973–1980) | Helmut Ziebart (1981–1990)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Vespers, Walter |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Nerz, Peter (pseudonym) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German politician (KPD), MdL, MdB |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 26, 1897 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Barmen |
| DATE OF DEATH | 17th December 1978 |
| Place of death | Berlin |