World Peace Council

Extraordinary meeting of the World Peace Council in May 1954 in the building of the Ministry of Finance of the GDR in East Berlin

GDR postage stamps for the World Peace Meeting in Berlin in 1969

Frédéric Joliot-Curie , GDR postage stamp 1964

The World Peace Council ( English World Peace Council , WPC ) is an international organization that in November 1950 to the second World Peace Congress in Warsaw to promote peaceful coexistence and nuclear disarmament was founded. Its forerunner was an international liaison office that emerged in August 1948 from the World Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace in Breslau . This followed on from the Amsterdam-Pleyel movement , which in 1932 and 1933 developed activities against the preparation of a new world war.

The organization was dominated by communist intellectuals. Frédéric Joliot-Curie was the founding president, the general secretary was Jean Laffitte , and the vice president was Ilja Ehrenburg . In the World Peace Council, however, there were also personalities who did not feel committed to communist ideology, but were involved there because their efforts to maintain peace in the West found no support. The World Peace Council was seen in the West as a front organization controlled by the USSR and also served the KGB as a front organization . With the rise of the New Left in the mid-1960s, its importance in the Western peace movement declined .

The organization had its first headquarters in Paris . However, shortly afterwards she was accused by the French government of being a fifth column of the Communists and expelled. Its headquarters were initially relocated to Prague and in 1954 to Vienna , which was still under Allied occupation . After regaining full sovereignty, the Austrian government also expelled the organization in 1957 for subversive activities in the country. In 1968 a new headquarters was opened in Helsinki, later it returned to Vienna under the name Institute for Peace . After the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the end of funding by the Soviet Union in 1989, this seat was dissolved in 1990. Today Vienna is again the seat of the World Peace Council.

The GDR Peace Council was a member of the World Peace Council. Manfred Feist , Erich Honecker's brother-in-law , was head of the Central Committee's Foreign Information Department in the GDR and was responsible for the World Peace Council and the Peace Council of the GDR. Otto Nuschke and Karl Kleinschmidt belonged to the German delegation that took part in the founding congress of the World Peace Movement in Paris in April 1949; Otto Nuschke was the spokesman for this delegation. Johannes Herz and Erwin Eckert were elected to the World Peace Council in 1950.

The World Peace Council awarded an International Peace Prize annually from 1949 to 1956 .

President of the World Peace Council

• 1950–1958: Frédéric Joliot-Curie (1900–1958)
• 1959–1965: John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971)
• 1965–1969: Isabelle Blume (1892–1975)
• 1977–1990: Romesh Chandra (1919–2016) (1966–1977 Secretary General)
• 1990–1993: Evangelos Maheras (1918–2015)
• 1993–2002: Albertina Sisulu (1918–2011)
• 2002–2008: Orlando Fundora López (1927–2016)
• since 2008: Maria do Socorro Gomes Coelho (* 1950)

National Peace Councils

• Australian Peace Committee, SA Branch
• African Committee of WPC
• All India Peace and Solidarity Organization
• Argentina - MOPASSOL
• Austrian Peace Council
• Bangladesh Peace Committee
• Belgium - Anti-imperialistic League
• Belgium - VREDE
• Brazil - CEBRAPAZ
• Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), UK
• Canadian Peace Alliance
• Colombian Peace Council
• Conselho Português para a Paz e Cooperação
• Costa Rica - National Council for Peace and Solidarity
• Cuba - Movimiento Cubano por la Paz y la Soberanía de los Pueblos
• Cyprus Peace Council
• Czech Peace Society
• Egyptian Committee for Peace & Disarmament - Arab Coordination Center Ecuadorian Council for Peace
• Finnish Peace Committee
• French Peace Movement
• German Peace Council
• Peace Council of the GDR
• Greece - Greek Committee for International Detente and Peace (ΕΕΔΥΕ)
• Italy - NINO PASTI FONDAZIONE
• Japan Peace Committee
• Korean National Peace Committee
• Malta Peace Council
• Mexico - MOMPADE
• Mongolian Peace and Friendship Organizations
• Nepal World Peace Committee
• New Zealand - Peace Council of Aotearoa
• Palestinian Council For Peace and Justice
• Swiss peace movement
• Spain - OSPAAAL
• Swedish Peace Committee
• Turkey - Peace Society in Turkey
• Ukrainian Peace Council
• USA - International Action Center
• USA - Peace Council
• USA - United for Peace and Justice
• Vietnam Peace Committee
• Yugoslavia - Freedom Association

Publications

• World Peace Council (Ed.): The World Peace Council - What it is and What It Does , Helsinki 1978
• World Peace Council (Ed.): Professional bans in the Federal Republic of Germany , Helsinki, no year.
• World Peace Council (Ed.): The Peace Movement and the Struggle for Just International Economic Relations , Helsinki, 1978
• World Peace Council (ed.): Kampf dem Rassismus , self-published Helsinki, 1978
• World Peace Council (Hrsg.): World Assembly of the Builders of Peace , self-published. Helsinki, 1977
• Swiss Peace Movement SFB (Ed.): Peace, Justice, Human Dignity. 70 years of the Swiss Peace Movement 1949–2019 , Basel 2019

Web links

Commons : World Peace Council  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• World Peace Council
• Rob Prince: The Catabolism of the World Peace Council . Peace Magazine, 1992 ( Part 1 , Part 2 )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Michael Ploetz, Hans-Peter Müller: Remote-controlled peace movement ?: GDR and USSR in the fight against the NATO double resolution p. 27
2. ↑ Ruth and Walter Wimmer: Peace certificates from four millennia , Leipzig Jena Berlin 1987, p. 205, ISBN 3-332-00095-0
3. ↑ Walter Dignath-Düren: Church-War-War Service. Herbert Reich Verlag, Hamburg-Volksdorf, 1955, p. 95.
4. ↑ Heinz P. Lohfeldt, Fritjof Meyer: "Andropow is the master of the house". The defected KGB major Stanislaw Levtschenko about the Soviet secret service and his boss Andropov . In: Der Spiegel . No. 7 , 1983, pp. 122-133 ( Online - Feb. 14, 1983 ).
5. ↑ Toralf Staud: Birthler Authority: Clarifying the past, once different. In: Zeit Online. March 25, 2010, accessed November 18, 2010 . 
6. ↑ Michael Ploetz, Hans-Peter Müller: Remote-controlled peace movement ?: GDR and USSR in the fight against the NATO double resolution, p. 288
7. ^ Richard F. Staar: USSR Foreign Policies After Détente. Hoover Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-8179-8593-6 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
8. ^ Michael Ploetz, Hans-Peter Müller: Remote-controlled peace movement? GDR and USSR in the fight against the NATO double decision Lit-Verlag, 2004 ISBN 978-3-8258-7235-9 , p. 278 on Google Books
9. ^ The last waltz. The aid funds of the SED for West Germany's communists are canceled, the DKP is facing bankruptcy . In: Der Spiegel . No. 49 , 1989, pp. 89-92 ( online - 4 December 1989 ).
10. ↑ RCS Trahair: Encyclopedia of Cold War espionage, spies, and secret operations , Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004, ISBN 978-0-313-31955-6 (English, p. 339)
11. ↑ Udo Baron - Cold War and Hot Peace - The Influence of the SED and its West German Allies on the Green Party, p. 12
12. ↑ http://www.hans-otto-bredendiek.de/fuchs_friedensrat.html
13. ↑ http://www.deutscher-friedensrat.de/berichte_027.htm