Wilhelm Adam (politician, 1905)

Wilhelm Adam (born July 27, 1905 in Ludenberg near Düsseldorf , † August 1, 1991 in Berlin ) was a German resistance fighter against National Socialism , a functionary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and university professor in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). From 1963 he was Vice-Rector of the University of Film and Television "Konrad Wolf" in Potsdam-Babelsberg .

Life

Adam, the son of a metalworker, learned the trade of a dental technician and became a member of the Socialist Workers' Youth (SAJ) in 1921, of the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD) in 1922 and of the KPD in 1923. After the handover of power to the National Socialists and the ban on the KPD, Adam continued the party work illegally from February 1933 and therefore had to emigrate at the end of 1933 . Adam first went to the then autonomous Saarland and in 1934 to Denmark . Under the code names Gilbert and Kleiner Hans , he was head of the North Section of the KPD in Copenhagen until 1936 , his successor being Sepp Schwab . In December 1936 Adam traveled to Norway to negotiate unity with other anti-fascist groups .

Even after the German occupation of Denmark and his expatriation from Denmark in 1938, Adam stayed in the country and edited the illegal, anti-fascist newspaper Deutsche Nachrichten . Adam was arrested by the Gestapo in April 1945 and was released after the war.

In 1945 Adam returned to Germany, became a member of the SED after the forced unification of the SPD and KPD in 1946 and was secretary for culture and education of the SED district leadership in Schwerin until 1948 . In 1948/49 he was head of the state youth welfare office and head of department in the Mecklenburg Ministry of Education. In October 1949 Adam became the main adviser of the Western Commission to the SED party executive. After that he was sector manager for all-German work in the cultural department of the SED's central committee until 1963 . In 1963 Adam went to the Konrad Wolf Academy for Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg, where he became a lecturer , party secretary and vice-rector for student affairs. In 1967 Adam became acting director of the Institute for Film Studies.

Honors

• 1964 Patriotic Order of Merit in silver
• 1970 Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold

literature

• Wilhelm Adam In: Hermann Weber , Andreas Herbst : German Communists. Biographisches Handbuch 1918 to 1945. 2nd, revised and greatly expanded edition. Dietz, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-320-02130-6 .
• Michael F. Scholz: Would you like some Scandinavian experience? Post-exile and remigration. The former KPD emigrants in Scandinavia and their further fate in the Soviet Zone / GDR , Franz Steiner Verlag, 2000, ISBN 9783515076517 . (on-line)

Web links

• Wilhelm Adam on www.ddr-biografien.de .