Wilhelm Kling

Wilhelm Kling (born February 7, 1902 in Bammental ; † November 17, 1973 in Berlin ) was a KPD functionary and employee in the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED in the GDR .

Life

Kling completed an apprenticeship as a businessman from 1916 to 1921, was an employee in Dortmund until 1924 , until 1928 worker in various construction companies, there also a member of the works council.In 1928 and 1929 he was unemployed and until 1933 editor of the newspaper Berlin am Morgen .

Kling had been a member of the youth association of the Central Employees' Association since 1919 and published the magazine Aktivist there . From 1922 to 1924 Kling was a member of the " Association for Defense of Anti-Semitism in Germany " and from 1923 in various functions in the subdistrict of Dortmund and later in the subdistrict of Berlin of the KPD. In 1926/27 he attended the KPD school in the Ruhr area. During his unemployment he wrote articles in the KPD newspaper Ruhr-Echo .

From March 1933 he worked in the KPD's illegal intelligence service in Berlin. He was first arrested in October 1933 and imprisoned in the Columbia House until March 1934 . In 1934/35 he was the political leader of the KPD sub-district Berlin-Neukölln (code name "Fritz") until he was arrested again in July 1935. In October 1936 he was sentenced to six years in prison at the last public hearing of the People's Court . Until 1945 he was u. a. imprisoned in Plötzensee prison , Brandenburg-Görden prison and in Bayreuth as well as in the Aschendorfer Moor , Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen concentration camps.

In 1945 he was secretary of the KPD Berlin-Neukölln , then an employee and main consultant in the economics department of the KPD Central Committee. With the compulsory unification of the SPD and KPD to form the SED in 1946, he became a member of the SED and held the same function in the SED's central secretariat . In 1948/49 Kling was the main adviser in the personnel policy department of the SED Central Committee . As the head of the “Officials in State and Economy” sub-department, he played a key role in the expropriation of “corporate and war crime companies ”. In 1950/51 he was the main consultant for economic issues in the Western Commission department of the SED Central Committee, in 1951 he was an employee for West German issues and KPD guidance (economic issues) in the economic policy department of the SED Central Committee, and from 1951 to 1953 he was sector manager in the Central Committee's planning and finance department the SED. From 1953 to 1961 he was deputy director of the German Economic Institute , then until 1969 employee of the agitation commission at the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED.

From 1970, Kling was a pensioner and at the same time a senior member of the committee of anti-fascist resistance fighters in the GDR.

Kling received the Order of Labor Banner in 1962 , the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver in 1959 and in gold in 1965, and the Karl Marx Order in 1967 .

Fonts

• A brief history of IG Farben , the major manufacturers of death , Berlin 1957

literature

• Bernd-Rainer Barth :  Kling, Wilhelm . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .