Wolf star

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wolf Stern (born December 15, 1897 in Woloka near Chernivtsi , today Ukraine ; † September 16, 1961 ) was a communist , officer in the Red Army and, in the GDR, headed the Institute for German Military History in Potsdam for several years . His brother Manfred went down in the history of the Spanish Civil War as General Kléber , while his brother Leo was temporarily rector of the Martin Luther University in Halle. His wife Gerda Stern was also active in the communist movement.

Life

youth

Stern was in 1897 as the son of a Jewish farmer in the then to Austria-Hungary belonging Bukovina born. After attending the German elementary school from 1903, he went to the state grammar school in Chernivtsi from 1907 to 1915. Then he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army , from which he deserted in 1918 with the rank of ensign because he played a leading role in the revolutionary uprising in the kuk 113th regiment. Stern began studying philosophy at the University of Chernivtsi, which he had to break off because of illegal political activities for the Communist Party of Bucovina. In February 1919 he was one of the founders of the Bucovina Communist Party and until 1924 the party organizer in its Central Committee. In 1924 Stern fled to Vienna and became a member of the KPÖ . On their behalf he worked as an editor in the press department of the Soviet embassy in Vienna until 1927 and acted as a liaison to the Comintern . During this time, he also worked as an informant for the Soviet military secret service GRU , for which he worked unofficially until 1939. Like his brother Leo , Wolf Stern also took part in the July Revolution in 1927 and in the Austrian Civil War in 1934.

Soviet citizens

Like many others, he emigrated to the Soviet Union a little later , of which he became a citizen in 1937. He also lived temporarily in the famous Hotel Lux . Under the code name Otto , Stern went to Spain in July 1936, where he worked as a member of a special brigade of the Soviet Interior Ministry until February 1939. After returning to Moscow, Stern worked as a senior teacher at the University of Foreign Languages ​​and Lomonosov University until the summer of 1941 . At the same time he received party training from 1939 to 1940 at the University of Marxism-Leninism. With the beginning of the war in the Soviet Union, Stern volunteered for the front. He first came to a special brigade of former interbrigadists. In 1943, Stern was transferred to the head of the prisoner-of-war administration at the NKVD . Among other things, he had to influence Field Marshal Paulus in such a way that he joined the Association of German Officers . From 1950 Stern worked as a translator and editor of the Soviet magazines Sowjetliteratur and Neue Zeit as well as an employee of the Union Chamber of Commerce.

In the DDR

tomb

In September 1956 he came to the GDR after spending more than 20 years in the Soviet Union. In 1949 the KPÖ tried to persuade him to return to Austria. It can be assumed that his brother Leo played a not insignificant role in the move to the GDR. Wolf Stern became a member of the SED and took over as an officer in the Minister's reserve from December 1, 1956 to January 31, 1957. Subsequently he was an employee of the chief of political administration of the NVA . In 1957, Stern became deputy head of the War History Research Council and head of the War History Research Institute in Dresden. He also became head of the initiative committee for the establishment of the working group of former officers , which was founded in 1958. From 1958 until his death in 1961, Stern was most recently head of the GDR's Military History Institute in Potsdam. His urn was in the grave conditioning Pergolenweg the memorial of the socialists at the Berlin Central Cemetery Friedrichsfelde buried.

literature

personal data
SURNAME Star, wolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Head of the Institute for German Military History in Potsdam
DATE OF BIRTH December 15, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Woloka near Chernivtsi
DATE OF DEATH September 16, 1961