Walter Ulbricht

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**Walter Ulbricht**

Name of Office (1):	General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany
Term of Office:	1950–1971
Predecessor:	Wilhelm Pieck and Otto Grotewohl
Successor:	Erich Honecker
Name of Office (2):	Chairman of the Council of State of the German Democratic Republic
Term of Office:	1960–1973
Predecessor:	Johannes Dieckmann (as State President)
Successor:	Friedrich Ebert
Date of Birth:	June 30, 1893
Place of Birth:	Leipzig, Germany
Date of Death:	August 1, 1973
Place of Death:	East Berlin, Germany
Profession:	Politician
Political party:	Socialist Unity Party of Germany

Walter Ulbricht (June 30, 1893 – August 1, 1973) was a German communist politician. As First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1950 to 1971, he held arguably the most central role in the early development and establishment of East Germany (the German Democratic Republic).

1 Early life
2 Political career
3 Famous quotes
4 External links

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Early life

Ulbricht was born in Leipzig as the son of a tailor. Both his parents worked actively for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD). He attended secondary school (Volksschule), and learned the trade of a joiner. Later, he served in World War I from 1915 to 1918 on the Polish, Serbian and Western Fronts.

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Political career

In 1912, Ulbricht joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany. A founding member of the Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, KPD) in 1919, Ulbricht attended the International Lenin School of the Komintern in Moscow in 1924/1925. The electors subsequently voted him into the regional parliament of Saxony (Sächsischer Landtag) in 1926. He became an Member of the German parliament (the Reichstag) from 1928 to 1933. After the Nazi Party formed a government in 1933, Ulbricht lived in exile in Paris and Prague from 1933 to 1938, then in the Soviet Union from 1938 to 1945. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, he was active in a group of German communists under NKVD supervision (a group including, among others, the poet Erich Weinert and the writer Willi Bredel) which, among other things, translated propaganda material into German, prepared broadcasts directed at the invaders, and interrogated captured German officers. In February 1943, following the surrender of the German Sixth Army at the close of the Battle of Stalingrad, Ulbricht, Weinert and Wilhelm Pieck conducted a Communist political rally in the center of Stalingrad which many German prisoners were forced to attend.

Image:Mielkehonulb005 540px.jpg A leader of the East German communist Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) from 1949 to 1971, he also served as Staatsratsvorsitzender (Chairman of the Council of State: head of state) of East Germany from 1960, when President Wilhelm Pieck died, until his own death in 1973. The Soviets ousted Ulbricht from power in 1971 and he had to hand over the leadership of the SED to Erich Honecker, although he remained the nominal head of state. He died at the Döllnsee near East Berlin on August 1, 1973 and was interred and honoured by a major state funeral.

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Famous quotes

"No one has the intention of building a wall" (Berlin, June 15, 1961) two months prior to the building of the Berlin wall and the wall between East and West Berlin.

(Original: "Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten.")

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