Anton Ackermann
Anton Ackermann
German communist who drafted the KPD’s 1945 appeal and argued for a “special German road to socialism”
The son of a hosier from Thalheim in Saxony, he joined the KPD in 1926 and attended the International Lenin School in Moscow. After underground work and exile under the Nazis he directed a political school of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, and in Moscow ran the “Free Germany” radio station. In 1945 he led the KPD group sent to Saxony and drafted the party’s appeal of 11 June 1945. In 1946 he argued that socialism could be built in Germany without a preceding dictatorship of the proletariat, a “special German road to socialism” he had to recant after Tito’s break with Stalin in 1948. He served as deputy foreign minister and first head of the GDR’s foreign intelligence service, and in 1953 was stripped of all posts for supporting Zaisser. Gravely ill with cancer, he took his own life in 1973.
Career timeline
- 1926Joined the KPD
- 1935KPD Central Committee member and Politburo candidate
- 1945Head of the KPD group in Saxony; drafted the 11 June appeal
- 1946Member of the SED Central Secretariat
- 1949–1953Deputy foreign minister
- 1953Removed from all posts