People of the Revolution and the USSR

East Germany Communism 1876–1960 ○ Natural causes

From the Spartacus League to GDR head of state, the sole founding member who lived the full arc of German communism

On the night of 15 January 1919, Pieck was arrested alongside Luxemburg and Liebknecht and taken to the Eden Hotel. He became the sole survivor — the last to witness his comrades alive.

A coachman's son turned carpenter, he joined the SPD in 1895 and was radicalized under Rosa Luxemburg's influence. Court-martialed for anti-war agitation, he co-founded the Spartacus League and the KPD. Arrested with Luxemburg and Liebknecht in January 1919, he alone survived. He served on the ECCI (1921) and its Presidium (1931), then led the KPD in Moscow exile as Comintern secretary. Returning after the war, he drove the SPD-KPD merger that created the SED and became the first President of the GDR in 1949, holding that office until his death.

East Germany Communism 1892–1973 ○ Natural death

First East German justice minister, dismissed and imprisoned in 1953 after opposing the prosecution of striking workers

A toolmaker from Berlin, he joined the SPD in 1910 and sat in the Prussian Landtag from 1928 to 1933. Under the Nazis he took part in a resistance group and was twice imprisoned. After the war he supported the forced merger of the SPD and KPD, sat on the SED’s Central Committee, and in October 1949 became the GDR’s first Minister of Justice. In the trial of the Gladow gang he had adult criminal law applied unlawfully so that a death sentence was possible. In an interview with Neues Deutschland on 30 June 1953 he said that members of the 17 June strike leadership would not be punished on mere suspicion; denounced as an “enemy of the state and the party”, he was dismissed, expelled and arrested, and sentenced to eight years. Released and pardoned in 1956, readmitted to the party in 1958, he died in 1973.

East Germany Communism 1893–1958 ○ Natural death

First East German Minister for State Security, purged in 1953 after trying to replace Ulbricht

Born in Gelsenkirchen to a gendarmerie sergeant’s family, he trained as a teacher and was a military leader of the Red Ruhr Army during the Kapp Putsch of 1920. As a GRU agent and Comintern military adviser he co-organised the Guangzhou Uprising in China, and in the Spanish Civil War, as “Gomez”, he led the International Brigades. He returned to Germany in 1947, joined the SED, and in 1950 became the first Minister for State Security and a Politburo member, building up the Stasi. After the uprising of June 1953 he moved to replace Ulbricht with Herrnstadt, but once Ulbricht had Khrushchev’s backing he lost his ministry and all his posts in July and was expelled from the party. He worked as a translator, died in East Berlin in 1958 and was rehabilitated after 1990.

Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) Communism 1893–1971 ○ Natural death

SED Politburo member and chairman of the Central Party Control Commission who stood by Ulbricht in 1953

Born in Burg, the son of a Social Democratic worker, he worked as a tanner and left the SPD when it voted for war loans. He went through the USPD into the KPD and led its Magdeburg and East Prussia districts. Arrested in 1933, he escaped and went into exile, joining the National Committee for a Free Germany in the Soviet Union. He returned in 1945 with Anton Ackermann’s group and until 1946 was first secretary of the KPD in Saxony. From 1948 until his death he chaired the SED’s Central Party Control Commission, responsible for party discipline, and was a Politburo member and vice-president of the People’s Chamber. After the 1953 uprising, when a Politburo majority wanted to remove Ulbricht, he and Honecker alone stayed loyal. He died in East Berlin in 1971.

Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) Communism 1893–1973 ○ Natural causes (stroke)

German communist leader who built the GDR and erected the Berlin Wall

At a press conference on 15 June 1961 he declared, 'Nobody intends to build a wall'; two months later, on 13 August, his orders launched the Berlin Wall.

Born in Leipzig in 1893 to a tailor's family and trained as a joiner, he joined the SPD in 1912, passed through the USPD (1917) and the Spartacus League (1919) into the KPD (1920), and sat on the KPD Central Committee from 1923 and in the Reichstag from 1928 to 1933. After the Nazi takeover he fled via Paris and Prague to the Soviet Union to work for the Comintern, and returned on 30 April 1945 leading the 'Ulbricht Group'. He was pivotal in the forced 1946 merger of the KPD and SPD into the SED and became its First Secretary in 1950, the effective leader of East Germany. He backed the suppression of the June 1953 uprising, ordered the Berlin Wall in 1961, and launched the New Economic System in 1963. Forced out on 3 May 1971 'for health reasons' in favour of Erich Honecker, he died of a stroke on 1 August 1973.

East Germany Communism 1894–1964 ○ Natural causes

The Social Democrat who led a divided state into being

In April 1946, he was elected co-chairman of the newly founded Socialist Unity Party alongside Wilhelm Pieck.

Otto Grotewohl was a Weimar-era Social Democratic politician who voted against Hitler’s Enabling Act and later led the postwar SPD in the Soviet occupation zone. Initially cautious, he helped drive the merger with the Communist Party under Soviet occupation authorities, becoming the SED’s co-chairman in 1946. The merger created the political foundation of East Germany, but it also followed the suppression of free choice within the SPD. As the GDR’s first head of government from 1949, Grotewohl helped build the new state while operating within the limits imposed by Soviet power.

East Germany Communism 1898–1967 ○ Natural death

Communist who ran an anti-fascist sabotage network before the war and headed the Stasi from 1953 to 1957

Born in Münden in the Province of Hanover, he took part in the sailors’ revolt of 1918, joined the KPD in 1919 and led party military wings; he sat in the Reichstag in 1932–1933. In exile he organised the “Wollweber League” in 1936–1940, which carried out 21 known acts of sabotage against ships of fascist nations, and supplied arms to the Spanish Republicans. Back in Germany in 1946 he ran shipping administration. In July 1953, when Zaisser was removed and the Ministry for State Security was downgraded to a State Secretariat, he became its head, and in November 1955 Minister of State Security again. He clashed with Ulbricht and Honecker and sided with Schirdewan, resigned in 1957, and in 1958 was removed from the Central Committee for “factional activity”. He died in East Berlin in 1967.

East Germany Communism 1899–1961 ○ Heart attack

Communist who chaired the German Economic Commission, the forerunner of the GDR government, and led East German economic policy

Born in Feuerbach near Stuttgart, he worked as a metal presser at Bosch and passed through the Spartacists and the USPD into the KPD in 1919, becoming the party’s leading agricultural policy maker in the 1920s. Imprisoned after the Nazis came to power, he emigrated to the Soviet Union and in the Spanish Civil War commanded the XI International Brigade. Interned in France and handed to the Gestapo by Vichy in 1942, he was liberated at Mauthausen. In March 1948 he became chairman of the German Economic Commission (DWK), which carried out the eastern currency reform and the first plans. In the GDR he was a Politburo member, deputy prime minister and chairman of the State Planning Commission; at the Politburo session of 8 July 1953 he recommended replacing Ulbricht, yet kept his posts. Minister of Machine Construction and then of Foreign Trade, he died of a heart attack in 1961.

East Germany Communism 1899–1975 ○ Natural death

East German heavy-industry minister who faced the striking workers outside the House of Ministries on 16 June 1953

The son of a coppersmith from Lauterbach in Hesse, he was working underground at seventeen, served in the First World War and in 1918 sat on a soldiers’ council. He joined the USPD in 1920 and the KPD in 1922, becoming the party’s political secretary in Saxony and a Reichstag deputy. Arrested in 1933, he survived the Nazi years in prisons and in concentration camps including Sachsenhausen and Flossenbürg. After the war he was Saxony’s minister for economics and planning, then deputy chairman of the German Economic Commission, and in the GDR minister of industry and of heavy industry. On 16 June 1953 he walked into the crowd outside the House of Ministries and tried to address it from a desk, but was whistled down. In 1958 Ulbricht pushed him out of his offices for a “deviant attitude”, and he turned to writing. He died in East Berlin in 1975.

East Germany Communism 1902–1989 ○ Natural death

East German jurist who succeeded Fechner as justice minister after the 1953 uprising and led its harsh political trials

Born into a liberal middle-class family in Bernburg, Anhalt, she was among the first women to study law in Germany. A Social Democrat, she married the physician Georg Benjamin, brother of Walter Benjamin, in 1926 and joined the KPD in 1927. Barred from practising law under the Nazis, she lost her husband in Mauthausen in 1942. After the war she worked in the justice administration of the Soviet zone, and as vice-president of the GDR Supreme Court presided over show trials of political undesirables and Jehovah’s Witnesses. On 15 July 1953 she succeeded Max Fechner, who had opposed prosecuting the striking workers, as minister of justice, and her heavy sentences against those arrested in June earned her the names “Red Hilde” and “the Red Freisler”. Ulbricht forced her to resign in 1967. She died in East Berlin in 1989.

Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) Communism 1903–1966 ○ Natural death

Editor of Neues Deutschland who helped draft the 1953 New Course, moved against Ulbricht and was purged as a “faction”

Born into a wealthy Jewish family in Gleiwitz, he became a correspondent for the Berliner Tageblatt and an agent of Soviet military intelligence (GRU). Exiled in the Soviet Union from 1939, he edited the newspaper of the National Committee for a Free Germany. Back in Berlin in 1945 he ran the Berliner Zeitung and helped found Neues Deutschland, whose editor always followed Moscow’s line. In June 1953 he and Zaisser set themselves against Ulbricht, and he helped formulate the New Course approved by the Central Committee. After the uprising he proposed a collective leadership, but in July he was removed from the Central Committee for “anti-party factionalism” and in January 1954 expelled from the SED. He worked at the Central Archives in Merseburg, died in 1966 and was rehabilitated only in 1989.

Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) Communism 1903–1977 ○ Natural death

Economist and the SED’s chief ideologue until 1958, when he was expelled from the Politburo in the Schirdewan affair

Born in Leipzig, he joined the USPD in 1919 and the KPD in 1920 and worked as an editor on party papers. From 1926 he studied in Moscow at the International Lenin School and the Institute of Red Professors. In exile from 1933 he was Ulbricht’s secretary in Paris; in Moscow he lost his teaching posts in 1936 for alleged deviations, and in the war became chief editor of Moscow Radio’s German service. Returning with the Ackermann Group in 1945, he ran the party’s propaganda and education work, joined the Politburo in 1950 and was Central Committee secretary for propaganda from 1950 to 1955, effectively the party’s chief ideologue. In June 1953 he set up the command in Halle that put down the uprising. After 1956 he opposed the complete collectivisation of agriculture, and in 1958 he was expelled from the Politburo. He then directed the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences.

Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) Communism 1905–1973 ✕ Suicide while ill with cancer

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.

East Germany Communism 1907–2000 ○ Natural causes

East Germany's 'Master of Fear': the Stasi chief who ruled state security for 32 years

“All this blithering over to execute or not to execute, for the death penalty or against — all rot, Comrades. Execute! And, when necessary, without a court judgment.” — to senior Stasi officers, 1982

A communist militant from Berlin's Wedding district, Mielke fled to the USSR after the 1931 killing of two Berlin policemen and was trained by the NKVD. After the Spanish Civil War he returned in 1945 to help build the GDR's state security apparatus, leading the Stasi from 1957 to 1989 and expanding it into a 90,000-strong surveillance network. The Stasi controlled all of East German society while training armed groups across the Third World and Western Europe, extending socialist-bloc security architecture. He fell with the regime in 1989 and was convicted after reunification for the 1931 murders.

East Germany Communism 1910–1965 ○ Natural death

East German planner who ran planning in the German Economic Commission and then chaired the State Planning Commission

A shoemaker’s son from Rixdorf, Berlin, he worked as a clerk, studied economics at night and joined the KPD in 1931. Under the Nazis he worked for the illegal paper “Der Rote Wedding” and the party’s military intelligence apparatus until his arrest in 1936; sentenced to six years in prison, he was then held in Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen until 1945. After the war he built up and headed the KPD’s economic department, and from 1947 played a major part in creating the German Economic Commission, where he took charge of planning and drew up the half-year plan of 1948 and the two-year plan of 1949/50. He succeeded Heinrich Rau as chairman of the State Planning Commission (1952–1961), joined the Politburo in 1958 and was deputy premier from 1955 to 1965. Removed as planning chief in 1961, he became the GDR’s permanent representative to Comecon. He died in East Berlin in 1965.

East Germany Communism 1921–2010 ○ Died

The GDR State Planning Commission chief who warned of bankruptcy but could not save the system

When I warned Honecker against this policy in the Politburo I was brushed aside as a 'saboteur'.

Gerhard Schürer was the economic official who chaired the GDR State Planning Commission from 1965 to 1989. He warned that Honecker's 'unity of economic and social policy' was tilting the country toward insolvency by favouring consumption over investment, but was denounced as a 'saboteur' in the Politburo and remained a candidate member for 18 years. Summoned by Egon Krenz, on 30 October 1989 he presented the 'Analysis of the Economic Condition of the GDR' revealing 49 billion Valutamark in Western debt and impending insolvency, and proposed looser border controls in exchange for West German loans: a document that laid bare the regime's desperation. After reunification he was jailed for 18 days on charges of 'breach of trust,' released without trial, and later published his memoir Gewagt und verloren (Dared and Lost).

East Germany Communism 1923–2006 ○ Natural causes

A long-serving architect of Cold War intelligence

At the August 1984 RYaN meeting, he stressed the need to establish the “actual situation” rather than mistake indicators for a Western nuclear attack.

Markus Wolf was a communist official and intelligence chief who, after fleeing Nazi persecution to the Soviet Union, led the foreign intelligence service of East Germany. From 1952 to 1986 he directed the Stasi’s Main Directorate for Reconnaissance, organizing espionage and active measures aimed at West German political, military, and economic institutions. When Soviet leaders expanded Operation RYaN amid fears of a pre-emptive nuclear attack in the early 1980s, Wolf maintained cooperation while exposing a tension between alarmist indicators and the need to establish the actual situation. After German reunification he passed through exile and trial, and used memoirs and public interventions to address responsibility for state security work and the possibility of reforming socialism.

Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) Communism 1929–2015 ○ Convicted for border deaths; pardoned

The East German Politburo spokesman whose mistake brought down the Berlin Wall

Asked 'When does it take effect?' at the press conference, he shuffled through his papers and replied: 'As far as I know… immediately, without delay.'

The GDR's leading propagandist, he rose from editor-in-chief of Neues Deutschland to SED Politburo member and First Secretary of East Berlin. On 9 November 1989, asked at a press conference when new travel regulations would take effect, he answered 'immediately, without delay,' triggering the rush that breached the Berlin Wall that night. He later called his mistake 'the final nail in the coffin' of the regime; after reunification he was convicted for the border deaths, but his public acceptance of moral guilt earned him a reduced sentence.

East Germany Communism 1937–

The last communist leader of East Germany, who succeeded Honecker, opened the Wall, and fell in 50 days

On 9 November 1989, Krenz read the travel regulation draft to the Central Committee, handed the note to Schabowski saying "Here, explain this to the journalists," and hours later the Berlin Wall was open.

Designated as Erich Honecker's successor, Egon Krenz was the last communist leader of East Germany, becoming SED General Secretary after Honecker was ousted in October 1989. Just three weeks into his tenure, he approved the draft travel regulations, read them to the Central Committee on 9 November, and handed the note to Günter Schabowski for announcement at a press conference; that night the Berlin Wall was opened. He promised reforms but never gained public trust, and resigned all his posts by early December. After reunification, he was convicted of manslaughter for the border deaths and served nearly four years of a six-and-a-half-year sentence.