Non-party chancellor who answered the Ruhr occupation with passive resistance and fell amid hyperinflation
Born to a civil servant’s family in Suhl, he studied law and, as a Treasury official, helped organise Germany’s food supply early in the First World War. In 1917 he joined the Hamburg America shipping line, which he went on to head. In November 1922 he was appointed chancellor by presidential decree without a Reichstag vote, the first Weimar chancellor who belonged to no party, and formed a “business ministry”. When French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr in January 1923 he called for passive resistance; paying for it, mostly by printing money, began the run-up to hyperinflation. Amid a wave of strikes his cabinet resigned in August in the face of a no-confidence vote initiated by the SPD. In 1932 he joined in advising Hitler on economics, and he died in January 1933.
Father of the Katyusha rocket, the engineer who perfected the RS‑82 and RS‑132 and coined the word 'cosmonautics'
During the 1921 Kronstadt rebellion, mutineers arrested Langemak and sentenced him to death. He was held from 2 March to 18 April and freed only after the Red Army crushed the uprising — twenty years before he would build the rockets that became the Katyusha.
Of German descent, Langemak began developing smokeless-powder rockets at the Gas Dynamics Laboratory (GDL) and, as chief engineer of the Rocket Research Institute (RNII, 1934–1938), brought the RS-82 and RS-132 solid-fuel rockets to operational readiness. These became the core munition of the BM-13 Katyusha multiple rocket launcher: one of the most iconic Soviet weapons of World War II. He introduced the term 'cosmonautics' into the Russian language and corresponded with Tsiolkovsky about the peaceful space applications of rocketry. Arrested on false charges during the Great Purge in 1937, he was shot on 11 January 1938, rehabilitated in 1955, and posthumously made a Hero of Socialist Labor in 1991.
Career timeline
1916–1918Entered Petrograd University for Japanese philology; graduated from Naval Ensign School, served in the fleet
1919–1922Mobilized into the Red Army; battery commander and assistant division chief, Kronstadt Fortress
1923–1928Graduated from the Red Army Military-Technical Academy
1928–1933Led development of smokeless-powder rockets RS-82 and RS-132 at the Gas Dynamics Laboratory (GDL)
1934–1937Deputy director and chief engineer of RNII (NII-3); Military Engineer 1st Rank
1937–1938Arrested by NKVD; sentenced to death by Military Collegium, shot same day, 11 January 1938
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.
Career timeline
1918Took part in the sailors’ revolt
1932–1933KPD Reichstag deputy
1936–1940Organised the Wollweber League sabotage network
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.
Career timeline
1922Joined the KPD
1932–1933Reichstag deputy
1933–1945Imprisoned; held in Sachsenhausen and Flossenbürg
1948–1949Deputy chairman of the German Economic Commission
1949–1955Minister of Industry, then of Heavy Industry
