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Communist Party of Germany Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands
Founded	1918
Dissolved	Banned from 1933 to 1945, 1946 (in East Germany), 1956 (in West Germany)
Preceded by	Spartacus League
Succeeded by	Socialist Unity Party of Germany (East Germany), German Communist Party (West Germany)
Newspaper	Die Rote Fahne
Youth wing	Young Communist League of Germany
Paramilitary wing	Rotfrontkämpferbund (RFB)
Membership	360,000 (in 1932)[1]
Ideology	Communism, Marxism–Leninism
Political position	Far-left
International affiliation	Comintern
Official colors	Red
Party flag
Politics of Germany Political parties Elections

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v t e

The Communist Party of Germany (German: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands – KPD) was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period until it was banned in 1956. In the 1920s it was called the "Spartacists", since it was formed from the Spartacus League.

Founded in the aftermath of the First World War by socialists opposed to the war, led by Rosa Luxemburg, after her death the party became gradually ever more committed to Leninism and later Stalinism. During the Weimar Republic period, the KPD usually polled between 10 and 15 per cent of the vote and was represented in the Reichstag and in state parliaments. The party directed most of its attacks on the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which it considered its main opponent. Banned by the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler, the KPD maintained an underground organization but suffered heavy losses. The party was revived in divided postwar West and East Germany and won seats in the first Bundestag (West German Parliament) elections in 1949, but its support collapsed following the establishment of a communist state in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany.

In East Germany, the party was merged, by Soviet decree, with the Social Democratic Party to form the Socialist Unity Party which ruled East Germany until 1989-1990. It was banned in West Germany in 1956 by the Constitutional Court. Some of its former members founded an even smaller fringe party, the German Communist Party (DKP), in 1969, which remains legal, and multiple tiny splinter groups claiming to be the successor to the KPD have also subsequently been formed.

Early history[link]

Before the First World War the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was the largest party in Germany and the world's most successful socialist party. Although still officially claiming to be a Marxist party, by 1914 it had become in practice a reformist party. In 1914 the SPD members of the Reichstag voted in favour of the war. Left-wing members of the party, led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, strongly opposed the war, and the SPD soon suffered a split, with the leftists forming the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) and the more radical Spartacist League. In November 1918, revolution broke out across Germany. The leftists, led by Rosa Luxemburg and the Spartacist League, formed the KPD at a founding congress held in Berlin in 30 December 1918 – 1 January 1919 in the reception hall of the City Council^[2]

There were seven main reports given:

• The crisis of the USPD — by Karl Liebknecht
• Greeting speech — by Karl Radek
• The National Assembly — by Paul Levi
• Economical Struggles — by Paul Lange
• Our Program — by Rosa Luxemburg
• Our Organazation — by Hugo Eberlein
• International Conference — by Hermann Duncker

These reports were given by leading figures of the Spartakus League, however members of the Internationale Kommunisten Deutschlands also took part in the discussions

Under the leadership of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, the KPD was committed to a violent revolution in Germany, and during 1919 and 1920 attempts to seize control of the government continued. Germany's Social Democratic government, which had come to power after the fall of the Monarchy, was vehemently opposed to the KPD's idea of socialism. With the new regime terrified of a Bolshevik Revolution in Germany, Defense Minister Gustav Noske formed a series of Anti-Communist paramilitary groups, dubbed "The Freikorps", out of demobilized World War I veterans. During the failed so-called Spartacist uprising in Berlin of January 1919, Liebknecht and Luxemburg, who had not initiated the uprising but joined once it had begun, were captured by the Freikorps and murdered. The Party split a few months later into two factions, the KPD and the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD).

Following the assassination of Leo Jogiches, Paul Levi became the KPD leader. Other prominent members included Clara Zetkin, Paul Frölich, Hugo Eberlein, Franz Mehring, August Thalheimer, and Ernst Meyer. Levi led the party away from the policy of immediate revolution, in an effort to win over SPD and USPD voters and union officials. These efforts were rewarded when a substantial section of the USPD joined the KPD, making it a mass party for the first time.

Through the 1920s the KPD was racked by internal conflict between more and less radical factions, partly reflecting the power struggles between Zinoviev and Stalin in Moscow. Germany was seen as being of central importance to the struggle for socialism, and the failure of the German revolution was a major setback. Eventually Levi was expelled in 1921 by the Comintern for "indiscipline." Further leadership changes took place in the early 1920s, and Party members accused of being Trotskyites were expelled; of these, Heinrich Brandler, August Thalheimer and Paul Frölich set up a splinter Communist Party Opposition.

The Weimar Republic years[link]

Karl-Liebknecht-Haus, the KPD's headquarters from 1926 to 1933. The KPD leaders were arrested by the Gestapo in this building in January 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor. The plaques on either side of the door recall the building's history. Today it is the Berlin headquarters of the Left Party

KPD in Essen, 1925

In 1923 a new KPD leadership more favorable to the USSR was elected. This leadership, headed by Ernst Thälmann, abandoned the goal of immediate revolution, and from 1924 onwards contested Reichstag elections, with some success.

During the years of the Weimar Republic the KPD was the largest Communist party in Europe, and was seen as the "leading party" of the Communist movement outside the Soviet Union. It maintained a solid electoral performance, usually polling more than 10% of the vote, and gaining 100 deputies in the November 1932 elections. In the presidential election of the same year, Thälmann took 13.2% of the vote, compared to Hitler's 30.1%.

Critics of the KPD accused it of having pursued a sectarian policy – e.g. the Social Democratic Party criticized the KPD's thesis of Social Fascism (which addressed the SPD as the Communist's main enemy). This scuttled any possibility of a united front with the SPD against the rising power of the Nazis. These allegations were repudiated by supporters of the KPD: the right-wing leadership of the SPD, it was said, rejected the proposals of the KPD to unite for the defeat of fascism. The SPD leaders were accused of having countered KPD efforts to form a united front of the working class. For instance, after Papen's government carried out a coup d'état in Prussia, the KPD called for a general strike and turned to the SPD leadership for joint struggle. But the SPD leaders again refused to cooperate with the KPD.

The Nazi era[link]

Soon after the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor, the Reichstag was set on fire and Dutch council communist Marinus van der Lubbe was found near the building. The Nazis publicly blamed the fire on communist agitators in general, although in a German court in 1933, it was decided that van der Lubbe had acted alone, as he claimed to have done. After the fire, the Reichstag Fire Decree was passed, which suspended most civil liberties. The KPD was banned shortly afterward. The Enabling Act, which legally gave Hitler dictatorial control of Germany, was passed by a Reichstag session held after all communist deputies had been arrested and jailed.

The KPD was efficiently suppressed by the Nazis. Thousands of Communists were imprisoned in concentration camps, including Thälmann and the party's leader in the Reichstag, Ernst Torgler. The most senior KPD leaders to escape were Wilhelm Pieck and Walter Ulbricht, who went into exile in the Soviet Union. The KPD maintained an underground organisation in Germany throughout the Nazi period, but the loss of many core members severely weakened the Party's infrastructure.

The Purge of 1937[link]

A number of senior KPD leaders in exile were caught up in Joseph Stalin's Great Purge of 1937-38 and executed, among them Eberlein, Heinz Neumann, Hermann Remmele, Fritz Schulte and Hermann Schubert, or sent to the GULAG, like Margarete Buber-Neumann. Still others, like Gustav von Wangenheim and Erich Mielke, denounced their fellow exiles to the NKVD.^[3] Willi Münzenberg, the KPD's propaganda chief, was murdered in mysterious circumstances in France in 1940. The NKVD is believed to have been responsible.

Postwar history[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

In East Germany, the Soviet occupation authorities forced the eastern branch of the SPD to merge with the KPD (led by Pieck and Ulbricht) to form the Socialist Unity Party (SED), which became the ruling party in East Germany until 1990. A small sister party of the SED, the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin, operated in Berlin.

The KPD reorganised in the western part of Germany, and received 5.7% of the vote in the first Bundestag election in 1949. But the onset of the Cold War and imposition of a communist state in East Germany soon caused a collapse in the party's support. At the 1953 election the KPD only won 2.2 percent of the total votes and lost all of its seats. The party was banned in August 1956 by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany. The ban was due to the aggressive and combative methods that the party used as a "Marxist-Leninist party struggle" to achieve their goals. After the party was declared illegal, many of its members continued to function clandestinely despite increased government surveillance. Part of its membership refounded the party in 1968 as the German Communist Party (DKP), which still exists. Following German reunification, however, many DKP members joined the new PDS.

In 1968, a self-named "true successor" to the (banned) West German KPD was formed, the KPD/ML (Marxist-Leninist), which followed maoist ideas. It went through multiple splits and united with a Trotskyist group in 1986 to form the Unified Socialist Party (VSP), which failed to gain any influence and dissolved in the early 1990s. However, multiple tiny splinter groups originating in the KPD/ML still exist, several of which claim the name of KPD. Another party with this name was formed in 1990 in East Berlin by members of the GDR leadership who were expelled from the PDS, including Erich Honecker. The "KPD (Bolshevik)" split off from the East German KPD in 2005, bringing the total number of (more or less) active KPDs to at least 5. The Left claims to be the historical successor of the KPD.

Organization[link]

In the early 1920s, the party operated under the principle of Democratic Centralism, whereby the leading body of the party was the Congress, meeting at least once a year.^[4] Between Congresses, leadership of the party resided in the Central Committee, which was elected at Congress, of one group of people who had to live where the leadership was resident and formed the Zentrale and others nominated from the districts they represented (but also elected at the Congress) who represented the wider party.^[5] Elected figures were subject to recall by the bodies that elected them.^[6]

The KPD employed around about 200 fulltimers during its early years of existence, and as Broue notes "They received the pay of an average skilled worker, and had no privileges, apart from being the first to be arrested, prosecuted and sentenced, and when shooting started, to be the first to fall".^[7]

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Communist Party of Germany

• Luxemburgism
• Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Paul Levi, Erich Mielke, Richard Müller (socialist)
• Rotfrontkämpferbund
• Spartacus League
• Communist Workers' Party of Germany
• Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition
• Union of Manual and Intellectual Workers
• Communist Party Opposition
• Socialist Workers' Party of Germany
• German Revolution of 1918–1919
• German resistance
• Hotel Lux, Moscow hotel where many German party members lived in exile

References[link]

v t e Political parties in East Germany (German Democratic Republic) Parties of the Democratic Bloc (1945–1946) Communist Party of Germany Social Democratic Party of Germany Christian Democratic Union Liberal Democratic Party Parties of the Democratic Bloc (1946–1989) Socialist Unity Party of Germany Christian Democratic Union of Germany Liberal Democratic Party of Germany National Democratic Party of Germany (formed in 1948) Democratic Farmers' Party of Germany (formed in 1948) Parties during and after the Peaceful Revolution (1989–1990) Alliance 90 (Democracy Now, Initiative for Peace and Human Rights, New Forum)  • Alliance for Germany (Christian Democratic Union, Democratic Awakening, German Social Union)  • Association of Free Democrats (Liberal Democratic Party, Free Democratic Party, German Forum Party)  • Democratic Farmers' Party of Germany  • Green Party  • National Democratic Party of Germany  • Social Democratic Party  • Socialist Unity Party of Germany—Party of Democratic Socialism  • United Left Politics of East Germany Political parties in East Germany

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Wilhelm Pieck
President of the German Democratic Republic
In office 11 October 1949 – 7 September 1960
Preceded by	Karl Dönitz (Third Reich) Allied military occupation 1945-1949
Succeeded by	Council of State (Effectively by Walter Ulbricht as its chairman)
Personal details
Born	(1876-01-03)3 January 1876 Guben, German Empire
Died	7 September 1960(1960-09-07) (aged 84) East Berlin, East Germany
Nationality	German
Political party	SPD, KPD, SED

Friedrich Wilhelm Reinhold Pieck (German pronunciation: [ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈpiːk]; 3 January 1876 – 7 September 1960) was a German politician and a Communist. In 1949, he became the first President of the German Democratic Republic, an office abolished upon his death. He was succeeded by Walter Ulbricht, who served as Chairman of the Council of State.

Biography[link]

Pieck was born the son of a coachman in the eastern part of Guben, Germany,^[1] which is now Gubin and part of Poland. While he initially trained to become a carpenter, a combination of world events, determined ideology, and political ambition led Pieck to a life of political activism.

As a carpenter, in 1894 Pieck joined the wood-workers' federation, which steered him towards joining the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) the following year.^[1] Pieck became the chairman of the party urban district in 1899, and in 1906 became full-time secretary of the SPD. Although the majority of the SPD supported the German government in World War I, Pieck was a member of the party's left wing, which opposed the war. Pieck's openness in doing so led to his arrest and detention in a military prison. After being released, Pieck briefly lived in exile in Amsterdam.^[1] Upon his return to Berlin in 1918, Pieck joined the newly-founded Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In 1922, he became a founding member of the International Red Aid, serving first on the executive committee. In May 1925, he became the chairman of the Rote Hilfe.^[1]

Following the Nazi Party's takeover in 1933, Pieck went into exile again, first in France, then in Moscow in 1935.^[1] In Moscow, Pieck served the Communist Party in a variety of capacities. From 1938 until 1943, he held the position of General Secretary of the Communist International. In 1943 Pieck was among the founders of the National Committee for a Free Germany (NKFD). The NKFD planned for the future of Germany after World War II. At the conclusion of the war in 1945 Pieck returned to Germany with the victorious Red Army.

In 1949 Pieck was elected President of the newly-established German Democratic Republic (GDR).^[1] He served as the only president of the GDR until his death in 1960. Pieck retained his political posts due to Joseph Stalin's trust in him.

Pieck lived at Majakowskiring 29, Pankow, East Berlin. His daughter, Elly Winter (1898–1987), held various posts in the SED and East German government.

Photo gallery[link]

• 

  Pieck in 1926

• 

  Pieck (left) and Otto Grotewohl in 1949

• 

  1951 East German commemorative stamp of the Treaty of Zgorzelec establishing the Oder-Neisse line as a “border of peace”, with Pieck and President Bolesław Bierut of Poland]]

• 

  His tomb in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde

References[link]

v t e Heads of State of the German Democratic Republic Presidents Wilhelm Pieck Chairmen of the State Council Walter Ulbricht Willi Stoph Erich Honecker Egon Krenz Manfred Gerlach Presidents of the People's Chamber Sabine Bergmann-Pohl

Max Reimann (1950)

Max Reimann's tombstone at the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde in Berlin

Max Reimann (31 October 1898 - 18 January 1977) was a German communist Politician and member of the German Bundestag.^[1]

Biography[link]

Reimann was born in Elbing (Elbląg), West Prussia (today Poland). He worked as a riveter at the Schichau yards in 1912-16 and was drafted into the German Army in the First World War. In 1913, he became a member of the German Metal Workers Union and the Socialist Labourers Youth, in 1916 of the Spartakusbund.^[1]

In 1918 he was sentenced to 1 year imprisonment for his participation in an anti-war demonstration at Elbing throughout the German Revolution of 1918–19. After his release from prison Reimann moved to Ahlen in 1920 to work as a miner, joined the German Coalminer Union and became a full-time official of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1921. Reimann fought against the French Occupation of the Ruhr in 1923 and was imprisoned for a short time. Throughout the 1920s, he held several positions within the Revolutionäre Gewerkschafts Opposition (RGO), the Communist union in the Ruhr area.^[1]

After the Nazis took over power in Germany in 1933 Reimann continued his work, now in illegal underground and became the head of the RGO in 1934. In 1935 Reimann was a delegate at the 7th Congress of the Comintern in Moscow and later worked for the KPD-Foreign office in Prague. After Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939 Reimann was arrested on 4 April 1939 and imprisoned at Hamm Prison, Sachsenhausen concentration camp and Falkensee.^[1]

After the end of World War II, Reimann was a candidate of the Western KPD organization for the executive committee of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED) but had to quit as the SED activities were limited to East Germany. In 1948, Reimann became chairman of the West German Communist Party.^[1]

Reimann was a member of the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia in 1946-54, the advisory board of the British Occupation Zone in 1946/48 and the economical board of the Bizone in 1947/49.

He was the head of the KPD group at the parliamentary council and a member of the Bundestag in 1949-53. In 1954, he moved to East Germany but continued to operate his position as the head of the West German KPD, which was illegalized in 1956.

Reimann returned to West Germany in 1968, became a member of the newfounded German Communist Party in 1971 and its honorary chairman.

Reimann died in Düsseldorf.

External links[link]

• Max Reimann in the German National Library catalogue (German)
• Max Reimann.com

References[link]