Peter Florin

Infobox_Officeholder
honorific-prefix =
name = Peter Florin


imagesize =
order = President of the United Nations General Assembly
term_start =
term_end =
predecessor = Humayun Rashid Choudhury
successor = Dante Caputo
birth_date = birth date and age|1921|2|10
birth_place = Cologne, Germany
death_date =
death_place =
spouse =

Peter Florin, born in Cologne on October 2, 1921 [ [http://www.un.org/french/ga/president/bios/bio42f.shtml Biography] on the website of the United Nations] , is a former East German politician and diplomat.

Early life

Peter's father, Wilhelm Florin, was a leading figure in the pre-war German Communist Party. [ [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1DE163FF931A1575AC0A961948260 "MAN IN THE NEWS; A German In Charge: Peter Florin"] , "New York Times", September 22, 1987]

Florin left Germany with his parents in 1933, when Adolf Hitler came to power and began persecuting Communists [ [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1DE163FF931A1575AC0A961948260 "MAN IN THE NEWS; A German In Charge: Peter Florin"] , "New York Times", September 22, 1987] , moving first to France and then to the Soviet Union. There, he studied chemistry at the University of Mendeleyev. [ [http://www.un.org/french/ga/president/bios/bio42f.shtml Biography] on the website of the United Nations]

During the Second World War, he fought with the Soviet partisans in Belarus. In 1944, Florin became editor of "Freies Deutschland", a weekly anti-nazi newspaper. [ [http://www.un.org/french/ga/president/bios/bio42f.shtml Biography] on the website of the United Nations]

Political and diplomatic career

Following the war, he entered politics in the German Democratic Republic and served as vice-president of the regional parliament of Wittenberg, while working as chief editor of the daily newspaper "Freiheit". Then, from 1949 to 1952, he was an advisor for the East German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1953, he was promoted to the head of the department of foreign affairs of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany's Central Committee. From 1954 to 1971, he was a member of the country's parliamentary committee on foreign affairs, which he presided over for a time. [ [http://www.un.org/french/ga/president/bios/bio42f.shtml Biography] on the website of the United Nations]

From 1967 to 1969, Florin was East Germany's ambassador to Czechoslovakia. [ [http://www.un.org/french/ga/president/bios/bio42f.shtml Biography] on the website of the United Nations] He openly supported the Russian crushing of the Prague Spring uprising in 1968. [ [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1DE163FF931A1575AC0A961948260 "MAN IN THE NEWS; A German In Charge: Peter Florin"] , "New York Times", September 22, 1987]

In 1969, he was named Secretary of State and first deputy Foreign Minister. [ [http://www.un.org/french/ga/president/bios/bio42f.shtml Biography] on the website of the United Nations]

From 1973 to 1982, Florin was the German Democratic Republic's Permanent Representative to the United Nations. In 1982, he became president of the National Commission for UNESCO in East Germany. In 1987 and 1988, he presided over the forty-second session of the United Nations General Assembly. [ [http://www.un.org/french/ga/president/bios/bio42f.shtml Biography] on the website of the United Nations]

Florin speaks fluent German, Russian and English, and good French. During his presidency of the United Nations General Assembly, he was, according to the "New York Times", "nicknamed 'Comrade Glasnost' by delegates, who s [aw] him as a symbol of the modern Communist of the Gorbachev era". [ [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1DE163FF931A1575AC0A961948260 "MAN IN THE NEWS; A German In Charge: Peter Florin"] , "New York Times", September 22, 1987]

Personal life

Peter Florin is married, and has three children. [ [http://www.un.org/french/ga/president/bios/bio42f.shtml Biography] on the website of the United Nations] His wife Edel was, in the late 1980s, a professor of Russian literature at Humboldt University in East Berlin. [ [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1DE163FF931A1575AC0A961948260 "MAN IN THE NEWS; A German In Charge: Peter Florin"] , "New York Times", September 22, 1987]

External link

* [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1309/is_/ai_6271989?tag=untagged "Forty-second General Assembly opens in hopeful atmosphere of increasing multilateral co-operation"] , "UN Chronicle", November 1987

References