- Ernst Wollweber
Ernst Friedrich Wollweber (
October 29 ,1898 -May 3 ,1967 ) was Minister ofEast Germany ’sStasi from 1953 to 1957.Biography
Born in
Hanover in 1898, "Fritz Karl Wollweber" (later known as "Ernst") joined theKaiserliche Marine at a young age and served in the submarine department duringWorld War I . In November 1918, Wollweber participated in a sailor rebellion in Kiel and, following the end of theGerman Revolution , joined theCommunist Party of Germany in 1919. Wollweber rose quickly through the party structure, and by 1921 was a member of theKPD ’sCentral Committee and Political Secretary ofHesse -Waldeck . Two years later, Wollweber became a leader of the militant wings of the KPD in Hesse-Waldeck,Thuringia , andSilesia . Wollweber’s activities led to his arrest in 1924, after which time he was charged with high treason. Wollweber was released in 1926, and in 1928 he was elected a representative of the Prussian Federal State Parliament, a position he held until 1932. In 1929, he was elected to the Federal State Parliament ofLower Silesia and from 1932 to 1933 was a representative of the Reichstag. In 1931 was he elected to the leadership of the International Union of Seamen and Harbour Workers (ISH). When the KPD was actively persecuted by theNazis after theReichstag Fire of February 1933, Wollweber was forced to flee toCopenhagen and later to Leningrad. From 1936 to 1940, Wollweber organized the "Organisation against fascism and in support of the USSR", which has been known as theWollweber League , that conducted 21 known acts ofsabotage against the ships offascist nations, from Scandinavian and other northern European ports. In 1937, Wollweber was a weapons provider for the Republican forces ofSpain during theSpanish Civil War . A worldwide fugitive, Wollweber was finally apprehended inSweden in 1940, where he nearly faced deportation toGermany . Instead, he was sentenced to three years of imprisonment. As he had received Soviet citizenship, the Swedish Government in 1944 finally gave in toSoviet pressure and let him go to theUSSR .After
World War II , Wollweber returned to Germany and joined theSocialist Unity Party of Germany in 1946. A year later, he became leader of the central management for shipping and in 1950, Undersecretary of State for the Ministry of Traffic in East Germany. Around this time, it was rumored in the west that he had established a new Wollweber Organization for the USSR, which should be teaching Communist agents in nations inEastern Europe and along theNorth Sea the art of sabotage. However, this rumours bears no evidence in the scientific research on the topic. In June of 1953, Wollweber was made Undersecretary of State for the Shipping Office, but a month later he became Minister of State Security (theStasi ) afterWilhelm Zaisser was removed from the post. Wollweber tried to improve the Stasi’s domestic powers in the search of what he saw as western intelligence infiltration in GDR, but this brought him into conflict with the mainstream in the SED party leadership, in particularly withWalter Ulbricht andErich Honecker . In 1954, Wollweber became a delegate to theVolkskammer and a member of the SED’s Central Committee, but in 1956 his influence began to wane when he clashed withWalter Ulbricht andErich Honecker on issues ranging fromEast Germany ’s policies towards Poland to the estimate of the amount of anti-Communist groups within the GDR. In addition to this, a new opposition group formed within the SED Politburo which opposed to Ulbricht's policies, and was led by Politburo memberKarl Schirdewan . Wollweber had taken Schirdewan's side. In 1957, Wollweber was forced to resign as head of the Stasi and was succeeded by his deputy,Erich Mielke . In 1958, Wollweber was accused of anti-SED Parliamentary activity and removed from the Central Committee. Shortly thereafter, Wollweber resigned from the Volkskammer and lived in obscurity inEast Berlin until his death in 1967.Further reading
*Cookridge, E.H. "Gehlen: Spy of the Century". New York: Random House, 1972. ISBN 0-394-47313-2
* Flocken, Jan von and Scholz, Michael F. Ernst Wollweber. Saboteur - Minister - Unperson, Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag 1994. ISBN 3-351-0219-3
*Lee, Martin A. "The Beast Reawakens". New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1997. ISBN 0-316-51959-6
*Payne, Ronald and Dobson, Christopher. "Who's Who in Espionage". New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984. ISBN 0-312-87432-4
*Whitney, Craig R. "Spy Trader". New York: Times Books - Random House, 1994. ISBN 0-8129-2461-4
*Wolf, Markus. "Man Without a Face: The Autobiography of Communism's Greatest Spymaster". New York: Times Books - Random House, 1997. ISBN 0-8129-6394-6ee also
*
Stasi
*Wilhelm Zaisser
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