Wilhelm Pieck

Weimar era

On 16 January 1919 Pieck, along with Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, was arrested in Berlin's Wilmersdorf district and taken to the Eden Hotel. Liebknecht and Luxemburg were then killed while "being taken to prison" by a unit of Freikorps. While the two were being murdered, Pieck claimed that he managed to escape. Due to lingering suspicions about Pieck's reported escape, KPD chairman Ernst Thälmann called Pieck before a party court chaired by Hans Kippenberger in 1929. The party court's decision was never published and Kippenberger was executed in Moscow after a secret trial in 1937. According to Waldemar Pabst (the officer who gave the order to kill Liebknecht and Luxemburg), Pieck did not actually escape, but was released in return for providing details about the military plans and hiding places of other KPD members.

During the Ruhr uprising, Pieck was sent by the KPD as a political advisor to the Ruhr Red Army. He was a founding member of the International Red Aid in 1922, serving first on its executive committee then as chairman from 1937 to 1941. In 1924 he became the first chairman of the Rote Hilfe, serving until Clara Zetkin succeeded him the next year. From February 1926 to November 1929 he served as political leader of the KPD's Berlin-Brandenberg district, but was removed from office and replaced by Walter Ulbricht for not supporting Ernst Thälmann during the Wittorf Affair.

Pieck held several elected offices in the Weimar Republic. He served in the Landtag of Prussia from 1921 to 1928 and again from 1932 to 1933 (leading the party in that body), the Reichstag from 1928 to 1933, the Berlin City Council from 1929 to 1933, and the Prussian State Council from 1930 to 1932.

Nazi years and Moscow exile

On 4 March 1933, one day before the Reichstag election, Pieck's family left their Steglitz apartment and moved into a cook's room. His son and younger daughter had been in the Soviet Union since 1932 while his eldest daughter Elly was still in Germany. At the beginning of May 1933, he left first to Paris and then to Moscow. In Moscow, Pieck served the Communist Party in a variety of capacities. From 1935 until 1943, he held the position of Secretary of the Communist International. In 1943 Pieck was among the founders of the National Committee for a Free Germany, an anti-Nazi organisation created by the Soviets aimed at Germans.

On 22 June 1941, Pieck and his family were in their country house on the outskirts of Moscow. Pieck came downstairs at six o'clock to his children's bedroom and said: "Children, get up, it was announced on the radio that war is over. Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, but that will be the end". In March 1942, the family was able to return home after the Soviet Armed Forces won the Battle of Moscow.

Soviet occupation zone

At the conclusion of the war in 1945 Pieck returned to Germany with the victorious Red Army. A year later, he helped engineer the merger of the eastern branches of the KPD and SPD into the Socialist Unity Party (SED). He was elected as the merged party's co-chairman, alongside former SPD leader Otto Grotewohl. His hand appeared alongside Grotewohl's on the SED's "handshake" logo, derived from the SPD-KPD congress establishing the party where he symbolically shook hands with Grotewohl.

President of East Germany

In October 1949, on the territory of the Soviet occupation zone the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, was formally established. Pieck was elected president of the new country. He served as East Germany's first (and last) president until his death in 1960.

Nominally, for the GDR's first year, Pieck was the number-two man in the government behind Grotewohl, who became the new country's first prime minister. In the East German political hierarchy, the prime minister was the top state official, while the president nominally ranked second.

He lost the co-chairmanship of the ruling SED (which he held with Grotewohl) in 1950, when Walter Ulbricht became the party's General Secretary as the party restructured along more orthodox Soviet lines. Nonetheless, he retained his other posts, including the presidency, due to Joseph Stalin's trust in him.

Last years

Pieck was already 73 years old at the time of his initial election as president. He nominally held the second highest state post in the GDR (behind Prime Minister Grotewohl) and served as SED co-chairman for the first four years of the party's existence. He was also a member of the SED's Politburo, the highest authority in the party. Despite this, he played a mostly minor role in the party, particularly after 1950.

On 13 July 1953, he suffered a second stroke. He also had progressive liver cirrhosis and existing ascites. A detailed medical report composed before the second stroke mentioned "mild paralysis on the right, a slight drooping of the corner of the mouth, breathing wheezing or snoring, slowed down pulse, tone of the limb musculature lowered ...".

In August 1960 he moved to a new summer residence, the converted former mansion of the Hermann Göring Leibförsters near "Carinhall".

In March 1956, due to health reasons Pieck was hardly able to fulfill all obligations as Head of State. He attended only a few events such as the Central Committee meeting in January 1957 and the opening of the 5th Party Congress of the SED in July 1958. The last months of his life spent Pieck in his country house in the Schorfheide, where he received the leadership of foreign delegations to the 10th anniversary of the GDR in October 1959.

Pieck died at Majakowskiring 29, Pankow, East Berlin. He was honoured with a state funeral, cremated and buried at the Memorial to the Socialists (German: Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten) in the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery, Berlin.

Personal life

He was married to Christine Häfker, a garments worker whom he met in a large dance hall in Bremen. At first, her parents did not want her to go out with a "red", but once she was pregnant, she was allowed to marry Wilhelm on 28 May 1898, on the condition that a traditional wedding in a church would still take place. On the wedding day Christine waited impatiently for Pieck to arrive at the church. At the last minute, he finally did, still carrying communist leaflets. In November 1936, his wife contracted pneumonia for the third time, dying on 1 December of the same year.

The Piecks' daughter, Elly Winter (1898–1987), held various posts in the SED and East German government. Their son Arthur Pieck (1899–1970) served as head of the East German national airline Interflug from 1955 to 1965, after having held various administrative posts in East Germany, for instance at the German Economic Commission. The youngest child, Eleonore Staimer (1906–1998), worked as a party official and, for a time, as a diplomat.

Honours and awards

National honours

• Hero of Labour (1951)
• Order of Karl Marx (1953)
• Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold (1954)
• Banner of Labour (1960)

Foreign honours

• Grand Cross of the Order of the White Lion (1956)

Photo gallery