Ulbricht

Career

He was born on June 30, 1893, into a poor working-class family in Leipzig and trained as a cabinetmaker. He joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1912, moved to the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1919 after the First World War, and rose through its ranks. From 1928 he served as a member of the Reichstag, but the Nazi takeover in 1933 forced him into exile, and after Paris and elsewhere he settled in Moscow. The ties he built there with the Soviet leadership determined his position after the war.

In 1945, just before Germany's defeat, he entered Berlin at the head of the "Ulbricht Group", a party of exiled communists sent from Moscow, and set about rebuilding the administrative apparatus of the Soviet occupation zone. In 1946 the SPD and KPD in the Soviet zone merged to form the SED. When the German Democratic Republic was founded in October 1949 he became Deputy Prime Minister, and in 1950 he became General Secretary of the SED Central Committee (renamed First Secretary from 1953^※1), the party's highest leader. In September 1960, after the death of the first president, Wilhelm Pieck, the presidency was abolished, and he also took the newly created post of Chairman of the State Council (head of state), combining the top of party and state.

The Berlin Wall

Throughout the 1950s people kept leaving East Germany for West Germany and West Berlin. By the time the Wall was built, the citizens who had gone west are said to have numbered about 3 million, roughly one sixth of the population, and because many of them were young people and skilled workers, this caused a serious labor shortage and a blow to the regime's legitimacy.

At an international press conference on June 15, 1961, asked whether a border would be drawn at the Brandenburg Gate in connection with the proposal to make West Berlin a "free city", Ulbricht answered, "No one has the intention of building a wall (Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten)." Less than two months later, in the early hours of August 13 of the same year, construction of the barrier separating East and West Berlin began. The remark is still quoted again and again as a phrase symbolic of the Cold War.

Economic reform, policy toward West Germany, and fall

After Stalin's death in March 1953, a large uprising broke out in East Berlin on June 17 in protest at raised work quotas, and Ulbricht suppressed it with the help of the Soviet forces stationed there. This experience shaped his style of rule, and he went on consolidating power while removing opponents within the regime.

In 1963 he launched an economic reform called the "New Economic System" (NÖS/NÖSPL), which tried to raise efficiency by partially introducing indicators such as enterprise profitability and profit into central planning. In foreign policy, at the Warsaw Pact foreign ministers' meeting of 1967 he put forward the line that the socialist countries would not establish diplomatic relations with West Germany unless West Germany recognized East Germany's sovereignty (known in the West as the "Ulbricht Doctrine")^※2, confronting West Germany's Hallstein Doctrine head on.

The economic reform, however, did not produce the hoped-for results, and his hard line against the Ostpolitik pursued by West Germany's Brandt government fell out of step with the Soviet Union's policy of détente. In May 1971 Ulbricht stepped down as First Secretary "for reasons of health" and Erich Honecker succeeded him. In substance it is described as a removal carried out with Soviet consent^※3. After leaving office he retained the post of Chairman of the State Council and an honorary post of "Chairman of the SED" created for him alone, and he died on August 1, 1973, at the age of 80. He was given a state funeral.