32 Facts About Arthur Pieck

Arthur Pieck was a German politician, typesetter and translator.

Arthur Pieck was a committed political activist who became a stage and movie actor and, later, a Communist party official.

Arthur Pieck topped off his varied career, between 1955 and 1960, as a senior director - ultimately General Director - of Interflug, the East German national airline.

Arthur Pieck's parents had married early the previous year: his mother, born Christine Hafker, worked in the garment industry.

Arthur Pieck's father was an active left wing member of the SPD and a consummate networker, as a result of which Arthur, while still a boy, could come into contact with stars of the contemporary socialist movement without leaving the family home.

Arthur Pieck attended secondary school in Bremen and then, after the family relocated, in Berlin.

Arthur Pieck was a leader in the Young Socialists in the Steglitz quarter of Berlin in 1914 and then for Greater Berlin from 1915.

Arthur Pieck joined the antiwar Spartacus League in 1916 which was the year in which he joined the Independent Social Democratic Party, a breakaway party formed by SPD members who found the SPD's parliamentary acquiescence in respect of war funding unacceptable.

War ended in November 1918 and Pieck immediately crossed the border back into Germany where political, social and economic chaos prevailed.

Arthur Pieck became a print worker for the Spartacus League.

Arthur Pieck became involved in the revolutionary uprising in Berlin.

In March 1920 Arthur Pieck took on leadership of the party news and information service in Berlin-Steglitz.

Arthur Pieck was employed, between October 1921 and October 1932 by the permanent Soviet Trade Mission in Berlin, working first in the transport department and later in the agriculture department.

Arthur Pieck was a member of the presidium of this association till 1938 and head of its West European section from 1932.

Between 1932 and 1938 Arthur Pieck was a permanent member of the IRTB in Moscow.

Between December 1932 and February 1933, the months which covered the Nazi power seizure, Arthur Pieck was back in Berlin.

Piscator stayed in Paris, emigrating to the United States three years later, while Arthur Pieck appears quietly to have returned to Moscow.

Arthur Pieck died on 1 December 1936 at the Kremlin Clinic in Moscow.

Between May 1938 and June 1941 Arthur Pieck worked in the Moscow press office of the Comintern.

At the start of 1941, as the German government prepared to tear up their non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union and launch an invasion, Arthur Pieck's name was added to the Gestapo's "special USSR list" of people in the Soviet Union to be sought out and dealt with as a priority.

Arthur Pieck was formally demobilised on 16 May 1945, less than two weeks after the end of the war.

In November 1945 Arthur Pieck married Margarete "Grete" Lode, a friend from his IRTB days as an organiser of Agitprop stage shows whom he had known since 1929 or earlier.

In 1946 Arthur Pieck was formally acknowledged to have been a victim of fascism.

Arthur Pieck gained that position on 16 October 1949, just five days after his father was elected the first President of the new East Germany.

On 1 July 1955 Arthur Pieck, who had no experience of flying or of the airline business, was appointed "Hauptdirektor" of the national airline.

President Wilhelm Arthur Pieck faded away and then, in September 1960, died.

Arthur Pieck was close to his father both personally and in terms of his career: he was under no illusion that his career as a top airline executive would long outlive his father.

Arthur Pieck became a member of the East German delegation to the Standing Transport Commission of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance.

Arthur Pieck was a member of the Committee of Antifascist Resistance Fighters.

In May 1965 Arthur Pieck went into full retirement at his own wish.

Arthur Pieck died in Berlin slightly less than five years later.

Arthur Pieck was cremated and honoured with burial in the Pergolenweg Ehrengrab section of Berlin's Friedrichsfelde Cemetery.