43 Facts About Franz Dahlem

Franz Dahlem was a German communist politician who was a leading official of the Socialist Unity Party.

Franz Dahlem went into exile in France during the Nazi period and continued KPD activities until the end of the Second World War.

Franz Dahlem became well-known and popular in the SED leadership by the early 1950s and was seen by some as a possible rival to Walter Ulbricht.

Franz Dahlem was one of several high-ranking SED officials to be removed from power by Ulbricht after the Uprising of 1953.

Franz Dahlem was formally rehabilitated by the SED in 1956, serving on the Central Committee from 1957 until his retirement in 1974.

Franz Dahlem's father, Jacques Pierre Dahlem, was a railway worker.

Franz Dahlem was a member of the Catholic Youth League at Sarreguemines between 1908 and 1911.

Franz Dahlem undertook a traineeship as an export salesman in Saarbrucken between 1911 and 1913.

In 1919, Franz Dahlem married Kathe Weber, who shared in his political beliefs and activism.

Franz Dahlem co-founded and became the editor of Sozialistische Republik, a USPD newspaper in which he powerfully advocated the party's membership of the Comintern and a party merger with the new Communist Party of Germany.

Franz Dahlem served, between 1919 and 1923, as a Cologne city councillor.

In December 1920, Franz Dahlem took part in the "unification party conference" at which the radical "left wing" of the USPD merged with the KPD to form what was briefly known as the Unified German Communist Party.

Franz Dahlem briefly represented Middle Rhine nationally on the party Central Committee.

Franz Dahlem was particularly effective in the application of "Leninist principles" to party organisation.

Franz Dahlem participated in the legislative processes of Weimar Germany, sitting as a member in the Landtag of Prussia between 1921 and 1924, and as a member of the Reichstag, representing the Potsdam electoral district, between 1928 and 1933.

One reason Franz Dahlem was sent to Berlin in 1921 to edit the Internationalen Presse-Korrespondenz was to enforce his separation from Central Committee members in his Rhineland home patch at a time when he was opposing the party leadership.

Franz Dahlem was closely aligned with the strategy of the KPD leader Ernst Thalmann during a further period of internal fragmentation at the end of the 1920s.

In November 1930, Thalmann suggested that Franz Dahlem take over the leadership of the Revolutionary Trades Union Opposition.

Franz Dahlem retained this function till he was replaced by Fritz Schulte in June 1932.

Franz Dahlem was one of approximately 40 party leaders who attended the eleventh party conference on 7 February 1933 at the Sporthaus Ziegenhals, a restaurant in the countryside just outside Berlin to the south.

In May 1933, under instructions from the party leadership, Franz Dahlem himself fled to Paris with Wilhelm Pieck und Wilhelm Florin, which quickly became the de facto headquarters of the KPD.

Franz Dahlem was back in Berlin between February and July 1934, undertaking "political work".

Between 1936 and 1938, Franz Dahlem was in charge of the Central Political Commission of the International Brigades in Spain.

Franz Dahlem took the lead in preparing for and running the German Communist Berner conference in Paris, which took place in February 1939.

Franz Dahlem was one of thousands who were arrested, and he was placed in the concentration camp at Camp Vernet in the southwest of the country.

Franz Dahlem immediately communicated to French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier, offering the services of the KPD to the French Army and calling for close cooperation against the Nazis, but the offer was countermanded by the Comintern in Moscow.

Franz Dahlem was not one of those freed in this break-out and the Gestapo ordered the Vichy government to hand him over immediately.

Franz Dahlem was transferred to Berlin in August 1942, and spent the next eight months in the Gestapo headquarters bunker there.

On 7 May 1945, the day before German surrender, Franz Dahlem was liberated from Mauthausen the Red army and taken to Moscow.

Franz Dahlem played a key role in establishing the German Democratic Republic, a Soviet-backed state with its political, economic and social institutions modeled on those of the Soviet Union itself.

Franz Dahlem played a leading role in the creation of the SED and the National Front, the notorious "single-list" voting system, had predetermined fixed quotas of seats in the Volkskammer occupied by approved representatives of their parties.

Franz Dahlem served as a member of the SED Party Executive and its powerful Central Committee between 1946 and 1953.

Franz Dahlem was leader of the party's "West Commission"; it is believed in some quarters that the Soviets had originally intended to impose the political structure created in the Soviet occupation zone across the three Western occupation zones.

Franz Dahlem's work gave him an extensive network of contacts within the party, and his widespread popularity led to talk of a rivalry with Ulbricht, the leader of the GDR as General Secretary of the SED.

In 1950, Franz Dahlem had already attracted the attention of the Central Party Control Commission in the context of the Paul Merker affair.

In December 1952, Franz Dahlem received a powerful rebuke from the party for kaderpolitischer Fehler, a term loosely meaning "cadre political errors".

Franz Dahlem refused to co-operate in a process of self-criticism, and accordingly the ZPKK dug back into his past in some detail.

Hermann Matern, the head of the commission, was critical above all of the attitude Franz Dahlem had displayed in Paris back in 1939, which seems to be a reference to his offer to the French government of military support on behalf of the German communists in French exile.

Franz Dahlem's wife spoke up in his defence, in June 1953 accusing Matern of lying.

Franz Dahlem was given a junior post in the department for higher education, and a couple of years later he was promoted to the rank of a junior minister in the department.

The stark inferiority of the parliament was in some respects obscured because senior members of the Central Committee, including Franz Dahlem, sat as members of the Volkskammer.

Franz Dahlem formally handed in his mandate on 3 February 1954.

Franz Dahlem returned to the Volkskammer in 1963 and remained a member of it until 1976.