58 Facts About Walter Ulbricht

Walter Ernst Paul Ulbricht was a German communist politician.

Walter Ulbricht began his political life during the German Empire, when he joined first the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1912, the anti-World War I Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1917 and deserted the Imperial German Army in 1918.

Walter Ulbricht joined the Communist Party of Germany in 1920 and became a leading party functionary, serving in its Central Committee from 1923 onward.

Walter Ulbricht played a key role in the forcible merger of the KPD and SPD into the Socialist Unity Party of Germany in 1946.

Walter Ulbricht became the First Secretary of the SED and effective leader of the recently established East Germany in 1950.

The Soviet Army occupation force violently suppressed the uprising of 1953 in East Germany on 17 June 1953, while Walter Ulbricht hid in the Soviet Army headquarters in Berlin-Karlshorst.

Walter Ulbricht presided over the total suppression of civil and political rights in the East German state, which functioned as a communist-ruled dictatorship from its founding in 1949 onward.

The nationalization of East German industry under Walter Ulbricht failed to raise the standard of living to a level comparable to that of West Germany.

When Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev gave permission for a wall to stop the outflow in Berlin, Walter Ulbricht had the Berlin Wall built in 1961, which triggered a diplomatic crisis but succeeded in curtailing emigration.

Walter Ulbricht was born in 1893 in Leipzig, Saxony, to Pauline Ida and Ernst August Walter Ulbricht, an impoverished tailor.

Walter Ulbricht spent eight years in primary school and this constituted all of his formal education since he left school to train as a joiner.

The young Walter Ulbricht first learned about radical socialism at home then in Leipzig's Naundorfchen workers' district.

Walter Ulbricht served in the Imperial German Army during World War I from 1915 to 1917 in Galicia, on the Eastern Front, and in the Balkans.

Walter Ulbricht deserted the Army in 1918, as he had opposed the war from the beginning.

Walter Ulbricht rose fast in the ranks of the KPD, becoming a member of the Central Committee in 1923.

Walter Ulbricht was an adherent of the Lenin model, which favored a highly centralized party.

Walter Ulbricht came home in 1926 and went on to assist the newly appointed party chief Ernst Thalmann.

Walter Ulbricht became a Member of the Reichstag for South Westphalia from 1928 to 1933 and served as KPD chairman in Berlin and Brandenburg from 1929.

Walter Ulbricht quickly became a KPD functionary and this was attributed to the Bolshevization of the party.

At an event arranged by the Nazi Party on 22 January 1931, Walter Ulbricht was allowed by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Party's Gauleiter of Berlin and Brandenburg, to give a speech.

On 2 August 1931, KPD Members of the Reichstag Heinz Neumann and Hans Kippenberger received a dressing down from Walter Ulbricht, who was the Party's leader in the Berlin-Brandenburg region.

Walter Ulbricht's precinct included the area around KPD headquarters, which made it the most dangerous in the city.

Walter Ulbricht lived in exile in Paris and Prague from 1933 to 1937.

Walter Ulbricht tried to persuade the KPD founder Willi Munzenberg to go to the Soviet Union, allegedly so that Walter Ulbricht could have "them take care of him".

Walter Ulbricht would have been in jeopardy of arrest and purge by the NKVD, a prospect in both Munzenberg's and Ulbricht's minds.

Walter Ulbricht spent some time in Spain during the Civil War, as a Comintern representative, ensuring the murder of Germans serving on the Republican side who were regarded as not sufficiently loyal to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin; some were sent to Moscow for trial, others were executed on the spot.

Walter Ulbricht lived in the Soviet Union from 1937 to 1945, leaving from Hotel Lux to return to Germany on 30 April 1945.

Walter Ulbricht was accused of building a cult of personality around himself, with an elaborate jubilee planned for his 60th birthday on 30 June 1953, which Walter Ulbricht later cancelled.

Walter Ulbricht was summoned to Moscow in July 1953, where he received the Kremlin's full endorsement as leader of East Germany.

Walter Ulbricht returned to Berlin and he took the lead in calling in Soviet troops to suppress the widespread unrest with full backing from Moscow and its large army stationed inside the GDR.

Walter Ulbricht managed to rise to power despite having a peculiarly squeaky falsetto voice, the result of a bout of diphtheria in his youth.

At the third congress of the SED in 1950, Walter Ulbricht announced a five-year plan concentrating on the doubling of industrial production.

Walter Ulbricht uncritically followed the orthodox Stalinist model of industrialization: concentration on the development of heavy industry.

In 1957, Walter Ulbricht arranged a visit to an East German collective farm at Trinwillershagen in order to demonstrate the GDR's modern agricultural industry to the visiting Soviet Politburo member Anastas Mikoyan.

Walter Ulbricht was named its chairman, a post equivalent to that of president.

Walter Ulbricht's power consolidated, Ulbricht suppressed critics such as Karl Schirdewan, Ernst Wollweber, Fritz Selbmann, Fred Oelssner, Gerhart Ziller and others from 1957 onward, designated them as "factionalists" and eliminated them politically.

When Khrushchev approved the building of a wall as a means to resolve this situation, Walter Ulbricht threw himself into the project with abandon.

On 13 August 1961, work began on what was to become the Berlin Wall, only two months after Walter Ulbricht had emphatically denied that there were such plans, thereby mentioning the word "wall" for the very first time.

Walter Ulbricht deployed GDR soldiers and police to seal the border with West Berlin overnight.

Walter Ulbricht dispersed 40,000 East German soldiers across the country to suppress any potential protests.

One of Walter Ulbricht's principles was the "scientific" execution of politics and economy: making use of sociology and psychology but most of all the natural sciences.

Also, Walter Ulbricht's motivations were at odds with communist theory, which did not suit ideological hardliners within the Party.

Walter Ulbricht attempted to shield the GDR from the cultural and social influences of the western world, particularly the youth culture.

Walter Ulbricht intended to create the most comprehensive youth culture of the GDR, which should be largely independent of western influences.

Walter Ulbricht declared at economic conferences that post-war times when East Germany had to offer other socialist countries free patents, were over once and for all and everything actually had to be paid for.

Walter Ulbricht began to believe that he had achieved something special, like Lenin and Stalin had.

On 3 May 1971 Walter Ulbricht was forced to resign from virtually all of his public functions "due to reasons of poor health" and was replaced, with the consent of the Soviets, by Erich Honecker.

Walter Ulbricht was allowed to remain as Chairman of the State Council, the effective head of state, and held on to this post for the rest of his life.

Walter Ulbricht was honoured with a state funeral, cremated and buried at the Memorial to the Socialists in the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery, Berlin.

Walter Ulbricht's images were hung in schools, residencies, and industrial facilities.

Walter Ulbricht was awarded all civil medals of East Germany, in addition to several Soviet honours.

Walter Ulbricht remained loyal to Marxist-Leninist principles throughout his life, rarely able or willing to make doctrinal compromises.

German historian Jurgen Kocka in 2010 summarized the consensus of scholars about the state that Walter Ulbricht headed for its first two decades:.

Walter Ulbricht married twice: in 1920 to Martha Schmellinsky and from 1953 until his death to Lotte Ulbricht nee Kuhn.

Walter Ulbricht was born in 1944 to a Ukrainian forced laborer in Leipzig.

In 1956, Walter Ulbricht was awarded the Hans Beimler Medal, for veterans of the Spanish Civil War, which caused controversy among other recipients, who had actually served on the front line.

Walter Ulbricht was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union on 29 June 1963.

On visiting Egypt in 1965, Walter Ulbricht was awarded the Great Collar of the Order of the Nile by Nasser.