1. Wilhelm Pieck co-founded the Spartacus League and the KPD, rising to become chairman of the latter organization following the imprisonment of Ernst Thalmann and John Schehr by the Nazis.
16 Facts About Wilhelm Pieck
1. 2.
Wilhelm Pieck became the chairman of the party urban district in 1899, and in 1906 became full-time secretary of the SPD.
3.
Wilhelm Pieck served in the Landtag of Prussia from 1921 to 1928 and again from 1932 to 1933, the Reichstag from 1928 to 1933, the Berlin City Council from 1929 to 1933, and the Prussian State Council from 1930 to 1932.
4.
On 4 March 1933, one day before the Reichstag election, Wilhelm Pieck's family left their Steglitz apartment and moved into a cook's room.
5.
In Moscow, Wilhelm Pieck served the Communist Party in a variety of capacities.
6.
In 1943 Wilhelm Pieck was among the founders of the National Committee for a Free Germany, an anti-Nazi organisation created by the Soviets aimed at Germans.
7.
Wilhelm Pieck was elected as the merged party's co-chairman, alongside former SPD leader Otto Grotewohl.
8.
Wilhelm Pieck's 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.
9.
Wilhelm Pieck served as East Germany's first president until his death in 1960.
10.
Nominally, for the GDR's first year, Wilhelm Pieck was the number-two man in the government behind Grotewohl, who became the new country's first prime minister.
11.
Wilhelm Pieck lost the co-chairmanship of the ruling SED in 1950, when Walter Ulbricht became the party's first secretary as the party restructured along more orthodox Soviet lines.
12.
Wilhelm Pieck was already 73 years old at the time of his initial election as president.
13.
Wilhelm Pieck nominally held the second highest state post in the GDR and served as SED co-chairman for the first four years of the party's existence.
14.
Wilhelm Pieck was a member of the SED's Politburo, the highest authority in the party.
15.
Wilhelm Pieck was honoured with a state funeral, cremated and buried at the Memorial to the Socialists in the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery, Berlin.
16.
Wilhelm Pieck was married to Christine Hafker, a garments worker whom he met in a large dance hall in Bremen.