Ackermann, Anton

Anton Akkerman was born in the family of a working hosiery factory, at the end of the public school he also worked in the factory and took an active part in the work of the Free German Youth Union, and in 1920-1928 he worked in the German Communist Youth Union . In 1926, Akkerman joined the KKE .

In 1929-1931, Akkerman studied at the International Lenin School in Moscow, until 1933 he was a graduate student. Subsequently, he worked in the German department of the Communist International. He was a personal employee of Fritz Heckert and Wilhelm Pick . Here he met Elly Schmidt , with whom he was married before the divorce in 1949.

After the national socialists came to power, Ackermann in 1933-1935 was in illegal party work in Berlin, worked as secretary to Jon Sher . In 1935 he emigrated to Prague , where he remained until 1937. Took part in the Brussels KKE Conference in October 1935. In the Spanish Civil War, in 1937, Akkerman supervised the political school of the international brigades in Benicassim . After spending some time in Paris, Akkerman arrived in Moscow in 1940, where he worked as an editor for the newspaper Das freie Wort . In 1941, Ackermann led propaganda work among German prisoners of war and co-founded the Free Germany National Committee. In the years 1941-1945, Ackermann led the radio station "Free Germany". In 1945 he was awarded the Order of the Red Star .

In May 1945, Anton Ackermann, with the permission of the Soviet military administration in Germany, arrived with Walter Ulbricht , Wilhelm Pieck and Franz Dahlem in Berlin, where he participated in the re-creation of the KPD in the Soviet zone of occupation of Germany . He led the CNG initiative group in Saxony and later wrote several policy documents for the CNG and the SED. Thus, Akkerman was the author of the draft and signatory to the KKE’s appeal of June 11, 1945. In his work published in the spring of 1946, "Is there a special German path to socialism?" Akkerman supported the thesis about the possibility of building socialism in Germany without a previous period of the dictatorship of the proletariat . Akkerman played an important role in the process of uniting the two workers' parties of the KPD and the SPD in the SED in the spring of 1946 and formulated the “Basic Principles and Objectives of the SED” together with the Social Democrats. At the XV Congress of the KKE, held April 19-20, 1946 and immediately preceding the merger of parties, Akkerman criticized the ideological struggle of the KKE in the period after 1933, mentioning some of the fatal mistakes of the communists in relation to national socialism .

At the unification congress in April 1946, Akkerman was elected to the party's board and the Central Secretariat of the SED, in the same year he became a deputy to the parliament of Saxony . After the deterioration of relations between Yugoslavia and the USSR in 1948, Akkerman was forced to abandon his thesis about a special German road to socialism.

In 1949, Akkerman was elected a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED. In 1950-1954 he was a deputy of the People's Chamber of the GDR , and in 1949-1953 he served as State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the GDR and at the same time headed the Institute of Scientific Research. In 1951-1952, the first head of the newly created Main Directorate of Foreign Intelligence (H. Plasma) of the Ministry of State Security of the GDR .

In the spring of 1953, he replaced Georg Dertinger as Minister of Foreign Affairs of the GDR . In September 1953, he was removed from all posts for supporting Wilhelm Zeisser , in 1954 he was expelled from the Central Committee of the SED. Rehabilitated in 1956.

Anton Ackermann worked in the group of Minister Paul Wandel and was mainly engaged in preparatory work for the formation of the Ministry of Culture. In 1954-1958, Akkerman headed the main film department at the Ministry of Culture, then from 1958 he headed the department, and from 1960 until dismissal in 1961, he was deputy chairman of the State Planning Commission for Culture and Education.

In May 1973, Akkerman, who was seriously ill with cancer, committed suicide. The urn with its ashes rests in the Socialist Memorial at the Friedrichsfeld Central Cemetery in Lichtenberg, Berlin.

• Biography (German)