Anton Ackermann

Anton Ackermann
Anton Ackermann in Berlin (1946)
Minister of Foreign Affairs of the German Democratic Republic
In office 15 January 1953 – July 1953
Preceded by	Georg Dertinger
Succeeded by	Lothar Bolz
Personal details
Born	Eugen Hanisch 25 November 1905 Thalheim, Saxony, Germany
Died	4 May 1973 (1973-05-05) (aged 67) East Berlin, GDR (East Germany)
Political party	KPD SED
Spouse(s)	Elli Schmidt (1908–1980) (married 1932–1949) Irmgard Kuske (married 1949–)
Children	2
Occupation	Politician

Anton Ackermann (born Eugen Hanisch, 25 November 1905 – 4 May 1973) was an East German politician. In 1953, he briefly served as Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Life and career

He was born into the family of a weaver and worked as an unskilled labourer from a young age while pursuing his elementary studies. At the same time, he began his political career in the Free Socialist Youth (FSJ) of the Social Democratic Party.

From 1920 to 1928, he worked as functionary of the Communist Youth League of Germany. In 1926 he joined the Communist Party of Germany. He studied at the Lenin School in Moscow. Back in Germany, the Communist Party was expelled after the Nazis gained power in 1933. Ackermann continued working for the illegal Communist Party.

From 1935 to 1937 he lived in Prague. During the Spanish Civil War, Ackermann was the leader of the Political School of the International Brigades. After staying a short while, he went to Moscow and became editor of the German language newspaper "The Free Word".

In 1943 he became an active member of the Moscow-based National Committee for a Free Germany (NKFD).

After World War II, at the end of April 1945, he returned to Saxony as head of the Ackermann Group, one of the three teams, each of ten men, flown in by the Communist Party from Moscow to different parts of the Soviet occupation zone to lay the groundwork for the Soviet Military Administration in Germany. He joined the newly reformed East German Communist party, the Socialist Unity Party (SED) in 1946. He was elected into the Central Committee and became a candidate member of the Politburo in 1949. From 1950 to 1954, he was a member of the People's Chamber.

Ackermann suggested that because the new state created out of the Soviet occupation would be a "progressive state" constituted from anti-fascist principles, it would not be a hindrance to the eventual progression towards socialism and therefore Germany could have a peaceful, reformist transition towards socialism. Though this was in line with a general rightward turn in the official communist parties following the Second World War, it would eventually be repudiated amidst the Soviet-Yugoslav split.

From 1949 to 1953, he was the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. After the arrest of the minister, Georg Dertinger, Ackermann succeeded him, briefly, as Minister of Foreign Affairs.

In 1953–1954, he was expelled from the Politburo and Central Committee and fired as minister because of his factional opposition to party leader Walter Ulbricht.

In 1956 he was rehabilitated and worked for the State Planning Bureau.

In 1970 he was rewarded with the Honor Clasp of the Patriotic Order of Merit. Ill with cancer, he committed suicide in 1973.

See also

• Wilhelm Zaisser
• Heinrich Rau

Further reading

• Buse, Dieter K. and Doerr, Juergen C., eds. Modern Germany: An Encyclopedia of History, People, and Culture, 1871–1990 (2 vol. Garland Pub., 1998) pp 6–7.