Franz Dahlem

Franz Dahlem (14 January 1892 – 17 December 1981) was a German communist politician who was a leading official of the Socialist Unity Party (SED). Dahlem helped establish the SED and German Democratic Republic, and held senior positions in the Volkskammer and SED Central Committee.

Dahlem participated in the German revolution of 1918-19 and joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) during the Weimar Republic, serving as a KPD member in the Landtag of Prussia from 1921 to 1924 and the Reichstag from 1928 to 1933. Dahlem went into exile in France during the Nazi period and continued KPD activities until the end of the Second World War. 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. His father, Jacques Pierre Dahlem, was a railway worker.

Weimar Republic

Following the war, Dahlem was involved in the German Revolution of 1918–19 and joined the workers' and soldiers' councils, initially in Allenstein in East Prussia, and subsequently in Cologne, participating in support of implementation of the slogan "All power to the councils" ("Alle Macht den Räten!"). He also briefly represented Middle Rhine nationally on the party Central Committee. In 1921, he was forced to surrender editorship of the Sozialistische Republik following his opposition to the March Action, He retained this function until he was replaced by Fritz Schulte in June 1932; Dahlem was one of approximately 40 party leaders who attended the on 7 February 1933 at the , a restaurant in the countryside just outside Berlin to the south. The meeting later achieved iconic status as the last meeting of the KPD until after 1945, and in 1953 the restaurant itself had been taken over and converted into a memorial centre. By that time many of those who had met in February 1933 had been killed or died in concentration camps.

In May 1933, under instructions from the party leadership, Dahlem himself fled to Paris with Wilhelm Pieck und Wilhelm Florin, which quickly became the de facto headquarters of the KPD. In 1934, he had taken French citizenship, which he would retain until 1941.

In October 1941, he was one of approximately 20 German prisoners removed to a secret prison at Castres. by the SS and handed over to the Gestapo.

German Democratic Republic

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

Dahlem served as a member of the SED Party Executive and its powerful Central Committee between 1946 and 1953. In December 1952, Dahlem received a powerful rebuke from the party for kaderpolitischer Fehler, a term loosely meaning "cadre political errors". Dahlem refused to co-operate in a process of self-criticism, and accordingly the ZPKK dug back into his past in some detail.

Dahlem's return to grace began in 1955, though he was never again powerful enough to be seen as a threat to Ulbricht. He 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. His formal rehabilitation took place in July 1956. In January 1957, he was co-opted back into the Central Committee, and also became a member of the influential . Merker was also released and rehabilitated in 1957. From 1964, he was also president of the German-French Society of the GDR and a member of the executive committee of the Committee of Antifascist Resistance Fighters.

Later career Under the new 1968 Constitution of East Germany, power was resided unambiguously with the SED, and the Volksammer served as little more than a rubber stamp for the Central Committee. The stark inferiority of the parliament was in some respects obscured because senior members of the Central Committee, including Dahlem, also sat as members of the Volkskammer. He formally handed in his mandate on 3 February 1954. He returned to the Volkskammer in 1963 and remained a member of it until 1976.

Awards and honours (not necessarily the full list)

1956 Hans Beimler Medal 1962 1962 Order of Karl Marx 1964 Patriotic Order of Merit in gold 1965 Merit medal of the National People's Army 1967 Patriotic Order of Merit gold clasp 1970 Star of People's Friendship 1970 Honorary citizenship of Ivry-sur-Seine (jointly with his wife) 1972 Merit medal of the National People's Army 1977 Grand Star of People's Friendship