Josef Ledwohn

Josef Ledwohn (24 October 1907 – 4 October 2003) was a prominent German trade unionist and Communist Party official who became an anti-Nazi resistance activist in 1933. He resurfaced in what became the British occupation zone after 1945 and was then, between 1946 and 1954, a leading member of the state parliament ("Landtag") in the newly reconfigured state of North Rhine-Westphalia. He was a leading exponent of German reunification, albeit under conditions to be determined by the East German ruling SED party and the residuum in the west of the old German Communist Party (which by this stage was widely perceived in West Germany as an ill-disguised proxy for Soviet imperialist ambitions).

Life Provenance and early years Josef Ledwohn was born in Rünthe, a mining village (subsequently subsumed into Unna district) a short distance outside Dortmund, to its east. His father worked as a miner. He grew up in the nearby town of Ahlen which is where between 1914 and 1922 he attended school. He joined the Young Socialist Workers in 1922 and more briefly, in 1926/27, the Social Democratic Party. He also became a member of the Young Communists in 1927, then joining the Communist Party in 1929. (and presumably a union member ). Sources refer to Ledwohn having become a Communist Party official in nearby Herne (Ruhr) during 1945, He also served at this time as a temporary deputy chair of the regional party executive ("Landesvorstand") for the wider region that would be relaunched, in 1946, as the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. That was the context through which Josef Ledwohn's repeated calls for German reunification during the late 1940s and early 1950s were seen in West Germany. At the end of 1946 the territories of Westphalia and the Rhine Province were merged to form the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Ledwohn's membership of the Provincial Council was carried across to the State Parliament (Landtag) of this new regional entity. He also, initially, retained leadership of the Communist Party parliamentary group. When the nominated assembly gave way to an elected state parliament Ledwohn again retained his seat, remaining a state parliamentarian. He lost his leadership of the parliamentary group in 1947 but remained influential as a member of the party's top team in and outside the state parliament at least until his arrest in 1954, which was followed by his exclusion from the assembly. Ledwohn was arrested in August 1954.

The more immediate trigger for Ledwohn's arrest was a cabinet meeting held on 12 May 1954 in Bonn. The ninth point on the agenda was headed "Programme for National Reunification" ("Programm der Nationalen Wiedervereinigung") and was introduced with a briefing from the Justice Minister who informed colleagues that the West German Supreme Court had recently determined that the Communist Party's Programme for National Reunification constituted preparation for high treason. The "Adenauer regime should be overthrown and a free, unified, independent, democratic and peace loving Germany" should be created. ("...Regime Adenauer gestürzt und auf den Trümmern dieses Regimes ein freies, einheitliches, unabhängiges, demokratisches und friedliebendes Deutschland geschaffen".) They all faced trial at the Supreme Court in Karlsruhe. Josef Ledwohn was sentenced on 17 July 1956 for "Preparing to commit High Treason" to three and a half years in prison. In setting conditions for his sentence his time in pre-trial detention was taken into account, and he was accordingly released on 4 December 1957. The West German court's writ did not run in East Germany, however, and between 1956 and 1968 Josef Ledwohn was a member of the Central Committee of the (West German) Communist Party, based in East Berlin (thereby in East Germany). He took work in East Berlin as a researcher and department head at the Marxism-Leninism Institute of the Party Central Committee. It was also in 1975 that he started to draw his pension.

Josef Ledwohn died a few days short of his ninety-sixth birthday in October 2003. In East Germany his record of commitment to the communist cause would normally have led to a place of honour for his mortal remains. with those of others honoured by The Party, at the Socialists' Memorial in the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery at Lichtenberg (Berlin). However, he had managed to outlive the German Democratic Republic by more than a decade. His ashes ended up in an anonymous shared location at the edge of the cemetery.

Awards and honours