Walter Beling

Walter Beling (19 May 1899 – 31 May 1988) was a German political activist and party official (KPD) who became a resistance activist during the Hitler years. He was released from prison, possibly due to an administrative error, in 1936 and fled the country. He spent much of his time during the war in the so-called "free zone" of occupied France. He returned to occupied Germany in November 1945 and took over as editor-in-chief at the Berliner Rundfunk (radio station). A succession of senior political appointments followed till 1950 when, like many senior party officials at around the same time, he abruptly fell from favour. He was grudgingly more or less rehabilitated in 1956, and at one point transferred to the Foreign Ministry: he undertook a diplomatic posting in Geneva between 1959 and 1965 as East Germany's permanent representative to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe.

Life Provenance and early years Walter Beling was born in Berlin, the son of a tailor. His mother is described simply as a "home worker". The Kiel mutiny which broke out at the start of November 1918 in response to what was seen as a desperate and suicidal set of orders from the German admirals is widely viewed as a final trigger point which unleashed twelve months of riots and insurrections across Germany – especially in the naval ports and industrial heartlands - which came to be known as Germany's November revolution. Beling was stationed in Kiel at the time, and took part in the insurrection, although surviving details of his personal involvement are vague. Walter Beling was arrested in Berlin on 20 July 1933 and badly tortured.

Exile Beling spent the first part of his sentence in Berlin's Plötzensee Prison. Later he was moved to the prison at nearby Luckau. In January 1936 he was unconditionally released. The reason for his early release is unclear. According to one source his release was not notified to the security services, due to a "technical oversight".

Toulouse was already becoming a focus for German communist exiles who had escaped from camps in southern France, or simply made their way south when the German army invaded France from the north in May 1940. Links were established to French communists who were becoming a leading element in the Résistance movement against the German military occupation in the north and the Pétain puppet government in the south. His party role at this time is variously described: according to at least one source he was the German party leader for the Toulouse region, identified by comrades under the party pseudonyms of "Claude" or "Clément". In September 1940 Beling came to an agreement with Maurice Tréand (who was representing the Central Committee of the French Communist Party in their discussions together) which led to the establishment of the so-called Travail allemand (literally, "German work") sub-section inside the French Résistance organisation. This provided important underpinning for closer collaboration between German communists operating "underground" in occupied France and Résistance comrades, reducing the mutual suspicion which was inherent in the situation. The Résistance was able to provide extensive "infrastructure support", including provision of counterfeit identity documents whereby German communists having acquired the necessary language skills could blend into the surrounding francophone population. Résistance comrades were also often able to arrange hiding places as the German occupation became more oppressive and, especially after 1942, German security service personnel were frequently to be encountered on French streets, even in the so-called "free zone".

Although sources are largely silent about Beling's resistance activity in France, reports survive of his involvement in attempts to free Franz Dahlem, a senior German Communist politician both before and after the twelve Hitler years. During the first part of 1941 the Résistance organised a mass break-out from the camp at Le Vernet, when Dahlem was being held, but for some reason Dahlem was not among those who managed to escape, and the German officials, evidently fully aware of Dahlem's political importance ordered the French puppet government to hand him over immediately. In the event, apparently very much against the odds, Dahlem survived a succession of Gestapo interrogations and subsequent internment in camps in Germany, but the attempts to secure his freedom in which Beling was involved must nevertheless be counted a failure, and on 12 December 1941 it was Walter Beling who was spotted in Marseille and (again) arrested: he was sentenced to a six month prison term. It is hard to determine the extent to which Beling and Field ever worked together. What is clear, however, is that in the spirit of Cold War mistrust that came about after 1945, and which could border on paranoia, Walter Beling's involvement with Noel Field would cost him very dearly.

As the war entered its final phase, during 1943–44 Beling was a member of the "Comité Allemagne libre pour l’Ouest", a western version of the National Committee for a Free Germany that had grown up among German prisoners of war with the backing of the Soviet authorities in the (very much larger) prison camps of the Soviet Union.

Soviet occupation zone War ended in May 1945, leaving the western two-thirds of Germany divided into four military occupation zones. Walter Beling returned to Berlin in November 1945, making his home in the part of the city that had become part of the Soviet occupation zone (to be relaunched in October 1949 as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic / East Germany). Almost immediately he accepted an appointment as editor in chief of Berliner Rundfunk, a radio station which despite initially having its studios physically located in a district of Berlin administered by the British Military, had been established by the Soviet Military Administration and operated under the direction of the Soviet military authorities. He held his post in charge of the radio station through much of 1946. The premise of Field's trial, which opened in September 1949, was that during the war he had, with his agents, worked to undermine the development of indigenous resistance, in order to strengthen Western influence and create a divided postwar Germany. Noel Field was "one of the leaders of American espionage," who "specialized in recruiting spies from among left-wing elements." Field was badly and repeatedly tortured and held in solitary confinement for the next five years. For the party leadership in East Germany, under intensifying pressure from popular discontent and a faltering economy, the Field affair provided an opportunity to remove from positions of influence a large number of party officials who were suspected of quietly harbouring their own ideas about the future of socialism. The party leadership in East Berlin consisted largely of men who had spent the war years in Moscow, planning in considerable detail a Soviet-style "socialist" future for Germany. At the end of April 1945 a tight-knit group of 30 men had arrived from Moscow and intensively set about their nation-building project. After the events of 1948 it became apparent that they would need to abandon dreams of imposing their blueprint across all four occupation zones, but the implementation of their plan continued to unfold, fully backed by military administration, in the Soviet zone. Leadership paranoia extended to an intensifying fear that comrades who had spent the war years not in Moscow but in "the west" might not be true believers in "the plan". A wave of arrests began in 1950. The most high-profile victim among the senior party officials caught up in the political purge was Paul Merker. An intriguingly high proportion of the purge victims were men who had spent the war years in France. Walter Beling was an energetic senior party official who had spent the war years in France. During that period he had been in contact with Noel Field. In August 1950 he was stripped of his entire portfolio of party functions "on account of his links in exile with Noel H. Field". The shock of the experience was so great that Beling was judged medically unfit for work till November 1951.

Beyond politics Between 1951 and 1955 Beling worked at "VEB Kranbau Eberswalde", a crane manufacturing enterprise where he worked initially as a "Normensachbearbeiter", concerned with conformity and quality of production. He subsequently became deputy head and then head of the business organisation department and later "kommissarischer Arbeitsdirektor", concerned with labour issues at the facility.

Partial return to respectability The death of Stalin in 1953 and the growing awareness of Nikita Khrushchev's "secret" speech, delivered early in 1956, marked a slow easing of the political paranoia at the heart of the East German political establishment. The party exhonerated Beling in July 1956 which involved setting aside the party punishments imposed in August 1950. This fell some way short of a full formal rehabilitation, but subsequent developments in his career followed by the awarding of certain state honours confirmed at least that Walter Beling was no longer regarded, within the party, as beyond the political pale. It was still July 1956 when he accepted a posting to the Foreign Ministry as head of the main "Europe" department. He then served, between 1959 and 1965, as East Germany's permanent representative to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. The job was based in Geneva: in a country where foreign travel was a rare privilege rather than a right, the posting to Switzerland indicates that any involvement with Noel Field was long forgiven or forgotten by the East German party leadership.

Death Walter Beling died in Berlin on 31 May 1988, so did not live to experience all the changes that led to reunification. He predeceased his wife by less than two years. Their physical remains have been placed together in the special Memorial to the socialists section at the Friedrichsfelde main cemetery.

Awards and honours