Wilhelm Koenen

Wilhelm Koenen (7 April 1886 – 19 October 1963) was a German communist journalist and politician who served in several legislative positions in the Weimar Republic and East Germany between 1919 and 1963. He also served as the first co-chairman of the Socialist Unity Party in Saxony from 1946 to 1948.

Biography Early life

Koenen was born in Hamburg, the son of a socialist carpenter and a cook. After finishing Volksschule, he continued his education, taking classes in business from 1900 to 1903. In 1904, he found employment at a book shop in Kiel. In addition, he took courses at the workers' school in Hamburg and the Social Democrat Party school in Berlin. In 1907, he became a newspaper correspondent in Kiel and then in Königsberg. In 1911, he became editor of the social democrat newspaper, Volksblatt, in Halle.

Weimar era

In 1919, Koenen was a member of the USPD's central committee, but in 1920 he joined the Communist Party (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, or KPD), where he became part of the left wing. He served as a member of the Weimar Reichstag from 1920 to 1932, then in the Prussian Landtag from 1932 to 1933 (leading the party list in the Merseburg district), in addition to the Berlin city council from 1926 to 1932.

From 1924, he was a member of the "Middle Group" (Mittelgruppe) and in 1925, actively supported the leadership group headed by Ernst Thälmann. Koenen served as political leader of the KPD for the Halle-Merseburg district from 1929 to 1931, but internal politics later forced him into the background and he lost his party function in Halle and what had been his secure place on the party list. Koenen was one of some 40 people at on 7 February 1933, at the , just a week after the Nazi Party seized power and was the last time that Thälmann, chairman of the KPD, spoke to the central committee.

In exile Koenen left Germany in June 1933 on the decision of the party leadership,

Koenen's brother Bernard Koenen was arrested briefly during the Great Purge. He and his brother are both buried at the Socialists' Memorial at the Berlin cemetery, Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde. A street in Sangerhausen is named after Wilhelm Koenen.