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26-854: Braunbuch – Kriegs- und Nazi-verbrecher in der Bundesrepublik: Staat – Wirtschaft – Verwaltung – Armee – Justiz – Wissenschaft (English title: Brown Book – War and Nazi Criminals in the Federal Republic: State, Economy, Administration, Army, Justice, Science ) is a book edited by Albert Norden in 1965. In this book Norden claimed that 1,800 politicians and other prominents in West Germany held prominent positions in Germany prior to 1945. Altogether 1,800 West German persons and their past were covered: especially 21 Ministers and state secretaries, 100 admirals and generals, 828 judges or state lawyers and high law officers, 245 officials of

52-691: A character similar to other groupings in the Eastern Bloc. For the next three decades, the minor parties in the Front had to accept the SED's "leading role" as a condition of their continued existence. On 1 December 1989, the Front was effectively rendered impotent when the Volkskammer deleted the provision of the Constitution of East Germany that gave the SED a monopoly of power. Four days later,

78-753: A condition of their existence. The SED had significant control over these parties, with their leadership even at a regional level being subject to approval by the Friendly Parties Department of the SED Central Committee. The parties were afforded a large amount of infrastructure, including party buildings, newspapers and companies and were represented in the East German government by several ministers each, though as all ministers, they were de jure bound to directives issued by their responsible Central Committee Secretary. Only in

104-770: A member of the Politburo of the party. Norden served as head of the Agitation Committee of the Politburo, 1955–67. He was in-charge of the Information & Foreign Department of the Politburo until 1979. In 1958, he became a member of the Volkskammer (People's Chamber, the parliament of the GDR). In 1960 he became the head of the 'West Commission'. In June 1965 Norden suggested that regional elections in

130-796: A professorship at Humboldt University . In 1954, he became director of the National Council of the National Front for a Democratic Germany . He would also become director of the Committee for German Unity. In 1955, he became a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). He was elected as one of the secretaries of the Central Committee. In 1958 he became

156-549: A reference in the West German New Left , which increasingly had begun to question the official historiography on the Nazi period . Norden was born into a Jewish petty bourgeois family, the son of a rabbi . As an adult, Norden declined to identify himself as a Jew. He was however, one of the most prominent persons of Jewish origin in East German society. National Front (East Germany) The main task of

182-626: Is brown ) was published in the GDR. This article about a non-fiction book on German history is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Albert Norden Albert Norden (4 December 1904 – 30 May 1982 ) was a German communist politician. Albert Norden was born in Myslowitz , Silesia on 4 December 1904, one of the five recorded children born to the liberal rabbi Joseph Norden  [ de ] (1870–1943) and his wife, Emilie Meseritz/Norden (1876–1931). In 1919, he joined

208-539: The Christian Democratic Union and Liberal Democratic Party, having thrown out their pro-Communist leaderships, withdrew from the Front. On 16 December the SED, having transformed itself into a democratic socialist party, reformed itself into the Party of Democratic Socialism . On 20 February 1990, an amendment to the constitution removed mention of the Front. The National Front, as in institution,

234-649: The Foreign Office and of embassies and consulates in leading position, 297 high police officers and officers of the Verfassungsschutz . The first brown book was seized in West Germany – on Frankfurt Book Fair – by judicial resolution. The contents of this book received substantial attention in West Germany and other countries. The West German government stated, at that time, that it was "all falsification". Later on, however, it became clear that

260-453: The People's Chamber . Seats were awarded on the basis of a set quota rather than vote totals. As voters only had the option of approving or rejecting the list in far-from-secret conditions, it "won" with virtually unanimous levels of support. Although nominally a broad-based coalition of parties, in practice the SED was the only one with any real power. By ensuring that Communists dominated

286-607: The Young Communist League of Germany . The following year, he became a member of the Communist Party of Germany . From 1923 onwards, he held editorial positions in various communist publications. Between 1931 and 1933, he was the editor of Rote Fahne ('Red Flag'). In 1933 Norden emigrated to France . He also spent time in exile in Denmark and Czechoslovakia . In 1938, he returned to France. Norden

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312-620: The Democratic Farmers' Party merged with the West German Christian Democratic Union . This saw controversy at the time because the elaborate infrastructure that the SED had afforded the bloc parties put them at a great competitive advantage over newly established parties. The following organizations, which were part of the NF, did not send elected representatives to the Volkskammer but were active in

338-954: The GDR. After the Second World War , the Allies initially allowed four parties: the Communists, the Social Democrats, the Christian Democratic Union and the Liberal Democratic Party. In the Soviet Occupation Zone, the Communist Party forced the Social Democrats to merge (1946). Thus the communist-dominated Socialist Unity Party (SED) was formed. The other two parties, the Christian Democratic Union and

364-466: The GDR. Some of them were represented on the electoral list, such as the trade union and the women's organisation. Nearly all of these MPs were members of the SED. Therefore, although the SED faction in parliament did not have an absolute majority, most MPs were nevertheless SED members. All parties and mass organisations in the National Front had to officially accept the SED's leading role as

390-699: The German Democratic Republic should be open for alternate candidates. In 1963, Norden became a member of the National Defense Council, a post he held until 1979. In 1976 he became a member of the State Council. In April 1981, the then ailing Norden was left out of the Central Committee and Politburo at the 10th SED party congress. In the same year he left the Volkskammer and State Council positions. After

416-544: The Liberal Democratic Party, were initially independent. The SED, with the help of the Soviet occupation authorities, intimidated these parties, removed and sometimes deported their leaders and forced them to get on course. Finally, the occupying authorities allowed two new parties to be founded: the Democratic Farmers' Party (DBD) and the National Democratic Party (NDPD) (1948). Both parties were founded by

442-410: The National Front was to draw up a common electoral list ("Einheitsliste") in elections to the East German parliament , the Volkskammer ("People's Chamber"). This "unity list" was the only list that citizens could vote for. Other parties or lists were prohibited. The National Front system was intended to give to the outside world the impression that there was a democracy with a multi-party system in

468-499: The SED, their first leaders even being former SED and Communist party functionaries respectively. Their task was to poach voters from the Christian Democrats and Liberals. The National Democrats were also supposed to be a collecting ground for former National Socialists. The parties that were not the SED were called Blockpartei . Finally, there were so-called mass organisations in the Soviet occupation zone and then in

494-584: The data of the book were largely correct. Hanns Martin Schleyer , for example, really had been a member of the SS . The book was translated into 10 languages. Amongst the reactions to it was also a similar West German book of the same name, covering the topic of Nazis re-emerging in high-level positions in the GDR. In addition to the Braunbuch the educational booklet Das ganze System ist braun ( The whole system

520-618: The last weeks prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall (November 1989), some politicians of non-SED parties started to moderately criticize SED dominance. The Front disbanded in February 1990, a month before the first free elections in the GDR. The Liberal Democratic Party and National Democratic Party eventually merged with the West German Free Democratic Party , whereas the Christian Democratic Union and

546-464: The lists, the SED essentially predetermined the composition of the People's Chamber. In 1950-1951, the public rejection of the validity of the list by some German politicians resulted in some of them being imprisoned for "rejecting the electoral law of the German Democratic Republic" (as in the case of LDPD leader Günter Stempel ). Although the SED had already become a full-fledged Stalinist "party of

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572-399: The new type" by the formation of the GDR, the other parties did not completely bend to the SED's will for a time. By the mid-1950s, however, the more courageous members of the constituent parties had been pushed out, and the parties had all been transformed into loyal partners of the SED. By this time, the SED itself had purged its few independent-minded members as well. The Front now took on

598-561: The performance of its activities. The National Front was the successor to the Demokratischer Block which had been founded in the Soviet occupation zone . The Front itself was founded on 30 March 1950. It operated through the issuing of a generally consistent proportion of seats (divided between the Front's parties and SED-controlled mass organisations) submitted in the form of a single list of candidates during each election to

624-463: The war Norden argued in several publications, articles and speeches that there was a direct continuation between the Hitler and Adenauer governments. In 1965 the National Front published a work by Norden, Braunbuch ('Brown Book'), in which he accused over 1,900 politicians, state officials and other prominent persons in West Germany of having worked for the Nazi regime in the past. The book became

650-674: Was born in October 1942. In October 1946 he returned to Berlin , where he became editor of the weekly Deutschlands Stimme ('Voice of Germany'). In 1949, he was assigned as head of the Press Section of the Information Department of Ministerial Council of the German Democratic Republic, working under Gerhart Eisler . In December 1952, he was purged from his position in the Press Department, but obtained

676-843: Was detained in France 1939–1940. In 1941, he was able to emigrate to the United States . During World War II , his father died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp . In exile in Paris and New York he worked with various popular front publications. He wrote some chapters, dealing with the international linkages of the German NSDAP, in the widely read 1933 Braunbuch über Reichstagsbrand und Hitlerterror ('Brown Book on Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror'). In 1940, he married Herta Fischer (1908–1990), and their son, Johnny,

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