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94-618: Constructed in 1912 as a factory, the building was purchased by the Communist Party of Germany ( Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands , KPD) in 1926. It became the seat of its Central Committee and was named in honor of Karl Liebknecht , the KPD leader who was murdered by a paramilitary unit in January 1919. After Adolf Hitler was appointed as German chancellor , the Berlin police raided

188-494: A quorum of two-thirds of the entire Reichstag had to be present in order to formally call up the bill. Leaving nothing to chance, Reichstag President Hermann Göring did not count the KPD seats for purposes of obtaining the required quorum. This led historian Richard J. Evans to contend that the Enabling Act had been passed in a manner contrary to law. The Nazis did not need to count the KPD deputies for purposes of getting

282-560: A soviet republic in Germany. After the defeat of the uprising, and the murder of KPD leaders Rosa Luxemburg , Karl Liebknecht and Leo Jogiches , the party temporarily steered a more moderate, parliamentarian course under the leadership of Paul Levi . During the Weimar Republic period, the KPD usually polled between 10 and 15 percent of the vote and was represented in the national Reichstag and in state parliaments. Under

376-612: A German court in 1933, it was decided that van der Lubbe had acted alone, as he claimed to have done. The following day, Hitler persuaded Hindenburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree . It used the provisions of Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution to suspend key civil liberties, ostensibly to deal with Communist acts of violence. Repression began within hours of the fire, when police arrested dozens of communists. Although Hitler could have formally banned

470-702: A Trotskyist group in 1986 to form the Unified Socialist Party (VSP), which failed to gain any influence and dissolved in the early 1990s. However, multiple tiny splinter groups originating from the KPD/ML still exist, several of which claim the name of KPD. Another party claiming the KPD name was formed in 1990 in East Berlin by several hard line communists who had been expelled from the PDS, including Erich Honecker . The KPD (Bolshevik) split off from

564-694: A coachman. In January 1915, one day before he was called up for military service in World War I , Thälmann married Rosa Koch. He was posted to the artillery on the western front, where he stayed until the end of the war, taking part in the Battle of Champagne (1915–1916), the Battle of the Somme (1916), the Battle of Arras (1917) , the Second Battle of the Aisne (1917), the Battle of Cambrai (1917) , and

658-651: A company of Danube Swabians and Wehrmacht defectors as the Ernst Thälmann Company to fight the German enemy. In 1935, the former town of Ostheim in Ukraine was renamed Telmanove ( Donetsk Oblast ). After 1945, Thälmann and other leading communists who had been murdered, such as Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht , were widely honoured in East Germany , with many schools, streets, factories, and

752-667: A coup d'état in Prussia , the KPD issued a call for all workers to support a general strike under its own leadership, which only resulted in limited local action. The statement was added with a short call on the GGTUF , the SPD and the General Federation of Free Employees to join in, but the KPD's belief that social democrats would have to be 'coerced by the masses' meant that their leaders were never approached directly. The KPD tried

846-620: A forest [of social democrats]". Critics of the KPD accused it of having pursued a sectarian policy. For example, the Social Democratic Party criticized the KPD's thesis of "social fascism", and both Leon Trotsky from the Comintern 's Left Opposition and August Thalheimer of the Right Opposition continued to argue for a united front. Critics believed that the KPD's sectarianism scuttled any possibility of

940-567: A major role during the political instability of the Weimar Republic , especially in its final years, when the KPD explicitly sought to overthrow the liberal democracy of the republic. Under his leadership, the KPD became intimately associated with the government of the Soviet Union and the policies of Joseph Stalin . The KPD under Thälmann's leadership regarded the Social Democratic Party (SPD) as its main adversary and

1034-483: A new wave of violence and arrests. Although having gone underground yet again, Thälmann was arrested and imprisoned together with his personal secretary Werner Hirsch on the afternoon of 3 March 1933. Eight officers of Police Station 121 arrested Thälmann at his self-appointed safehouse, the home of Hans and Martha Kluczynski in Berlin-Charlottenburg . Although the main police informant was a neighbor of

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1128-515: A policy of confrontation with the SPD. This followed the events of "Bloody May", in which 32 people were killed by the police in an attempt to suppress demonstrations, which had been banned by the Interior Minister and SPD member Carl Severing . Thälmann's KPD thus fought the SPD as their main political enemy, acting according to the Comintern policy, which declared social democrats to be " social fascists ". This made it difficult for

1222-577: A result, the KPD under Thälmann had a hostile, confrontational attitude toward the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) as defenders of the capitalist status quo. Their perception was reinforced by the explicit anti-Communist views of numerous SPD politicians in the German and Prussian governments, including Chancellor Hermann Müller , Interior Minister Carl Severing , Prussian Minister President Otto Braun , Prussian Interior Minister Albert Grzesinski and Berlin Police chief Karl Zörgiebel. In

1316-523: A splinter Communist Party Opposition in 1928. The leadership of the German Communist party had requested that Moscow send Leon Trotsky to Germany to direct the 1923 insurrection . However, this proposal was rejected by the Politburo which was controlled by Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev who decided to send a commission of lower-ranking Russian Communist party members. During the years of

1410-577: A super-majority of two-thirds of those deputies present and voting. However, Evans argued, not counting the KPD deputies for purposes of a quorum amounted to "refusing to recognize their existence", and was thus "an illegal act". The KPD was efficiently suppressed by the Nazis. The most senior KPD leaders were Wilhelm Pieck and Walter Ulbricht , who went into exile in the Soviet Union. The KPD maintained an underground organisation in Germany throughout

1504-471: A tremendous storm of protest throughout the world, it will be possible to break down the prison walls and as in the case of Dimitrov, deliver Thälmann from the clutches of the Fascist hangmen. The fact that Ernst Thälmann has got to spend his fiftieth birthday in the gaols of Hitler-Fascism is an urgent reminder to all the anti-Fascists of the whole world that they must intensify to the utmost their campaign for

1598-581: A united front with the SPD against the rising power of the National Socialists . Thälmann claimed that the right-wing leadership of the SPD rejected and actively worked against the KPD's efforts to form a united front against fascism. The party itself, however, continued to publicly clash with the SPD and the General German Trade Union Federation well into 1932. A brawl between Nazi and KPD lawmakers in

1692-600: The 1928 Reichstag election , the KPD with 54 seats remained one of the largest and most politically potent Communist parties in Europe. Led now by Thälmann, who supported a close alignment with the Soviet Union and the Communist International (Comintern). At the time, the Comintern held the position that social democracy was social fascism and that it frustrated rather than helped the proletariat . As

1786-451: The 1931 Prussian Landtag referendum , an unsuccessful attempt launched by the far-right Stahlhelm to bring down the social democrat state government of Prussia by means of a plebiscite; the KPD referred to some within the SA as "working people's comrades" during this campaign. The KPD maintained a solid electoral performance, usually polling more than 10% of the vote. It gained 100 deputies in

1880-627: The Battle of Soissons (1918) . For his service, Thälmann received the Iron cross Second Class, the Hanseatic Cross and Wound Badge (twice). Towards the end of 1917, Thälmann became a member of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD). In late October 1918, while on home leave from the front, Thälmann deserted together with four fellow soldiers. On 9 November 1918, he wrote in his diary on

1974-525: The German Communist Party (DKP). Following German reunification many DKP members joined the new Party of Democratic Socialism , formed out of the remains of the SED. In 1968, another self-described successor to the KPD was formed, the Communist Party of Germany/Marxists–Leninists (KPD/ML), which followed Maoist and later Hoxhaist ideas. It went through multiple splits and united with

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2068-466: The Landtag of Prussia led to the creation of Antifa – short Antifaschistische Aktion , which the party itself described as a "red united front under the leadership of the only anti-fascist party, the KPD". Thälmann, however, reiterated that there was still a ‘principal fight’ to be led against the SPD and that there would be no ‘unity at all costs’. After Franz von Papen 's government carried out

2162-563: The November 1932 elections , getting 16% of the vote and coming third. In the presidential election of the same year , its candidate Thälmann took 13.2% of the vote, compared to Hitler's 30.1%. In this period, while also opposed to the Nazis, the KPD regarded the Nazi Party as a less sophisticated and thus less dangerous fascist party than the SPD, and KPD leader Ernst Thälmann declared that "some Nazi trees must not be allowed to overshadow

2256-468: The Weimar Republic , the KPD was the largest communist party in Europe and seen as the "leading party" of the communist movement outside of the Soviet Union. The party abandoned the goal of immediate revolution, and from 1924 onwards contested Reichstag elections, with some success. A new KPD leadership more favorable to the Soviet Union was elected in 1923. The party's left around Ruth Fischer , Arkadi Maslow and Werner Scholem took leadership of

2350-754: The Western Front that he "did a bunk from the Front with 4 comrades at 2 o'clock." After his desertion, Thälmann was active in the German Revolution of 1918–1919 in Hamburg that began on 29 October 1918. From March 1919, he was chairman of the USPD in Hamburg, a member of the Hamburg Parliament , and worked as a relief worker in the Hamburg city park before taking up a well-paying job at

2444-647: The fascist threat—an attempt to win over the leftist elements of the NSDAP , especially the SA , who largely came from a working-class background and supported socialist economic policies. By that time, Hitler had risen to power to establish Nazi Germany and the KPD had been largely destroyed. After the Reichstag Fire on 27 February 1933, the Nazi regime targeted members of the KPD and other left-wing opponents of it in

2538-707: The Centre Party's Wilhelm Marx . In October 1926, Thälmann supported the dockers' strike in his home town of Hamburg. He saw this as an act of solidarity with the British miners' strike which had started on 1 May, although that strike had been profitable for the Hamburg Docks as an alternative supplier of coal. After the Revolution of 1918 and during the Spartacist uprising , the government ordered

2632-605: The East German KPD in 2005, bringing the total number of active KPDs to at least five (more or less). The Left , formed out of a merger between the PDS and Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative in 2007, claims to be the historical successor of the KPD (by way of the PDS). In the early 1920s, the party operated under the principle of democratic centralism , whereby different tendencies could confront each other and vote on different programmes and candidates that

2726-529: The KPD but found Stalin machinating against his efforts. In March 1932, Thälmann was once again a candidate for the German Presidency against the incumbent Paul von Hindenburg and Hitler. The KPD's slogan was "A vote for Hindenburg is a vote for Hitler; a vote for Hitler is a vote for war". Thälmann returned as a candidate in the second round of the election, as it was permitted by the German electoral law; his vote count lessened from 4,983,000 (13.2%) in

2820-846: The KPD considered all other parties in the Weimar Republic to be " fascists ". The KPD was banned in the Weimar Republic one day after the Nazi Party emerged triumphant in the German elections in 1933. It maintained an underground organization in Nazi Germany, and the KPD and groups associated with it led the internal resistance to the Nazi regime, with a focus on distributing anti-Nazi literature. The KPD suffered heavy losses between 1933 and 1939, with 30,000 communists executed and 150,000 sent to Nazi concentration camps . According to historian Eric D. Weitz , 60% of German exiles in

2914-584: The KPD in 1924; Ernst Thälmann was allied to this faction and became a member of the politburo and was appointed KPD vice-chairman in January 1924. Stalin engineered the Fischer leadership's removal in August 1925, and installed Thälmann as party chairman. From 1923 to 1928, the KPD broadly followed the united front policy developed in the early 1920s of working with other working class and socialist parties to contest elections, pursue social struggles and fight

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3008-541: The KPD in turn began aligning with the Comintern's ultra-left Third Period , under the slogan "Class against class", the KPD turned to viewing the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) as its main adversary. The term social fascism was introduced to the German Communist Party shortly after the Hamburg Uprising of 1923 and gradually became ever more influential in the party; by 1929 it

3102-542: The KPD was "outlawed" on the day the Reichstag Fire Decree was issued, and "completely banned" as of 6 March, the day after the election. Shortly after the election, the Nazis pushed through the Enabling Act , which allowed the cabinet–in practice, Hitler–to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag, effectively giving Hitler dictatorial powers. Since the bill was effectively a constitutional amendment ,

3196-581: The KPD's paramilitary organisation, the Roter Frontkämpferbund (RFB); this organisation was banned by the governing SPD in 1929 after the events of Blutmai ("Bloody May"). In October 1925, Thälmann became chairman of the KPD and thus a candidate for the German Presidency . Thälmann's candidacy in the second round of the presidential election split the centre-left vote, ensuring that the conservative Paul von Hindenburg defeated

3290-568: The KPD, he did not do so right away. Not only was he reluctant to chance a violent uprising, but he believed the KPD could siphon off SPD votes and split the left. However, most judges held the KPD responsible for the fire, and took the line that KPD membership was in and of itself a treasonous act. At the March 1933 election , the KPD elected 81 deputies. However, it was an open secret that they would never be allowed to take up their seats; they were all arrested in short order. For all intents and purposes,

3384-443: The KPD, were killed, 200 injured, and over a thousand people taken into police custody, many of whom were also not involved in the initial KPD rallies. Only 66 of those arrested were charged and 44 convicted. The events of Blutmai deepened the split between the SPD and KPD, the two major left-wing parties of the Weimar Republic, making a united stand against the growing strength of far-right parties more difficult. Tensions soured,

3478-605: The KPD. The Revolutionary Shop Stewards , a network of dissenting socialist trade unionists centered in Berlin, were also invited to the congress, but ultimately did not join the KPD because they deemed the founding congress too syndicalist -leaning. The Party's first Central Committee consisted of Hermann Duncker , Käte Duncker , Hugo Eberlein , Paul Frölich , Leo Jogiches , Paul Lange , Paul Levi , Karl Liebknecht , Rosa Luxemburg , Ernst Meyer , Wilhelm Pieck , and August Thalheimer . There were seven main reports given at

3572-492: The Kluczynskis, Hermann Hilliges, at least four other people informed the police of the connection between the Kluczynskis and Thälmann in the days before the latter's arrest. Thälmann had used the Kluczynskis' home occasionally for several years, but started fully residing there in January 1933. Although it was not among the six illegal residences that the military-political apparatus of the KPD had prepared for Thälmann, it

3666-579: The Nazi period, but the loss of many core members severely weakened the Party's infrastructure. A number of senior KPD leaders in exile were caught up in Joseph Stalin 's Great Purge of 1937–1938 and executed, among them Hugo Eberlein , Heinz Neumann , Hermann Remmele , Hans Kippenberger , Fritz Schulte and Hermann Schubert , or sent to the gulag , like Margarete Buber-Neumann . Still others, like Gustav von Wangenheim and Erich Mielke (later

3760-534: The PDS subsequently merged with the SPD splinter faction WASG to form Die Linke . Before the First World War the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was the largest party in Germany and the world's most successful socialist party. Although still officially claiming to be a Marxist party, by 1914 it had become in practice a reformist party. In 1914 the SPD members of the Reichstag voted in favour of

3854-605: The SED to form a small branch in West Berlin , the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin . The KPD reorganised in the western part of Germany, and received 5.7 percent of the vote in the first Bundestag election in 1949. But the onset of the Cold War and the subsequent widespread repression of the far-left soon caused a collapse in the party's support. The reputation of the party had also been damaged by

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3948-588: The Soviet Union had been liquidated during the Stalinist terror and a higher proportion of the KPD Politburo membership had died in the Soviet Union than in Nazi Germany. Weitz also noted that hundreds of German citizens, the majority of whom were communists, had been handed over to the Gestapo from Stalin's administration. The party was revived in divided postwar West and East Germany and won seats in

4042-606: The United States. He was a Social Democratic Party (SPD) member during 1903. On 1 February 1904, he joined the Central Union of Trade, Transport and Traffic Workers of Germany and ascended to the chairman of the Department Carters. In 1913, he supported a call of Rosa Luxemburg for a mass strike as a means of action of the SPD to enforce political demands. From 1913 to 1914, he worked for a laundry as

4136-614: The Zentrale. The other group was also elected at the Congress, but was nominated from the districts they represented who represented the wider party. In 1920, the Zentrale (mirroring its Russian counterpart) split itself into two bodies: a Political Bureau ( Politburo ) and an Organization Bureau (Orgburo). Elected figures were subject to recall by the bodies that elected them. The KPD employed around about 200 full-timers during its early years of existence, and as Broue notes "They received

4230-423: The business after school and did his schoolwork in the morning before classes started. Despite this burden, Thälmann was a good student who enjoyed learning. He wanted to become a teacher or to learn a trade but his parents refused to lend him financial support. He had to continue working in his parents' business, causing much sorrow and conflict with his parents. As a result, he sought a job as an unskilled worker in

4324-455: The conduct of the Red Army during its occupation of eastern Germany , which included looting , political repression, and mass rape . On orders from Joseph Stalin, the Communist deputies to the Parlamentarischer Rat refused to sign West Germany's Basic Law to avoid recognizing the political legitimacy of West Germany. At the 1953 election the KPD only won 2.2 percent of the total votes and lost all of its seats, never to return. The party

4418-450: The employment office. There, he rose to the rank of Inspector . When the USPD split over the question whether to join the Communist International (Comintern), Thälmann sided with the pro-communist faction which merged with the KPD in November 1920, and in the following December he was elected to the KPD's Central Committee. In March 1921, he was fired from his job at the employment office due to his political activities. That summer Thälmann

4512-400: The entire party would then follow. The leading body of the party was the Congress , meeting at least once a year. Between Congresses, leadership of the party resided in the Central Committee , which was made up of people elected at the Congress in two different ways. One group of people was elected directly by the Congress and had to live where the leadership was resident; these members formed

4606-486: The fall of the monarchy, was vehemently opposed to a socialist revolution. With the new regime terrified of a Bolshevik Revolution in Germany, Defense Minister Gustav Noske recruited former right-wing military officers and demobilized veterans and formed various Freikorps and anti-communist paramilitaries to violently suppress all revolutionary activity. During the failed Spartacist uprising in Berlin of January 1919, Liebknecht and Luxemburg, who had not initiated

4700-423: The first Bundestag (West German Parliament) elections in 1949. The KPD was banned as extremist in West Germany in 1956 by the Federal Constitutional Court . In 1969, some of its former members founded an even smaller fringe party, the German Communist Party (DKP), which remains legal, and multiple tiny splinter groups claiming to be the successor to the KPD have also subsequently been formed. In East Germany,

4794-403: The first round to 3,707,000 (10.2%) in the second. After the Nazis came to power in January 1933, Thälmann proposed that the SPD and KPD should organise a general strike to topple Hitler's rule. This was rejected by the SPD, as they did not want to work with the KPD after the long years of Thälmann and the KPD's accusations of "social fascism". In February 1933, a Central Committee meeting of

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4888-463: The founding congress: These reports were given by leading figures of the Spartacist League, but members of the International Communists of Germany also took part in the discussions. Under the leadership of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, the KPD was committed to a revolution in Germany, and attempts to bring down the interim government and create a revolutionary situation continued during 1919 and 1920. Germany's SPD leadership, which had come to power after

4982-402: The head of the Stasi in East Germany), denounced their fellow exiles to the NKVD . In East Germany , the Soviet Military Administration in Germany forced the eastern branch of the SPD to merge with the KPD (led by Pieck and Ulbricht) to form the Socialist Unity Party (SED) in April 1946. Although nominally a union of equals, the SED quickly fell under communist domination, and most of

5076-644: The headquarters of the new party, which is called simply "The Left" ( Die Linke ) after the merger was completed in June 2007. 52°31′34″N 13°24′47″E  /  52.52611°N 13.41306°E  / 52.52611; 13.41306 This article about a German building or structure is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Communist Party of Germany Former parties Former parties Former parties The Communist Party of Germany ( German : Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands , pronounced [kɔmuˈnɪstɪʃə paʁˈtaɪ ˈdɔʏtʃlants] ; KPD [ˌkaːpeːˈdeː] )

5170-418: The headquarters, and by March 1, the Nazi swastika flag was flying over the building. Renamed the Horst Wessel House, the building at first served as a district police station and detention center in which Jews and political opponents were tortured. In 1935, the finance department of the state of Prussia moved into the building. Severely damaged during World War II , the building was repaired in 1948, and

5264-646: The lead-up to the 1929 celebration of International Workers' Day , SPD Minister Grzesinski threatened to ban the KPD and its organizations if they acted in defiance of a ban on public gatherings in Berlin ordered by the city's police chief Karl Zörgiebel of the SPD. The attempted banning galvanized the KPD, who responded by exhorting workers to defy the ban and organize peacefully, but to be prepared to strike on May 2 "if Zörgiebel dares to spill workers' blood". The KPD proceeded with May Day marches in Berlin. The Berlin Police responded with an immediate, harsh, and disproportionate crackdown. Often without regard to whether

5358-417: The leadership of Ernst Thälmann from 1925 the party became thoroughly Stalinist and loyal to the leadership of the Soviet Union , and from 1928 it was largely controlled and funded by the Comintern in Moscow. Under Thälmann's leadership the party directed most of its attacks against the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which it regarded as its main adversary and referred to as " social fascists ";

5452-448: The like named after them. Thälmann, like Luxemburg and Liebknecht, was honoured with a symbolic grave at the Memorial to the Socialists ( German : Gedenkstätte der Sozialisten ) in the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery , Berlin . Many of these names were changed after German reunification ; streets and squares named after Thälmann remain in Berlin, Hamburg, Greifswald , and Frankfurt an der Oder . The East German pioneer organisation

5546-432: The more recalcitrant members from the SPD side of the merger were pushed out in short order. By the time of the formal formation of the East German state in 1949, the SED was a full-fledged Communist party, and developed along lines similar to other Soviet-bloc communist parties. It was the ruling party in East Germany from its formation in 1949 until 1989. The SPD managed to preserve its independence in East Berlin , forcing

5640-456: The name "Karl Liebknecht House" restored. It housed the East German Institute for Marxism-Leninism after 1950. The building became the headquarters for the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the reformed successor of East Germany's former ruling party , in May 1990. In 2005, the PDS was renamed "The Left Party PDS" in preparation for its merger with the Party of Social Justice-Electoral Alternative (WASG). The building continues to serve as

5734-488: The party adopted the position that the social democrats were " social fascists ". Thälmann was leader of the paramilitary Roter Frontkämpferbund . He was arrested by the Gestapo in 1933 and held in solitary confinement for eleven years. Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov originally sought Thälmann’s release; after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact , he abandoned efforts to that end, while Thälmann's party rival Walter Ulbricht ignored requests to plead on his behalf. Thälmann

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5828-462: The party away from the policy of immediate revolution, in an effort to win over SPD and USPD voters and trade union officials. These efforts were rewarded when a substantial section of the USPD joined the KPD, making it a mass party for the first time. Through the 1920s, the KPD was racked by internal conflict between radical and moderate factions, partly reflecting the power struggles between Joseph Stalin and Grigory Zinoviev in Moscow . Germany

5922-464: The party followed the Comintern line and received funding from the Comintern. Under Thälmann's leadership, the party was closely aligned with the Soviet leadership headed by Joseph Stalin ; Thälmann has been described as "the driving force behind Stalinization in the mid to late 1920s" and "Stalin’s right hand in Germany". After winning control from his former leftist allies, he expelled the party's Right Opposition around Heinrich Brandler . After

6016-402: The party was merged, by Soviet decree, with remnants of the Social Democratic Party to form the Socialist Unity Party (SED) which ruled East Germany from 1949 until 1989–1990; the merger was opposed by many Social Democrats, many of whom fled to the western zones. After the fall of the Berlin Wall , reformists took over the SED and renamed it the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS); in 2007

6110-486: The pay of an average skilled worker, and had no privileges, apart from being the first to be arrested, prosecuted and sentenced, and when shooting started, to be the first to fall". Ernst Th%C3%A4lmann Ernst Johannes Fritz Thälmann ( German pronunciation: [ɛʁnst ˈtɛːlman] ; 16 April 1886 – 18 August 1944) was a German communist politician and leader of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) from 1925 to 1933. A committed communist, Thälmann played

6204-424: The persons involved were demonstrators or bystanders, they forcibly and violently dispersed the crowds that formed. As the day progressed, street battles developed between the protestors and the police, who used firearms and armoured cars. The violence lasted until the afternoon of 3 May, mostly in the working-class neighbourhoods of Wedding and Neukölln . An estimated 33 civilians, none of whom were involved with

6298-418: The port. The ten-year-old Thälmann came in contact with the port workers on strike from November 1896 till February 1897 in the bitter labor dispute known as the Hamburg Docker's Strike 1896–1897. At the beginning of 1902, Thälmann left home. He first lived in an emergency shelter , later in a basement apartment, and in 1904 he was a fireman on the steam-powered freight ship AMERIKA , which also traveled to

6392-406: The reception hall of the City Council. Rosa Luxemburg was initially against the setting up of a new party but joined the KPD after her initial hesitation. Apart from the Spartacists, another dissident group of socialists called the International Communists of Germany (IKD), also dissenting members of the Social Democratic party but mainly located in Hamburg , Bremen and Northern Germany , joined

6486-446: The release of Thälmann and the many thousands of imprisoned victims of the White Terror." After the German–Soviet Non-Aggression Pact in 1939 and Germany's and the Soviet Union's joint invasion of Poland — and despite Thälmann's loyalty to Stalin during his time leading the KPD — Moscow pragmatically removed a slogan for the 1939 International Youth Day, which read in part, "Long live Comrade Thälmann!", and replaced it with, "Long live

6580-406: The remaining legitimacy of the pro-democratic parties - such as the Social Democrats, the State Party, and the German People's Party - in favor of the anti-democratic parties. They also followed an increasingly nationalist course, trying to appeal to nationalist-leaning workers. In 1931, the party reported a membership of 200,000. The KPD leadership initially first criticised but then supported

6674-463: The rising right-wing militias. For example, in October 1923 the KPD formed a coalition government with the SPD in the states of Saxony and Thuringia . However, the Reichswehr legally overthrew these governments by force, through a constitutional process called Reichsexekution . In 1926 the KPD worked with the SPD on a referendum to expropriate the German nobility, together mobilising 14.4 million voters. The party's first paramilitary wing

6768-434: The same tactic again after Adolf Hitler was appointed as chancellor but was widely ignored by other organisations and individual workers this time as well. On 27 February, soon after the appointment of Adolf Hitler as chancellor, the Reichstag was set on fire and Dutch council communist Marinus van der Lubbe was found near the building. The Nazis publicly blamed the fire on communist agitators in general, although in

6862-849: The suppression of the revolt and the extrajudicial murders of KPD leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht by members of the Freikorps . That same year, the German Army under orders of the SPD-led republic government used military force against the Bavarian Soviet Republic . In 1920, there was a fierce suppression of the Ruhr uprising . At the 12th party congress of the KPD in June 1929 in Berlin-Wedding , Thälmann adopted

6956-480: The then already banned KPD took place at the "Sporthaus Ziegenhals" in Königs Wusterhausen , near Berlin , where Thälmann had called for the violent overthrow of Hitler's government. The Comintern's guidelines on social democracy as "social fascism" remained in force until 1935, when the Comintern officially switched to endorsing a " popular front " of socialists, liberals, and even conservatives against

7050-490: The top of my lungs. Then they held my mouth shut for a while and hit me in the face, and with a whip across the chest and back. I then collapsed, rolled on the floor, always kept my face down and no longer replied to any of their questions." Fellow German communist Wilhelm Pieck had managed to escape to the Soviet Union and in July 1936 issued a statement calling for the release of Thälmann. He stated: "If we succeeded in raising

7144-539: The two leftist parties to work together against the emergence of Adolf Hitler . The KPD under Thälmann declared that "fighting fascism means fighting the SPD just as much as it means fighting Hitler and the parties of Brüning ." Thälmann declared in December 1931 that "some Nazi trees must not be allowed to overshadow a forest" of social democrats. By 1927, Karl Kilbom , the Comintern representative to Germany, had started to combat this ultra-leftist tendency within

7238-547: The uprising but joined once it had begun, were captured by the Freikorps and murdered. At its peak, the party had 350–400,000 members in 1920. The party split a few months later into two factions, the KPD and the much smaller Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD). Following the assassination of Leo Jogiches , Paul Levi became the KPD's leader. Other prominent members included Clara Zetkin , Paul Frölich , Hugo Eberlein , Franz Mehring , Julian Marchlewski , August Thalheimer , Wilhelm Pieck and Ernst Meyer . Levi led

7332-478: The war. Left-wing members of the party, led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg , strongly opposed the war, and the SPD soon suffered a split. From the split emerged the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) and the more radical Spartacist League ; the latter formed the core of what would become the KPD. In November 1918, revolution broke out across Germany. The KPD held its founding congress in Berlin from 30 December 1918 to 1 January 1919, in

7426-457: The wise foreign policy of the Soviet Union, guided by Comrade Stalin's instructions." Thälmann's long-time party rival Walter Ulbricht had ignored several requests for help from Thälmann's family when the thaw in German–Soviet relations could have made a release possible, preferring to let Thälmann remain imprisoned. Thälmann spent over eleven years in solitary confinement. In August 1944, he

7520-659: Was a major far-left political party in the Weimar Republic during the interwar period , an underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany , and a minor party in West Germany during the postwar period until it was banned by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1956. Founded in the aftermath of the First World War by socialists who had opposed the war, the party joined the Spartacist uprising of January 1919, which sought to establish

7614-451: Was a representative of the KPD to the 3rd Congress of the Comintern in Moscow and met Vladimir Lenin personally. In June 1922, terrorists from the ultranationalist group Organisation Consul threw a hand grenade into his ground floor flat; the assassination attempt failed and he survived. Thälmann helped to organise the Hamburg Uprising of October 1923; as this failed, Thälmann

7708-617: Was banned in August 1956 by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany . The decision was upheld in 1957 by the European Commission of Human Rights in Communist Party of Germany v. the Federal Republic of Germany . After the party was declared illegal, many of its members continued to function clandestinely despite increased government surveillance. Part of its membership re-founded the party in 1968 as

7802-551: Was being propagated as a theory. The KPD regarded itself as "the only anti-fascist party" in Germany and held that all other parties in the Weimar Republic were "fascist". The Nazis achieved an electoral breakthrough in the 1930 Reichstag election . By the early 1930s, the political situation in Weimar Germany was extremely unstable after the onset of the Great Depression . The Depression effectively destroyed

7896-727: Was deeply religious. After his birth, his parents took over a pub near the Port of Hamburg . On 4 April 1887, his sister Frieda was born (died 8 July 1967 in Hamburg). In March 1892, Thälmann's parents were convicted and sentenced to two years in prison because they had fenced stolen goods or had taken them for debt payment. Thälmann and his sister Frieda were placed in separate foster families. Thälmann's parents were released early, his mother in May, and his father in October 1893. His parents' offense

7990-440: Was forced to go in hiding. After Lenin's death in late January 1924, Thälmann visited Moscow and maintained a guard of honour at his bier . From February 1924, he was deputy chairman of the KPD and from May 1924 he was also a Reichstag member. At the 5th Congress of the Comintern in July 1924. he was elected to the Comintern executive committee and a short time later to its steering committee. In February 1925, he became chairman of

8084-634: Was immediately cremated . Shortly after, the Nazis claimed in an announcement that, together with Rudolf Breitscheid , Thälmann had died in an Allied bombing raid on 23 August. During the Spanish Civil War , several units of German Republican volunteers (most notably the Thälmann Battalion of the International Brigades ) were named in his honour. During World War II , Yugoslavia's leader Tito organized

8178-456: Was named Ernsta Tēlmaņa iela after him on completion in 1981; however, soon after Latvia had regained independence in 1991 it was renamed Kārļa Ulmaņa gatve , after pre-World War II prime minister Kārlis Ulmanis . In Ho Chi Minh City , a highschool, THPT Ernst Thalmann (Ten-lơ-man) was named after him. The VEB Ernst Thälmann Waffenfabrik, an East German weapons factory in Suhl (formerly Simson),

8272-498: Was named the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation in his memory. Members pledged that "Ernst Thälmann is my role model ... I promise to learn to work and fight [struggle] as Ernst Thälmann teaches." In the 1950s, a two-part East German film, Ernst Thälmann , was produced. In 1972, Cuba named a small island, Cayo Ernesto Thaelmann , after him. One of the main traffic arteries of Soviet Riga

8366-445: Was not considered known to the police. During imprisonment, Thälmann managed to smuggle out detailed descriptions of his treatment in writing. He wrote: "They ordered me to take off my pants and then two men grabbed me by the back of the neck and placed me across a footstool. A uniformed Gestapo officer with a whip of hippopotamus hide in his hand then beat my buttocks with measured strokes. Driven wild with pain I repeatedly screamed at

8460-498: Was seen as being of central importance to the struggle for socialism, and the failure of the German revolution was a major setback. Eventually Levi was expelled in 1921 by the Comintern for "indiscipline". Further leadership changes took place in the 1920s. Supporters of the Left or Right Opposition to the Stalinist -controlled Comintern leadership were expelled; of these, Heinrich Brandler , August Thalheimer and Paul Frölich set up

8554-540: Was shot dead on Adolf Hitler 's personal order in Buchenwald in 1944. Thälmann was born in Hamburg on 16 April 1886, His parents, Johannes "Jan" Thälmann (11 April 1857, Weddern ( Holstein )  – 31 October 1933), a farmworker , and Mary-Magdalene (née Kohpeiss ; 8 November 1857, Kirchwerder  – 9 March 1927), married in 1884 in Hamburg. They had no party affiliation; in contrast to his father, his mother

8648-432: Was the Roter Frontkämpferbund (Alliance of Red Front Fighters), which was founded in 1924 but banned by the governing Social Democrats in 1929. By 1927, the party had 130,000 members, of whom 40,000 had been members in 1920. From 1928 onwards (after Stalin reinstated Thälmann as KPD leader against the majority of the KPD central committee in the wake of an embezzlement scandal involving Thälmann's ally John Wittorf ),

8742-413: Was transferred from Bautzen prison to Buchenwald concentration camp . That same August, Heinrich Himmler took notes during a conversation with Hitler where he said: "Thälmann must be executed." A fellow Buchenwald prisoner, Marian Zgoda , recalls hearing the shooting of Thälmann on the 18th—four days after Himmler's curt annotation in his notes. After he was shot on Hitler's personal order, his body

8836-452: Was used 36 years later in the campaign against him. From 1893 to 1900, Thälmann attended elementary school. He later described history , natural history , folklore , mathematics , gymnastics , and sports as his favorite subjects; he did not like religion . In the mid-1890s, his parents opened a vegetable, coal and wagon shop in Eilbek , a suburb of Hamburg. The young Thälmann worked in

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