ULBRICHT, WALTER

born June 30, 1893, Leipzig, Ger. died Aug. 1, 1973, East Berlin German Communist leader and head of the post-World War II German Democratic Republic, or East Germany. Ulbricht, a cabinetmaker by trade, joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1912 and during World War I served on the Eastern Front, deserting twice. After the war he entered the new German Communist Party (KPD). A bureaucrat and organizer, he was elected to the party's central committee in 1923. With the rise of Joseph Stalin, Ulbricht became instrumental in Bolshevizing the German party and organizing it on a cell basis. He became a member of the Reichstag (federal lower house) in 1928 and led the Berlin party organization from 1929. After Adolf Hitler's accession to power in Germany (January 1933), Ulbricht fled abroad, serving for the next five years as an agent of both the KPD and the Comintern in Paris and Moscow and in Spain during the Spanish Civil War (193639), all the time relentlessly persecuting Trotskyites and other deviationists. Back in Moscow at the start of Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union (1941), Ulbricht was assigned to propagandize German prisoners of war and process information from the German army. Returning to Germany on April 30, 1945, Ulbricht helped reestablish the KPD and was charged with organizing an administration in the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany. He played a leading role in the merger of the KPD and the SPD into the Socialist Unity Party (SED; April 1946), which controlled East Germany until 1989. On the formation of the German Democratic Republic (Oct. 11, 1949), Ulbricht became deputy prime minister, adding the post of general secretary of the SED in 1950. When, on the death of President Wilhelm Pieck (1960), the presidency was abolished and a council of state instituted in its stead, Ulbricht became its chairman, thus formally taking supreme power. He crushed all opposition and became so powerful that he was able to block the de-Stalinization movement that swept eastern Europe after the death of the Soviet dictator. Only after the erection of the Berlin Wall (1961) did the government finally begin to ease its strict control and permit a certain amount of economic liberalization and decentralization. East Germany became one of the most industrialized nations in eastern Europe, yet Ulbricht remained implacably opposed to the Federal Republic of Germany. Forced to retire as first secretary of the SED in May 1971, he retained his position as head of state until his death. Additional reading Carola Stern, Ulbricht: A Political Biography (1965); and Gregory W. Sandford, From Hitler to Ulbricht (1983), examine Ulbricht's role in the Communist reconstruction of East Germany.