* Walter Ulbricht, died 1973 at Groß Dölln

Erich Honecker, watched by his mentor Walter Ulbricht at the 5th Party Congress, 1958

Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Ulbricht was active in a group of German communists under NKVD supervision ( a group including, among others, the poet Erich Weinert and the writer Willi Bredel ) which, among other things, translated propaganda material into German, prepared broadcasts directed at the invaders, and interrogated captured German officers.

In February 1943, following the surrender of the German Sixth Army at the close of the Battle of Stalingrad, Ulbricht, Weinert and Wilhelm Pieck conducted a Communist political rally in the center of Stalingrad which many German prisoners were forced to attend.

Mao Zedong | Mao, Stalin and Ulbricht, at Stalin's 70th birthday celebration in Moscow, December 1949 Ulbricht ( right ) with Nikita Khrushchev in 1963

In 1957, Ulbricht arranged a visit to an East German collective farm at Trinwillershagen in order to demonstrate the GDR's modern agricultural industry to the visiting Soviet Politburo member Anastas Mikoyan.

" The direct cost of labour force losses has been estimated at $ 7 billion to $ 9 billion, with East German party leader Walter Ulbricht later claiming that West Germany owed him $ 17 billion in compensation, including reparations as well as labour force losses.

In July 1952, at a conference of the S. E. D., Walter Ulbricht announced that " the democratic ( sic ) and economic development, and the consciousness ( Bewusstsein ) of the working class and the majority of the employed classes must be developed so that the construction of Socialism becomes their most important objective.

At the beginning of June, the Soviet government was alarmed at reports of unrest, and Ulbricht was summoned to Moscow.

Nevertheless, he resigned one year later to work at the KPD politburo in Berlin with Walter Ulbricht.

After the war, he studied law at the German Academy of State Sciences and Law " Walter Ulbricht " from 1951-54.

Though Walter Ulbricht, by grace of Soviet tanks, may be head man in East Germany, that does not give him any right to usurp the government of East Berlin or to absorb that semi-city into the Soviet zone.

In 1961, the East German government under Walter Ulbricht erected a barbed-wire barrier around West Berlin, officially called the antifaschistischer Schutzwall ( anti-fascist protective barrier ).

In Die Welt, a communist newspaper published in Stockholm the exiled communist leader Walter Ulbricht opposed the allies ( Britain representing “ the most reactionary force in the world ”) and argued: “ The German government declared itself ready for friendly relations with the Soviet Union, whereas the English-French war bloc desires a war against the socialist Soviet Union.

In June 1945, he was appointed Regierungspräsident ( president of the government ) of Thuringia, an office he lost again in July after Thuringia became part of the Soviet occupation zone, due to pressure from Walter Ulbricht.

Opposition to the East German government and its leader, Walter Ulbricht, had existed since the 1950s.

The Chancellor had as much business there as Ulbricht had in East Berlin -- and was certainly less provocative than the juvenile sound-truck taunts of Gerhard Eisler.

In 1949 the Soviets turned control of East Germany over to the Socialist Unity Party, headed by Wilhelm Pieck ( 1876 – 1960 ), who became president of the GDR and remained officially ' Number One ' until his death in 1960, while most executive authority was assumed by SED General Secretary Walter Ulbricht.

** East German Premier Walter Ulbricht discusses negotiations about German reunification.

** East German leader Walter Ulbricht resigns as Communist Party leader but retains the position of head of state.

** Walter Ulbricht, East German leader ( b. 1893 )

** Walter Ulbricht announces that the agriculture will be collectivized in East Germany.

Fearful of the possible consequences of this continued outflow of refugees, and aware of the dangers an East German collapse would present to the Soviet Union ’ s Communist satellite empire, Ulbricht pressured Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in early 1961 to stop the outflow and resolve the status of Berlin.

During this time, the refugees ’ mood was rarely expressed in words, though East German laborer Kurt Wismach did so effectively by shouting for free elections during one of Ulbricht ’ s speeches.

Ulbricht also dispersed 40, 000 East German soldiers across the country to suppress any potential protests.

The 1968 invasion by Warsaw Pact troops of Czechoslovakia and the suppression of the Prague Spring were also applauded by Ulbricht – East German soldiers were among those massed on the border but did not cross over, probably due to Czech sensitivities about German troops on their soil – and earned him a reputation as a staunch Soviet ally in contrast to Romanian leader Nicolae Ceauşescu, who condemned the invasion.

Ulbricht lived in Majakowskiring, Pankow, East Berlin.

The party's dominant figure from 1950 to 1971, and effective leader of East Germany, was Walter Ulbricht.

In East Germany, the Soviet occupation authorities forced the eastern branch of the SPD to merge with the KPD ( led by Pieck and Ulbricht ) to form the Socialist Unity Party ( SED ), which became the ruling party in East Germany until 1990.

The division of Berlin following the Second World War caused the cemetery to be within the borders of East Berlin, where it was used to bury East German ( GDR ) leaders, such as Walter Ulbricht and Wilhelm Pieck, the first President of the GDR.

* Walter Ulbricht – East German leader

In 1964, Walter Ulbricht, leader of the Socialist Unity Party which governed East Germany, decided to allow the construction of a television tower on Alexanderplatz, modelled on the Fernsehturm Stuttgart.

The Ulbricht Doctrine, named after East German leader Walter Ulbricht, was the assertion that normal diplomatic relations between East Germany and West Germany could only occur if both states fully recognised each other's sovereignty.

** German communists, led by Walter Ulbricht, arrive in Berlin.

In 1931 the Communists in Berlin decided on a policy of killing two police officers for every communist demonstrator killed by police, and as a result Ulbricht urged fellow communists Heinz Neumann and Hans Kippenberger to plan the assassination of two Berlin police officers, Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenck.

In 1932, the Comintern ordered the Communists to cooperate with the Nazis against the Social Democrats, so Ulbricht and Joseph Goebbels ( the Nazi Gauleiter for Berlin ) both urged their respective constituents to support the Berlin transport workers ' strike in November 1932.

Ironically, he was saved by the Berlin Uprising of 17 June 1953, because the Soviet leadership feared that deposing Ulbricht might be construed as a sign of weakness.

On 13 August 1961, work began on what was to become the Berlin Wall, only two months after Ulbricht had emphatically denied that there were such plans (" Nobody has the intention of building a wall ").

Ulbricht had sent out GDR soldiers and police to seal the border with West Berlin overnight.

After the end of the war, he was sent to Berlin with the Ulbricht Group, led by Walter Ulbricht to work as a journalist for a radio station in the Soviet Zone of occupation.

Ulbricht lost power in 1971, but was kept on as a nominal head of state.

Ulbricht served in World War I from 1915 to 1917 in Galicia on the Eastern Front, and in the Balkans.

Ulbricht spent some time in Spain during the Civil War, as a Comintern representative, ensuring the liquidation of Germans serving on the Republican side who were regarded as not sufficiently loyal to Stalin ; some were sent to Moscow for trial, others were executed on the spot.

Ulbricht lived in the Soviet Union from 1937 to 1945, leaving from Hotel Lux to return to Germany on 30 April 1945.

Within the Soviet occupied zone of Germany, the Social Democrats were pressured into merging with the Communists, on Communist terms, to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany ( Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands or SED ), and Ulbricht played a key role in this.

After the founding of the German Democratic Republic on 7 October 1949, Ulbricht became Deputy Chairman ( Stellvertreter des Vorsitzenden ) of the Council of Ministers ( Ministerrat der DDR ) under Chairman Otto Grotewohl -- i. e., deputy prime minister.

At the third congress of the SED in 1950, Ulbricht announced a five-year plan concentrating on the doubling of industrial production.

In 1956, Ulbricht was awarded the Hans Beimler Medal, for veterans of the Spanish Civil War, which caused controversy among other recipients, who had actually served on the front line.

* Extracts from Walter Ulbricht — A Life for Germany, an illustrated 1968 book on Ulbricht

And finally, upon the death of President Wilhelm Pieck on 7 September 1960, a constitutional amendment of 12 September 1960 replaced the office of President with the Council of State ( Staatsrat der DDR ); Walter Ulbricht became its first chairman.

The actual power holder however was Walter Ulbricht, General Secretary of the governing SED Central Committee from 1950 on.

In 1954, Wollweber became a delegate to the Volkskammer and a member of the SED ’ s Central Committee, but in 1956 his influence began to wane when he clashed with Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker on issues ranging from East Germany ’ s policies towards Poland to the estimate of the number of anti-Communist groups within the GDR.

The South African Communist Party, the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party and Walter Ulbricht of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany sent greetings on the occasion of the founding of the party.

In late 1936, fellow KPD exile Walter Ulbricht, who had parted ways with Münzenberg over the latter's refusal to carry out Stalin's directive to purge the KPD, urged him to take up an offer by Bulgarian Communist party leader Georgi Dimitrov, then residing in Moscow, to return there and assume other missions on behalf of the Comintern.

Ulbricht appears to have been well aware of Münzenberg's probable fate if he returned to Moscow, since he had been communicating to Moscow reports on Münzenberg ' deviance ' from Stalinist orthodoxy.

Shortly after urging Münzenberg to visit Moscow, Ulbricht traveled to Republican Spain, where his work consisted of identifying ' disloyal ' German communists ( or anyone not totally loyal to Stalin ) who were fighting on the Republican side in Spain ; these men were either returned to the Soviet Union to face a tribunal or were executed on the spot.