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Concept
Wilhelm Pieck
Summary
Friedrich Wilhelm Reinhold Pieck (ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈpiːk; 3 January 1876 – 7 September 1960) was a German communist politician who served as the chairman of the Socialist Unity Party from 1946 to 1950 and as president of the German Democratic Republic from 1949 to 1960.
Pieck was born in to a Catholic family, as the son of the coachman Friedrich Pieck and his wife Auguste in the eastern part of Guben, in what was then the German Empire and is now Gubin, Poland. Two years later, his mother died. The father soon married the washerwoman Wilhelmine Bahro. After attending elementary school, the young Wilhelm completed a four-year carpentry apprenticeship. As a journeyman, he joined the German Timber Workers Association in 1894.
As a carpenter, in 1894 Pieck joined the wood-workers' federation, which steered him towards joining the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) the following year. Pieck became the chairman of the party urban district in 1899, and in 1906 became full-time secretary of the SPD. In 1914, he moved to a three-room apartment in Berlin-Steglitz. By now he had his own study with many shelves full of books. In May 1915, he was arrested at the big women's demonstration in front of the Reichstag and kept in "protective custody" until October. As Bremen Party secretary in 1916, Pieck had asked Anton Pannekoek to continue teaching socialist theory in the party school. Although the majority of the SPD supported the German government in World War I, Pieck was a member of the party's left wing, which opposed the war. Pieck's openness in doing so led to his arrest and detention in a military prison. After being released, Pieck briefly lived in exile in Amsterdam. Upon his return to Berlin in 1918, Pieck joined the newly founded Communist Party of Germany (KPD).
On 16 January 1919 Pieck, along with Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht was arrested while meeting at Berlin Eden Hotel. Liebknecht and Luxemburg were then killed while "being taken to prison" by a unit of Freikorps. While the two were being murdered, Pieck claimed that he managed to escape.
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