Karl Schirdewan

Karl Schirdewan (14 May 1907 – 14 July 1998) was a German Communist activist who after World War II became a top East German politician. During the mid 1950s, Schirdewan was seen as a potential successor to Walter Ulbricht but fell out of favour in 1958. Ulbricht continued to lead the government until 1971, while 1958 was the year in which Schirdewan was thrown out of the Politburo and placed in charge of the National Archives at Potsdam, a position from which he retired in 1964 or 1965. Schirdewan was born in Stettin, an industrial port city which at that time was the capital of the Prussian Province of Pomerania. His mother's name was Josephine Arentz. His father's identity is unknown, but interviewed in 1994 Schirdewan stated that he believed his father had died shortly after his own birth. Karl Schirewan spent time living in an orphanage and then moved through a succession of foster families. He acquired the name by which he was subsequently identified when he was adopted by Robert and Martha Schirdewan in 1914. His step-parents both worked, in administrative/custodial capacities, at the Botanical Institute in Breslau, but in 1918 his step-mother died of tuberculosis, and his relationship with his step-father's new wife never became close. Karl Schirdewan left school when he was 16 and looked, without success, for work in a book shop. He then, in 1922, began a commercial apprenticeship with a grain company: this occupied him till 1924 when the company went bankrupt. Later, between 1926 and 1929, he worked as an office assistant and as messenger. At one stage he was employed as a transport worker, and there were also periods of unemployment, notably between 1929 and 1931. On the political front, Karl Schirdewan joined the Young Communists aged 16, in 1923 and the Breslau branch of the Communist Party itself in 1925. Between 1925 and 1927 he was employed with the Young Communists as an official, in September 1929 voted onto the organisation's central committee, and appointed chairman of the Silesian regional Communist Party branch.