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Konrad Naumann

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Konrad Naumann
Naumann in 1982
First Secretary of the
Socialist Unity Party in Berlin
In office
26 November 1971 – 22 November 1985
Second Secretary
  • Helmut Müller
Preceded byPaul Verner
Succeeded byGünter Schabowski
Second Secretary of the
Socialist Unity Party in Berlin
In office
1964–1971
First Secretary
Preceded byHans Wagner
Succeeded byHelmut Müller
Personal details
Born(1928-11-25)25 November 1928
Leipzig, Free State of Saxony, Weimar Germany (now Germany)
Died25 July 1992(1992-07-25) (aged 63)
Guayaquil, Ecuador
Political partySocialist Unity Party
(1946–1990)
Other political
affiliations		Communist Party of Germany (1945–1946)
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1977; div. 1987)​
Alma materCentral Komsomol School
Occupation
  • Politician
  • Party Clerk
Awards
Central institution membership
Other offices held

Konrad Naumann (25 November 1928 – 25 July 1992) was an East German politician. He built his career; initially, in regional politics, but between 1966 and 1986 he was important nationally as a member of the Central Committee of the country's ruling SED (party).[1] At times, Naumann was the unofficial number two to General Secretary Erich Honecker and seen as his potential successor.

He was also appointed in May 1976 a member of the party's Politburo. Most Politburo members remained in post till they died. Naumann was unusual in finding himself relieved of his Politburo (and other party) duties while still alive, following a speech in October 1985 which was felt to be insufficiently supportive of the party line.[2]

Life

Early years

Konrad Naumann was born in Leipzig during the final years of what later came to be known as the Weimar period. His father was a financial auditor and his mother worked in garment manufacturing. He attended junior school in Holzhausen, on the east side of Leipzig, till 1931, and then middle school in Engelsdorf, a couple of miles to the north. His senior school, which he attended formally till 1945, was also in Leipzig. In 1939 became a member and later a group leader in the "Deutsches Jungvolk", by now part of the Hitler Youth organisation. In 1944 his class was conscripted as Luftwaffenhelfer which by this stage in the war had become in most respects a schoolboy branch of the army. Early in 1945 he was stationed in nearby Bad Lausick. Shortly before the Americans arrived in April/May 1945 he deserted.[1]

Politics

In November 1945 Naumann celebrated his seventeenth birthday and joined the Communist Party. Between January and March 1946 he attended the local Party Academy. He then took a full-time job with the local Leipzig district board of the Free German Youth (FDJ / Freie Deutsche Jugend) and its Dresden based regional board for Saxony. In the meantime the German Communist Party was abolished, in April 1946, as a result of a controversial merger with the more moderately left-wing SPD (party). Within the Soviet occupation zone this established the basis for a return to one-party government. Communist Party members, along with those from the SPD, were invited to sign their membership across to the new Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED / Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands ), and Konrad Naumann was one of many who did so.[3] For a period he obtained promotions in his work with the FDJ, becoming local FDJ President in Leipzig.[3] Then, early in 1948, he was accused of "political mistakes" and relieved of his party functions, following which he obtained a job as an assistant mechanic in the lignite (brown coal) mines at Hirschfelde on the eastern side of Saxony.[1] Despite his difficultse earlier in the year, 1948/49 found Naumann working as an instructor for the FDJ National Council, based in Berlin. Later in 1949 he moved north, becoming FDJ Secretary for work and social affairs with the organisations regional board in Mecklenburg.[1] He retained this post till 1951, at the same time sitting as a delegate in the Mecklenburg Regional Assembly.[3]

Promotions

The founder of the FDJ and its leader between 1946 and 1955 was Erich Honecker who was becoming increasingly influential in party circles by 1950 and whom Konrad Naumann got to know through their FDJ work.[4] In 1951 Naumann was sent to Moscow, signalling that he had been identified for future promotion. Between 1951 and 1952 he studied at Moscow's Komsomol Academy. Between 1952 and 1957 he served as First Secretary with the FDJ regional leadership in Frankfurt (Oder), was on the candidates list for membership of the regional SED (party) leadership team and a district councillor.[1] Nationally, he was also a member of the Central Council of the FDJ Central Committee between 1952 and 1967, serving as Committee Secretary at various times. In 1959 he attended the Seventh World Festival of Youth and Students in Vienna, leading a party of 550 East German young people.[5]

The senior politician

In 1963 Konrad Naumann was listed as a candidate for membership of the Party Central Committee. In September 1966 he became one of its 131 members.[1] The Central Committee was the German Democratic Republic's most powerful political institution. Naumann also retained his powerbase at a regional level, serving as Second Secretary in the Party's Berlin Regional leadership from 1964 till 1971, and from 1971, in succession to Paul Verner, as First Secretary in the Berlin party leadership.[4] He also served from 1967 till 1986 as a Berlin City Councillor and a member of the National Legislature (Volkskammer).[6]

Within the Central Committee, in 1973 Naumann was a candidate for Politburo membership. He joined the politburo in 1976. The next year he married, as her third husband, the actress Vera Oelschlegel. The extent and nature of the relationship between Naumann and Oelschlegel while the latter was still married to her second husband, the writer Hermann Kant, was the subject of rumour and, at least in the west, press speculation.[7] The marriage would last for ten years.[8]

High living and political power

Through the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s Konrad Naumann lived as a member of the political elite, apparently little affected by rumours, later crystallized in released intelligence files and press reports, of an intemperate life-style[9] He continued to live, like most of the Politburo members, in the exclusive Waldsiedlung residential quarter just outside Berlin.[10] From 1984 till 1985 he was secretary of the Central Committee and, from 1984 till 1986, a member of the State Council.[1]

Nemesis

At the 11th congress of the Central Committee, on 22 November 1985, superficially on account of a speech he had given the previous month to the National Academy for Social Sciences, Konrad Neumann was stripped, reportedly at his own request, of his key Central Committee secretarial function and his Politburo membership on health grounds.[2] Informal rumours rapidly proliferated, attributing his fall to poorly judged remarks and actions, for instance at social events following excessive alcohol consumption; however, commentators pointed out that within the East German ruling circle, alcoholic excesses were not restricted to Konrad Neumann.[2] Politburo resignations were highly unusual, however. Nevertheless, directly after his fall it was also reported that he spent several weeks in a Government Hospital, undergoing treatment for acute liver damage.[11] More thoughtful commentators placed the Naumann resignation in the context of growing tensions in the country's most important political and economic partnership. Moves to modernise Soviet industry under Yuri Andropov and Mikhail Gorbachev threatened greater commercial competition across the Comecon area for East Germany's own industrial sector, along with the threat of higher prices for energy and other commodities from the Soviet Union.[2] East German attempts to diversify and extend trade relationships outside the Comecon family were nevertheless resisted by the Soviets.[12] At the same time the leadership in East Berlin were caught unprepared for the new questioning of old Stalinist certainties concerning the relationship between the state and its citizens which were being consciously unleashed by the new General Secretary of the Party Central Committee in Moscow.[2] According to this analysis, Erich Honecker sacked his roguish former FDJ comrade[4] because pressures from Moscow left him needing a strong united front from a well controlled and disciplined politburo at the heart of political power in East Berlin.[2] Nor did Naumann go entirely quietly. The possibility surfaced that he could disclose what he knew about Party Organisation and might even, if necessary, turn to the western press.[11] In the end there was something reassuringly familiar about Naumann's next position. Like Karl Schirdewan in 1958, in 1986 Konrad Naumann was given a post, in the first instance as a Research Assistant, with the National Archives Administration in Potsdam,[11] where he remained till 1989.[1] He took early retirement in 1990 and in April 1991 relocated to Quito in Ecuador where he died just over a year later.[1]

Awards and honours

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Helmut Müller-Enbergs; Monika Kaiser. "Naumann, Konrad * 25.11.1928, † 25.7.1992 Mitglied des Politbüros des ZK u. 1. Sekretär der Bezirksleitung Berlin der SED". Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur: Biographische Datenbanken. Retrieved 10 February 2015.
  2. ^ a b c d e f "Erich kommt SED-Chef Honecker schaßte seinen mächtigsten Widersacher - er braucht Rückenstärkung gegenüber Moskau". Der Spiegel. Der Spiegel (online). December 1985. Retrieved 10 February 2015.
  3. ^ a b c "Konrad Naumann fr. deutscher Politiker; SED (DDR)". Internationales Biographisches Archiv 44/1992 vom 19. Oktober 1992 (lm). Munzinger-Archiv GmbH, Ravensburg. Retrieved 11 February 2015.
  4. ^ a b c Helmut Müller (1999). "Erinnerungen eines "Mitteldeckoffiziers"". WendeJahre 1949–1989. Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin. Retrieved 11 February 2015.
  5. ^ "130 Nationen treffen sich in Wien: Interview mit dem Leiter der DDR-Delegation zu den Weltfestspielen der Jugend und Studenten". Neues Deutschland (online archive). 18 July 1959. Retrieved 11 February 2015.
  6. ^ "Was sie will: Erstmals wählen die Ost-Berliner ihre Abgeordneten zur DDR-Volkskammer - ein weiterer Verstoß gegen den Viermächte-Status der Stadt". Der Spiegel (online). 8 June 1981. Retrieved 11 February 2015.
  7. ^ "Datum: 30. Januar 1978 Betr.: Manifest". Der Spiegel (online). 30 July 1978. Retrieved 11 February 2015.
  8. ^ Anja Maier (interviewer) [in German]; Vera Oelschlegel (interviewee) (11 August 2012). "Ich fand mich nie besonders schön". taz Verlags u. Vertriebs GmbH, Berlin. Retrieved 11 February 2015. {{cite web}}: |author1= has generic name (help)
  9. ^ Hartmut Kasca (25 January 2012). "Geheimakte HoneckerSo liebte das DDR-Politbüro Fremdgeher, Charmeure – und Walter Ulbricht klaute seinem besten Freund die Frau .... Sie verkauften sich als leuchtende Vorbilder, aber waren voller Laster! Sie herrschten über 17 Millionen Bürger und nahmen sich frech, was sie wollten. Die Mitglieder des DDR-Politbüros". Bild. Retrieved 12 February 2015.
  10. ^ Regine Sylvester [in German] (26 April 1991). "Weg mit dieser Frau". Die Zeit (online). Retrieved 12 February 2015.
  11. ^ a b c "Ab ins Archiv". Der Spiegel (online). 17 February 1986. Retrieved 12 February 2015.
  12. ^ Zhong Zhong Chen (June 2014). "Defying Moscow, engaging Beijing: The German Democratic Republic's relations with the People's Republic of China, 1980-1989" (PDF). A thesis submitted to the Department of International History of the London School of Economics for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, London. London School of Economics (LSE Theses Online). pp. 75–77, 86–88. Retrieved 7 February 2015.
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