Karl Maron

Karl Maron (27 April 1903 – 2 February 1975) was a German politician, who served as the interior minister of East Germany. He also assumed different posts in East Germany's government.

Karl Maron
Minister of Interior
In office
1 July 1955 – 14 November 1963
Preceded byWilli Stoph
Succeeded byFriedrich Dickel
Personal details
Born27 April 1903
Berlin, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire
Died2 February 1975 (aged 71)
East Berlin, German Democratic Republic
NationalityGerman
Political partySocialist Unity Party of Germany

Early life and education

Maron was born in 1903.[1] He was educated in Russia.[2]

Career

Maron was a metal worker.[3] In 1926, he joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).[3] During the Nazi regime, he left Germany in 1934 for Denmark and then settled in Russia.[2][3] He returned to Berlin under the protection of a Russian general a few days after the Red Army captured the city in 1945.[2] Immediately after his return he became deputy lord mayor of Berlin.[4] In 1946, he became a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED).[3][5] From 1946 to 1950 he was the chief editor of daily Neues Deutschland, which was founded in 1946 by the SED.[3] He was also the director of Berlin municipality's economy department at the end of the 1940s.[6]

He became the chief of the German people’s police or more commonly Volkspolizei in June 1950 when former chief Kurt Fischer died.[7] In February 1953, he publicly argued "the Volkspolizei can never be neutral or unpolitical."[7] In 1954, he was named as the member of SED's central committee.[3] During his tenure as the chief of Volkspolizei he also assumed the role of deputy interior minister.[8]

He was appointed interior minister on 1 July 1955, replacing Willi Stoph.[1][9] In this position he was promoted in 1962 to Generaloberst. In 1961, he became a member of the working group formed by the Politburo to develop ways to end refugee flow from East Germany.[10] The other members of the group were then security chief Erich Honecker and Stasi chief Erich Mielke.[10] Maron's tenure as interior minister ended on 14 November 1963.[1][11] He was succeeded by Friedrich Dickel as interior minister.[12] From 1958 to 1967 he served as the representative of Volkskammer.[3] In 1964, Maron founded the Institute for Demoscopy (Institut für Meinungsforschung in German) that was a demoscopic research body sponsored by the SED.[13]

Personal life and death

Maron was the step-father of author Monika Maron.[14][15] Karl Maron married her mother in 1955.[16] He died in 1975.[3]

References
  1. "East German ministries". Rulers. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  2. "In Berlin zone". Toledo Blade. 8 December 1948. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  3. Caroline Schaumann (27 August 2008). Memory Matters: Generational Responses to Germany's Nazi Past in Recent Women's Literature. Walter de Gruyter. p. 255. ISBN 978-3-11-020659-3. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  4. "Berlin and London think Hitler alive". Toronto Daily Star. 8 September 1945. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  5. "1 July 1961". Chronik der Mauer. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  6. "Reds take complete control of Berlin city hall". The Day. 1 December 1948. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  7. Bessel, Richard (2003). "Policing in East Germany in the wake of the Second World". Crime, History & Societies. 7 (2). Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  8. McLellan, Josie (March 2007). "State Socialist Bodies: East German Nudism from Ban to Boom". The Journal of Modern History. 79: 48–79. doi:10.1086/517544. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  9. Deirdre Byrnes (2011). Rereading Monika Maron: Text, Counter-text and Context. Peter Lang. p. 138. ISBN 978-3-03911-422-1. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  10. Hope M. Harrison (27 June 2011). Driving the Soviets up the Wall: Soviet-East German Relations, 1953-1961. Princeton University Press. p. 194. ISBN 978-1-4008-4072-4. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  11. "Monika Maron". Central European Forum. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  12. Hertle, Hans-Hermann (Winter–Spring 2001). "The Fall of the Wall: The Unintended Self-Dissolution of East Germany's Ruling Regime" (PDF). Cold War International History Project Bulletin (12–13): 1–31. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 December 2012. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  13. Patrick Major; Johnathan Osmond (2002). The Workers' and Peasants' State: Communism and Society in East Germany Under Ulbricht, 1945-71. Manchester University Press. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-7190-6289-6. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  14. Zimmermann, Ulf (1 January 2005). "Monika Maron. Geburtsort Berlin". World Literature Today. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  15. Lei, Zhang (25 October 2011). "From the Bamboo to the Iron Curtain". Global Times. Archived from the original on 29 October 2011. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  16. Deirdre Byrnes (2011). Rereading Monika Maron (PDF). Oxford: BI50. ISBN 978-3-0353-0056-7. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 19 December 2014.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.