biography
pronunciation:
[peek]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1876–1960)
|
| biography:
| East German politician and president (1949–60), born near Berlin. Originally a carpenter, he helped found the Spartacus League (1915) and the German Communist Party (1918), leading the unsuccessful ‘Spartacus uprising’ in Berlin in 1919. Elected as a Communist to the Reichstag (1928), he was forced into exile in 1933, and fled to Moscow where he became secretary of the Comintern (1935). In 1945 he returned to Berlin, founded the dominant Socialist Unity Party (1946), and from 1949 until his death served as president of East Germany. |
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