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 by	Willi Stoph
Succeeded by	Friedrich Dickel
Personal details
Born	27 April 1903 Berlin, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire
Died	2 February 1975 (aged 71) East Berlin, German Democratic Republic
Nationality	German
Political party	Socialist 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] Karl Maron married her mother in 1955.[15] 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. Richard Bessel (2003). "Policing in East Germany in the wake of the Second World". Crime, History & Societies. 7 (2).
8. Josie McLellan (March 2007). "State Socialist Bodies: East German Nudism from Ban to Boom". The Journal of Modern History. 79: 48–79. doi:10.1086/517544.
9. Deirdre Byrnes (2011). Rereading Monika Maron: Text, Counter-text and Context. Peter Lang. p. 138. ISBN 978-3-03911-422-1.
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.
11. "Monika Maron". Central European Forum. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
12. Hans-Hermann Hertle (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.
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.
14. Ulf Zimmermann (1 January 2005). "Monika Maron. Geburtsort Berlin". World Literature Today. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
15. Deirdre Byrnes (2011). Rereading Monika Maron (PDF). Oxford: BI50. ISBN 978-3-0353-0056-7. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 March 2016.

External links