Overview

"King of Saboteurs" - Ernst Wollweber, German communist, active in Sweden during the Second World War, eventually Stasi commander in the GDR, finally purged and forgotten. Ernst Friedrich Wollweber (1898 - 1967) was State Secretary of State Security from 1953 to 1955 and Minister of State Security of the German Democratic Republic from 1955 to 1957. He rose quickly through the party ranks and by 1921 had become a member of the KPD's Central Committee and Political Secretary of Hesse-Waldeck. When the KPD was outlawed in Germany after the Reichstag fire of February 1933, Wollweber was forced to flee to Copenhagen and later to Leningrad. From 1936 to 1940, Wollweber organized the "Organisation Against Fascism and in Support of the USSR", better known as the Wollweber League. After World War II, Wollweber returned to Germany and joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany in 1946.