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The Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin (German: Sozialistische Einheitspartei Westberlins, SEW) was a communist party in West Berlin. The party was founded on 24 November 1962, when the West Berlin local organization of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) was separated from the main party.
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In 1946 East German Communists and Socialists merged into a single left-wing party, the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party of Germany, SED). Originally, the new party pursued a relatively open and independent policy that included de-Nazification, political pluralism, and state intervention in the economy. Starting in ...
1926: Britain paralyzed by a general strike.1931: Financial crisis widens in the United Statesand Europe, which reel from bank failures and climbing unemployment levels. In London, armies of the unemployed riot.1936: The election of a leftist Popular Front government in Spain in February precipitates an uprising by rightists under the leadership of Francisco Franco. Over the next three years, war will rag...1941: Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December brings the United States into the war against the Axis. Combined with the attack on the Soviet Union, which makes Stalin an unlikely ally of the...Founding of the SED
The Red Army entered Berlin on 2 May 1945, and the Wehrmacht surrendered on 8 May. On 9 June the Soviets established a military government in the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany. Its Order Number Twoof the following day contemplated the legalization of anti-Fascist parties. The CommunistParty of Germany (KPD) became legal that day, followed by the Social-Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Liberal Party (LDP), and the Christian-Democratic Union (CDU). The circumstances of the fight against...
The New Party
The congress of unity elected the Socialist Grotewohl and the Communist Wilhem Pieck as cochairs of the SED. The rest of the party's politburo comprised six Socialists and six Communists, including ex-SPD members Erich Gniffke and Max Fechner, and ex-KPD members Anton Ackermann and Walter Ulbricht. Together with the carefully balanced composition of the leadership, another distinctive characteristic of the SED was the enormous size of its membership. In April 1946 the ranks had swelled to 1,3...
The SED After 1947: Cold War and Stalinism
In 1946 the SED platform did not differ substantially from those of the KPD and SPD in 1945. Party theoreticians argued that the establishment of socialism in Germany had to consider the country's particularities and, accordingly, it should follow a different course from that in the Soviet Union, which consisted in bringing the bourgeois revolution to a conclusion before taking up the task of building a proletarian society. This was also the policy of the Soviet military government from 1945...
Grotewohl, Otto (1894-1964): Leader of the German Social Democratic Party in the Soviet-occupied zone. Grotewohl was elected cochair of the SED following the April 1946 merger of the KPD and the SPD. He was prime ministerof the GDR from 1949 to 1964. Pieck, Wilhelm (1876-1960): Leader of the German Communist Party. Pieck joined the Social-Democrats...
It was the ruling party in East Germany from its formation in 1949 until 1989. The SPD managed to preserve its independence in Berlin, forcing the SED to form a small branch in West Berlin, the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin.
DW spoke to participants in the demonstration that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. On October 9, 1989, over 70,000 people gathered in Leipzig calling for freedom and democracy — and...
Left Party, German political party that ruled East Germany as the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and now contests elections in united Germany. At the behest of the Soviet Union, the SED was formed in April 1946 through a merger of the German Communist and Social Democratic parties.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
May 26, 2024 · For nearly three decades, the Berlin Wall stood as a grim symbol of the Cold War divide between East and West. Constructed virtually overnight in August 1961, this concrete barrier split Germany‘s capital in two, separating families and trapping East Germans under strict communist rule.
Abstract. On April 21–22, 1946, the KPD and the SPD in the Soviet occupation zone merged to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany [ Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands or SED]. Wilhelm Pieck (KPD) and Otto Grotewohl (SPD) became co-chairmen of the new party.
