Fred Oelßner (27 February 1903 – 7 November 1977) was a German communist politician, economist and a leading political figure in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). He served as secretary of several departments of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), specializing in cultural and academic matters.
Oelßner became a member of the SED Politburo in 1950. He fell out of favour over the so-called Schirdewan affair in 1958, however, and was excluded from the politburo. Tensions had arisen at the top of government over the extent which the country should be willing to respond positively to pressure from Moscow for a measure of De-Stalinization. Oelßner was able to argue from an economic and political perspective in favour of a cautious easing of restrictions. After a period of a year or so during which it might have been thought that the East German leader, Walter Ulbricht, was open to suggestions, the political downfall of Karl Schirdewan, Fred Oelßner, and other functionaries, were seen as a sign that traditionalist economic hardliners would remain in control. In September 1959 Oelßner published his self-criticism on account of his "opportunism and political blindness" ("Opportunismus und politische Blindheit") during the years 1956/57.
Life Provenance and early years Fred Oelßner was born in Leipzig. Alfred Oelßner, his father, was an activist member of the Social Democratic Party, and later became a prominent Communist Party activist and official. His mother worked in the garments business. After attending middle school at nearby Weißenfels Oelßner remained in Weißenfels, where he embarked on an apprenticeship in business and milling at the Beuditz Mill between 1917 and 1919. At the same time he continued his education, attending evening classes at a business school.
Politicisation He joined the Young Socialists ("Sozialistische Arbeiter-Jugend" / SAJ) in 1917 and the Free Young Socialists ("Freie sozialistische Jugend" / FSJ) in 1918. He was dismissed from his apprenticeship after eighteen month in account of his "political activities". Despite still only being sixteen, Oelßner joined the Independent Social Democratic Party ("Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" / USPD) in May 1919. The party had been formed a couple of years earlier as the result of a split in the mainstream SPD. At that point the principal cause of the split had been the decision by the SPD leadership to vote in support of funding for the war. By 1919 the war was over and economic hardship was leading to increased political polarisation. The Russian Revolution of 1917 had appeared to open up the possibilities for similar developments in Germany. The Communist Party of Germany was founded at a congress held in Berlin during three days between 30 December 1918 and 1 January 1919. Over the next year or so it was the turn of the USPD to break apart, with the majority of is members joining the newly formed Communist Party. However, the USPD seems to have remained relatively active in the Halle-Merseburg locality (where Oelßner was based) through 1920, and it was only in December 1920 that he formally joined the Communist Party. During this period he supported himself with an office job at a co-operative enterprise in Halle till 1921. At the same time he served as a local team leader ("Bezirksleiter") for the Socialist Proletarian Youth organisation ("Sozialistische Proletarierjugend") and for the Young Communists in the Halle-Merseburg locality.
In 1921 Oelßner took part in the so-called March Action, a short-lived workers' revolt in central Germany. He then accepted a paid job, working for the Communist Party Central Committee under the direction of Wilhelm Koenen and Walter Stoecker. From Autumn 1921 till January 1922 he worked as a volunteer with the "Hamburgische Volkszeitung" (newspaper). During 1922/23 he undertook an editorial role with the "Schlesische Arbeiterzeitung", based in Breslau (as Wrocław was then known). Further editorial postings on left-wing newspapers followed in Chemnitz, Aachen and Stuttgart. It was in Stuttgart that he was arrested in December 1923. He faced trial in September 1924 at the Supreme Court in Leipzig and was sentenced to a year in prison. The charge was the usual one under such circumstances of "preparing to commit high treason" ("Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat"). Most of his sentence had already been expunged during his pretrial detention and he was released from prison in Cottbus in January 1925. After this he took further editorial posts in Remscheid and Aachen.
Moscow He was sent by the party to Moscow in April 1926 and joined the Soviet Communist Party the same year. In Moscow he studied at the Comintern's newly established International Lenin School between 1926 and 1928. He remained at the school in 1929, now as an "Aspirant" (loosely "graduate student"). After that, he undertook a higher degree course at the Economics Faculty at the Institute of Red Professors ("Институт красной профессуры"). He returned to Germany in the summer of 1932 and worked in Berlin under Ernst Schneller in the Propaganda Department of the party central committee. His areas of responsibility included party training, and he himself taught at the party's "Rosa Luxemburg Party Academy ("Reichsparteischule Rosa Luxemburg") at Schöneiche-Fichtenau, just outside the city.
Nazi Germany In January 1933 the Nazi Party took power and lost little time in transforming the country into a one-party dictatorship. The party had gained support on the traditional populist pillars of hope and hatred. After the Reichstag fire at the end of February 1933 the authorities became particularly focused on those with a record of Communist Party activism. The party was progressively banned and by the middle of the summer most active communists had been arrested (or worse) or had fled abroad. Fred Oelßner managed to remain in Berlin till December 1933, however. Both his continuing presence - presumably unregistered - and his continuing "party work" are identified in sources as "illegal". In December 1933 he emigrated to the Saarland, which at this point had not yet been re-integrated into Germany. Here he undertook "education" on behalf of the Party Central Committee. By 1934 he was in Paris which was rapidly becoming one of the two headquarter locations of the German Communist Party in exile. In Paris he worked closely with Walter Ulbricht, a future leader of East Germany. At least one source describes Oelßner during 1934 as "Ulbricht's secretary" in Paris. He also headed up "party education" in Amsterdam, Zürich and Paris.
Back in Moscow In 1935 he was one of several exiled German Communists who relocated from Paris to Moscow, where by March 1935 he had accepted an invitation to become a teacher at the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West and at the International Lenin School. The decision to close down the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West was taken in May 1936. In August 1936 Oelßner was dismissed from his teachings posts on account of alleged ideological deviations. The years 1936 - 1938 saw the Stalinist purges at their peak. Many hundred German political refugees from Nazism were arrested and accused of Trotskyite sympathies. Some were shot. Some were sent to labour camps and/or banished to remote regions of the Soviet Unions for many years. Oelßner experienced the period as an unemployed refugee in Moscow, supporting himself as best he could with freelance translating and writing. There are suggestions that he was fortunate to suffer nothing worse. In September 1938 he obtained work in charge of the planning department at the so-called "Bop" Paper Mill in Moscow. He retained this job till June 1941.
Soviet citizen In March 1940 Fred Oelßner was granted Soviet citizenship. A factor was that he was by now married. His first wife was Russian and a Soviet citizen when he married her. His Soviet passport and other identity documents issued to him gave him a new name, "Fritz Larew". Back in Germany, Gestapo files from the start of 1941 list Oelßner as one of their Special manhunt targets (in der "Sonderfahndungsliste") within the Soviet Union.
Between June 1941 and Autumn 1944 he worked in Kuybyshev as an editor, and then as a chief editor, in the German language section of Moscow Radio. (In October 1941, the Communist Party and governmental organisations, diplomatic missions of foreign countries, leading cultural establishments and their staff were evacuated to Kuybyshe, but contingency preparations had been in place for such a move from at least as far back as the start of the war.Andrew Nagorski: The Greatest Battle, 2007, pp. 165–166) Early in 1943 he also became a member of a working group set up by the party leadership dealing with propaganda issues. By the end of 1944 the government apparatus had been back in Moscow for more than a year, and Fred Oelßner with it. Between February and August 1944 he served as a member of an important working group planning a postwar programme for the (German) Communist Party. He was also a member of a smaller sub-group on the "trades union role". In September 1944 he took a teaching position at the German party's "Party Academy Nbr. 12" under the direction of Heinz Hoffmann, just outside Moscow. The school's "pupils" were German prisoners of war.
Soviet occupation zone