Edith Baumann

Edith Baumann (1 August 1909 – 7 April 1973) was a German politician.

Between 1925 and 1929 she was employed as a typist by a pharmacist wholesale supplier: a succession of typing jobs followed.

She joined the Socialist Workers' Youth movement (Sozialistische Arbeiter-Jugend / SAJ) in 1925, remaining a member till 1931.

Between 1925 and 1933 she was also a member of the Zentralverband der Angestellten (ZdA) trades union.

Although the organisation had roots in the 1930s, this was in most respects a new beginning for an important social and political pillar of the new Germany that the zone's sponsors would create over the next few years.

She joined the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany (Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands / SAPD) in 1931, which was the year in which it broke away from the more moderate mainstream Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands / SPD).

She was also a leading member of the Socialist Youth League of Germany (Sozialistischer Jugend-Verband Deutschlands / SJV / SJVD ), the youth wing of the SAPD.

The Nazi take-over in January 1933 ushered in a rapid series of social and political changes, as the new government lost little time in creating a one-party dictatorship.

Edith Baumann was a political activist in the "wrong" party.

At the party conference in March 1933 she was voted on to the party executive of the SAPD, and continued to devote herself actively to what now counted as "illegal party work".

During this time, between April and August 1933, she was supporting herself by working as a typist with the "National Agency for Milk Products, Oils and fats" ("Reichsstelle für Milcherzeugnisse, Öle u. Fett") based in Berlin.

She was brutally beaten and arrested by the Gestapo in August 1933.

Baumann was detained and tortured while in investigatory custody for more than a year, first in prison at Berlin-Moabit and then at the Barnimstrasse women's prison.

She faced trial in December 1934 and was sentenced by the special "people's court" to three years in prison for preparing to commit high treason ("Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat").

In the event she was released in October 1936.

She remained in Berlin.

Between 1936 and 1938 she was employed as a typist by a Berlin patent attorney.

Between 1936 and 1945 she was employed as a book keeper at the company owned by the "Carbon By-products Association" ("Kohlenwertstoff-Verbände").

Between the late 1940s and early or mid-1950s, sources differing on both the dates of marriage and divorce (see below), she was married to Erich Honecker, at that time the chairman of the Free German Youth organisation, and from 1971 until 1989, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, East Germany's leader.

Edith Baumann was born into a working-class family in Prenzlauer Berg, at that time a recently developed district on the southern edge of Berlin.

Her father was a building worker.

She attended school locally, training as a stenotypist.

The Second World War ended in Europe in May 1945 with a large area surrounding Berlin administered as the Soviet occupation zone.

In September 1945 Edith Baumann was recruited to work with Erich Honecker to establish the Free German Youth (Freie Deutsche Jugend / FDJ) organisation.

She was a co-founder and official of the Free German Youth (Freie Deutsche Jugend / FDJ), the youth organisation that after 1946 became the youth wing of East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands / SED).

Between 1946 and her death she was a member of the country's powerful Party Central Committee.

Sources sometimes identify her as Edith Honecker-Baumann.

Within the Soviet occupation zone the contentious merger, in April 1946, of the Communist Party with the centre-left Social Democratic Party of Germany was intended to avoid the mistakes of 1932 when divisions between the two principal left wing parties were widely believed to have opened the way for the Nazi dictatorship, and both the ensuing war and Holocaust.

In 1946 she became a member both of the SED Party Executive ("Parteivorstand") and of its Central Committee.

Baumann started out as the FDJ General Secretary and then became its deputy chairman, a position she retained until 1949.

The FDJ chairman was Erich Honecker.

In the event the new merged party, the Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands / SED), would have emerged by 1949 as the ruling party in a new one-party dictatorship.

Edith Baumann was a top level party functionary from the outset.

In October 1949 the Soviet occupation zone was relaunched as the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), a separate German state with its political and social institutions consciously modelled on those developed in the Soviet Union during the previous three decades.

Between 1949 and 1953 Baumann belonged to the secretariat of the Central Committee, also serving, between 1953 and 1955, as party secretary of the regional party leadership team for Berlin itself.

Between 1955 and 1961 she headed up working groups and the central committee Women's Section.

The zenith of her career was the period between 1958 and 1963 when she was listed as a candidate member of the Politburo, though she never made the final leap to full Politburo membership.

From 1961 till 1963 she was simultaneously also Central Committee secretary with responsibilities over trade and supply, light goods and food products.

After this, till 1973, the focus of her political career switched to Berlin where she served as a city councillor and secretary to the city executive group ("Magistrat von Berlin").

Under the Leninist constitutional arrangements in force, political power was concentrated on the party, and within the party on its Central Committee, rather than with ministers or with the national parliament.