Wilhelm Pieck, whose brief biography is presented in this article, is the founder of the German Communist Party. He is the head of the German Bolsheviks, a brilliant leader of the Comintern, a deputy of the Reichstag, the first and only president of the German Democratic Republic.
Childhood
Wilhelm Peak, whose biography is very fascinating, was born on January 3, 1876 in Guben. His house was in the eastern part of the city. William's father was a personal coachman. After receiving education, the young man went to wander. So it was accepted in the old days. Wilhelm was brought up strictly in Catholic traditions.
Education
First, William graduated from an ordinary public high school. Then his father sent his son to study as a carpenter. There was a prison opposite the school, and William often saw prisoners. These were mainly thieves, murderers and troublemakers. The teachers kept telling William to stay away from them. Finally, vocational training was completed and, becoming a joiner-apprentice, he went to look for work.
Joining a union
On the way, he met a young guy, an apprentice potter. And William Peak, not even having time to become a worker, joined the union of woodworkers. They paid money there, but not enough, at 2 pfenning per kilometer. His task was to agitate the people he met to join the union. Wilhelm felt so in his element that he even joined first in a singing circle, and then, in 1895, in the SPD (German Social Democratic Party).
Since 1896 he got a job as a joiner in Bremen. And since 1899 he led the district party organization in the same city. In 1905, he chaired the SPD and was elected to the city parliament. In 1906, V. Peak was promoted to the post of secretary of a party organization. From 1907 to 1908, V. Peak studied at a party school. At that time, R. Luxemburg greatly influenced his views. In 1910, he became head of education at the SPD secretariat.
During the first world
During the First World War, William was a fierce opponent of dividing the world into classes and actively participated in the left social-democratic movement. He managed to agitate two thousand women for anti-government riots. For this, Peak ended up in Moabit Prison, from which they wanted to send him to the front. But he avoided this by working as a telephone operator.
In 1917, Peak Wilhelm refused to go to the front and received 1.5 years in prison for this, but his fellow lawyers obtained an acquittal. William hid in Amsterdam, and at the same time distributed the print edition of The Struggle. In 1918, uprisings in the German fleet began. The peak at that time had already returned to Berlin and was again in the thick of things. The leaders of the uprising were arrested and executed, but Peak again managed to escape thanks to a fake passport.
Post-war activities
V. Peak returned to Berlin after the war. He became a co-founder of the KKE (Communist Party of Germany). In 1919 he participated in the uprising and was arrested. He was a witness at the final interrogation of K. Liebknecht and R. Luxembourg. Unlike them, he managed to escape from arrest.
In 1920, V. Peak was legalized and turned out to be the fourth in the list of elections in the Reichstag. But only Levy and Zetkin could become deputies, as the Reds gained only 1.7% of the vote. The peak began a violent activity to seize party power. His main goal was to discredit the chairman. As a result, Levy was still removed from his post and expelled from the party.
Political career
In 1921, William Peak was elected to the executive committee of the Communist International. Then his acquaintance with Lenin took place. At the OKPG congress, it was decided to send V. Peak to the Russian leader in Moscow. He praised his efforts to purge the Communists. The peak at this time met such famous personalities as Dzerzhinsky, Lunacharsky and Kalinin. Subsequently, these ties were strong and fruitful.
At the same time, V. Peak - deputy of the Prussian Landtag. He remained in this position until 1928, until his election to the Reichstag. In 1922, V. Peak became one of the founders of Red Aid at the international level, and three years later - chairman of this organization in Germany. In 1923, in Germany, two coup attempts were made, red terror swept across the country. But the authorities quickly crushed all rebellions.
Wilhelm was accused of "Luxembourgism" and was forced to resign from the party post. Telman took his place. For six months, Peak Wilhelm worked as district secretary. But he was not forgotten in Moscow, and Peak was included in the members of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. In 1931, he became a member of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, representing Germany in it.
In 1933, when Hitler came to power, the persecution of the German Communists began. Wilhelm participated in the illegal meeting of the Central Committee of the KKE, which took place near Berlin. And in August 1933, he was deprived of German citizenship. In 1934, John Sher was killed. V. Peak was his deputy and, accordingly, headed the Communist Party. But in August he was forced to leave for Paris.
True, the Communist Party of Germany continued its activities, but only clandestinely, from abroad. In 1935, at the Brussels Conference, V. Peak was elected to the post of chairman of the KKE while E. Telman was in custody. The peak went to Moscow. In 1943, he became one of the organizers of the Free Germany national committee.
Presidency
He returned to Berlin Peak only in 1945 and continued political activity in Germany. Wilhelm tried to combine the KKE and the SPD. In 1946, V. Peak, together with O. Grotevol, co-chaired the SED. In 1949, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was formed. Its first and only president was William Peak. In this post, he remained until his death. V. Peak died in 1960, at the age of 84.
