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Ernst Thälmann | |
|---|---|
| Born | Ernst Johannes Fritz Thälmann 16 April 1886 Hamburg, German Empire |
| Died | 18 August 1944 (aged 58) Buchenwald concentration camp, Weimar, Thuringia, Nazi Germany |
| Cause of death | Execution by gunshot |
| Nationality | German |
| Political orientation | Marxism |
| Political party | KPD |
Ernst Johannes Fritz Thälmann was a German politician and Marxist-Leninist who served as the Chairman of the Communist Party of Germany from 1925 until his imprisonment in 1933. He rebuilt the Communist Party following the failures of the Spartacist uprising and German October. In February 1933, the Reichstag Fire Decree was passed, and the Nazi government began arresting dozens of Communists. Thälmann was forced into hiding until his eventual arrest in Berlin on 3 March 1933 by the Gestapo. He was executed at the Buchenwald concentration camp on Hitler's personal orders in 1944.
The Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation (a youth organisation in the German Democratic Republic), the Thälmann Battalion (a battalion of the International Brigades which fought on the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War), the Ernst Thälmann Company, a number of awards in East Germany, various streets, stadiums, towns, shipyards, factories, and schools in Germany, Donetsk, and Russia, a training ship, a mountain range in Antarctica, and even an island off the coast of Cuba all bare/bore his name.