Albert Norden

Albert Norden (4 December 1904 – 30 May 1982) was a German communist politician.

Early years

Albert Norden was born in Myslowitz, Silesia on 4 December 1904, one of the five recorded children born to the liberal rabbi (1870–1943) and his wife, Emilie Meseritz/Norden (1876–1931).

In 1919, he joined the Young Communist League of Germany. The following year, he became a member of the Communist Party of Germany. From 1923 onwards, he held editorial positions in various communist publications. Between 1931 and 1933, he was the editor of ''Rote Fahne'' ('Red Flag').Amos, Heike.
Politik und Organisation der SED-Zentrale 1949–1963: Struktur und Arbeitsweise von Politbüro, Sekretariat, Zentralkomitee und ZK-Apparat
'. Diktatur und Widerstand, Bd. 4. Münster: Lit, 2003, pp. 547–48.

In exile

In 1933 Norden emigrated to France. He also spent time in exile in Denmark and Czechoslovakia. In 1938, he returned to France. Norden was detained in France 1939–1940. In 1941, he was able to emigrate to the United States. During World War II, his father died in the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

In exile in Paris and New York he worked with various popular front publications. He wrote some chapters, dealing with the international linkages of the German NSDAP, in the widely read 1933 '' Braunbuch über Reichstagsbrand und Hitlerterror'' ('Brown Book on Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror'). In 1940, he married Herta Fischer (1908–1990), and their son, Johnny, was born in October 1942. In October 1946 he returned to Berlin, where he became editor of the weekly ''Deutschlands Stimme'' ('Voice of Germany').

Political career in East Germany

In 1949, he was assigned as head of the Press Section of the Information Department of Ministerial Council of the German Democratic Republic, working under Gerhart Eisler. In December 1952, he was purged from his position in the Press Department, but obtained a professorship at Humboldt University.Herf, Jeffrey.
Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys
'. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997, p. 170.

In 1954, he became director of the National Council of the National Front for a Democratic Germany. He would also become director of the Committee for German Unity. In 1955, he became a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). He was elected as one of the secretaries of the Central Committee. In 1958 he became a member of the Politburo of the party.

Norden served as head of the Agitation Committee of the Politburo, 1955–67. He was in-charge of the Information & Foreign Department of the Politburo until 1979. In 1958, he became a member of the ''Volkskammer'' (People's Chamber, the parliament of the GDR). In 1960 he became the head of the 'West Commission'. In June 1965 Norden suggested that regional elections in the German Democratic Republic should be open for alternate candidates.

In 1963, Norden became a member of the National Defense Council, a post he held until 1979. In 1976 he became a member of the State Council. In April 1981, the then ailing Norden was left out of the Central Committee and Politburo at the 10th SED party congress. In the same year he left the ''Volkskammer'' and State Council positions.

Brown Book

After the war Norden argued in several publications, articles and speeches that there was a direct continuation between the Hitler and Adenauer governments. In 1965 the National Front published a work by Norden, '' Braunbuch'' ('Brown Book'), in which he accused over 1,900 politicians, state officials and other prominent persons in West Germany of having worked for the Nazi regime in the past. The book became a reference in the West German New Left, which increasingly had begun to question the official historiography on the Nazi period.Herf, Jeffrey.
Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys
'. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997, pp. 182–5.

Religious identity

Norden was born into a Jewish petty bourgeois family, the son of a rabbi.Timm, Angelika.
Jewish Claims against East Germany: Moral Obligations and Pragmatic Policy
'. Budapest: Central European University Press, 1997. p. 61 As an adult, Norden declined to identify himself as a Jew. He was however, one of the most prominent persons of Jewish origin in East German society.Ó Dochartaigh, Pól.
The Portrayal of Jews in GDR Prose Fiction
'. Amsterdamer Publikationen zur Sprache und Literatur, 126. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997. p. 14

References

External links

The thugs of Europe (1942) - a pamphlet on the Third Reich
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Norden, Albert
1904 births
1982 deaths
People from Mysłowice
People from the Province of Silesia
Jewish German politicians
Jewish socialists
Communist Party of Germany politicians
Members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany
Members of the State Council of East Germany
Members of the Provisional Volkskammer
Members of the 3rd Volkskammer
Members of the 4th Volkskammer
Members of the 5th Volkskammer
Members of the 6th Volkskammer
Members of the 7th Volkskammer
Academic staff of the Humboldt University of Berlin
Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States
Recipients of the National Prize of East Germany
Recipients of the Patriotic Order of Merit in gold