Person

Wilhelm Pieck

1876 – 1960 · aged 84

German communist politician, president of GDR (1876-1960)

Born
3 Jan 1876 · Guben
Died
7 Sept 1960 · Berlin

Life timeline

Their life from birth to death. On the timeline, world events of the time are shown faintly.

Showing 97 years
  1. 3 Jan 1876BornBorn in Guben
  2. 1946AwardHonorary citizen of Hoyerswerda
  3. 1949 – 1960RolePresident of East Germany
  4. 7 Sept 1960DiedDied in Berlin

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Meanwhile in the world

Major world events during their lifetime (1876 – 1960).

  1. 18961896 Summer Olympics
  2. 1898Spanish–American War
  3. 1904 – 1905Russo-Japanese War
  4. 1914 – 1918World War I
  5. 1915 – 1923Armenian genocide
  6. 1917Balfour Declaration
  7. 1917February Revolution
  8. 1917October Revolution
  9. 1917 – 1922Russian Civil War
  10. 1919 – 1920Paris Peace Conference
  11. 1920Treaty of Versailles
  12. 1933 – 1945The Holocaust
  13. 19341934 FIFA World Cup
  14. 19361936 Summer Olympics
  15. 1937 – 1945Second Sino-Japanese War
  16. 19381938 FIFA World Cup
  17. 1938Munich Agreement
  18. 1939 – 1940Winter War
  19. 1939 – 1945World War II
  20. 1940 – 1945Auschwitz concentration camp
  21. 1941Attack on Pearl Harbor
  22. 1941 – 1945Eastern Front
  23. 1941Operation Barbarossa
  24. 1942 – 1943Battle of Stalingrad
  25. 1945Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
  26. 1945 – 1946Nuremberg trials
  27. 19501950 FIFA World Cup
  28. 1950 – 1953Korean War
  29. 1953 – 1959Cuban Revolution
  30. 19541954 FIFA World Cup
  31. 1955 – 1975Vietnam War
  32. 1956Hungarian Revolution of 1956
  33. 1956Suez Crisis
  34. 19581958 FIFA World Cup
  35. 1959Antarctic Treaty System

Biography

Friedrich Wilhelm Reinhold Pieck (German pronunciation: [ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈpiːk]; 3 January 1876 – 7 September 1960) was a German communist politician who served as the co-chairman of the Socialist Unity Party from 1946 to 1950 and as the only president of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) from 1949 until his death in 1960.

Pieck had been active in the SPD since the 1890s, breaking from the party in 1917 over his opposition to the First World War. He co-founded the Spartacus League and the KPD, rising to become chairman of the latter organization following the imprisonment of Ernst Thälmann and John Schehr by the Nazis. After the end of the Second World War, he played a key role in the 1946 merger of the KPD and SPD into the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, which served as the ruling party of East Germany from 1949 until 1989.

Text from the Wikipedia article Wilhelm Pieck, CC BY-SA 4.0

About this information

Dates and life events come from this person’s Wikidata entry.

We only show events that the sources give a date for. Anything without a date is left out rather than guessed.