Peter Florin

Peter Florin ( born October 2, 1921 in Cologne, † February 17, 2014 in Berlin) was a German politician ( SED). He was deputy foreign minister and permanent representative of the GDR at the United Nations in New York City.

Life

Florin, son of the Communist Party functionary and member of the Reichstag Wilhelm Florin, attended from 1927 to 1933, the primary school and secondary school in Essen and Berlin. The family emigrated to France in 1933. After the arrest of his mother in Paris, he was taken by the International Red Aid to Moscow, where he attended the Karl Liebknecht School. In 1938, he joined the Young Communist League. In the same year his German citizenship revoked. He studied from 1940 at the University Mendeleyev Chemical Technology in Moscow, volunteered in 1941 as a soldier to the Red Army in 1942 and attended four months, the special training of the Comintern School in Kushnarenkovo ​​, where he met among others Wolfgang Leonhard and Markus Wolf. From 1943 to 1944 he was a partisan in Belarus. Afterwards he worked until 1945 at the National Committee for a Free Germany.

He came back in 1945 with the Communist Party Initiative Group for Saxony under Anton Ackermann to Germany and became for a short time district administrator in the district of Wittenberg. He then became editor of the "People's Daily " and later the " freedom " in Hall and a member of the Secretariat of the SED state executive Saxony- Anhalt. Head of the Department of International Relations After a serious illness in 1948 and 1949 he was in September 1949 to early 1950, Deputy Secretary of the foreign affairs commission at the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED and from October 1949, Deputy Head of the Office or the Department of International Relations of the Central Committee of the SED. From January 1950 to 1952 deputy head of the Department of Political Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the GDR, also head of the Department of the USSR or the so-called Department I, which dealt with the relations with the Soviet Union and the " people's democracies ". From 1953 to 1966 he was Head of International Relations of the Central Committee of the SED.

Florin 1954 was the candidate of the SED Central Committee and from 1958 to 1989 a member of the Central Committee of the SED. He was from 1954 to 1990 deputy of the GDR People's Chamber, where he served from 1954 to 1963 as chairman, from 1963 to 1967 as Vice Chairman and from 1967 to 1971 as an ordinary member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

In 1959 he participated in the Geneva Conference of Foreign Ministers of the great powers as a member of the East German delegation. 1967 to 1969, and thus he was Ambassador of the GDR in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, then to 1973 State Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs until 1989 during the Prague Spring.

Florin was of 1972/1973 the GDR in the accession negotiations with the United Nations and thereafter remained constant representative of the GDR at the United Nations in New York until 1981. 1980 to 1981 he represented the GDR in the UN Security Council. Florin was 1982-1988 Chairman of the National Commission for UNESCO of the GDR. He was President of the General Assembly of the United Nations in its 42nd session in 1987, during their 15th special session in 1988. Between 1988 and 1990 he was elected member of the Council of State. In 1990 he was Chairman of the Provisional Board of the Committee of Anti-Fascist resistance fighters for a short time.

Florin has received numerous awards: including 1944 in the USSR, the Order of the Red Star, 1955 and 1970, the Patriotic Order of Merit, in 1958 the medal for fighters against fascism, the 1965 Banner of Labor, in 1970 the Soviet Order of the Great Patriotic War, 1971 honor clasp to the Patriotic Order of Merit, in 1981 the Karl -Marx- Orden, 1985 Great Star of Friendship of Nations and in 1986 the title hero of the work.

Florin was married and father of three children since 1945 with precious mirowa ( 1921-2012 ).

Writings

  • The foreign policy of sovereign socialist GDR. Berlin, 1966
643665
de