COMMUNIST LEADER MADE PRESIDENT OF EAST GERMANY

Grey River Argus, 13 October 1949, Page 5

COMMUNIST LEADER MADE PRESIDENT OF EAST GERMANY

Allegiance to Soviet Is Proclaimed

BERLIN, Octobei’ 11

Dr. Will'elm Pieck, ageing Communist leader was unanimously elected President of the new East German Republic to-day. The 73-year-old Pieck, who holds the rank of Colonel in the Russian Army, was unopposed for the post. Herr Otto NucChke, Christian Democrat leader, announced the new Presidents’ name at a joint meeting of the Communist-appointed Upper and Lower Houses of Parliament in Goering’s former Air Ministry in central Berlin. The delegates rose shouting approval and waving bunches of flowers as Herr Nuschke proposed Dr Pieck’s nomination.

The Russian Ambassador, M. Vladimir Semeonov, was smiling broadly. Half an hour earlier he had warmly congratulate! Dr. Pieck on bis “election.”

In his presidential address, Doctor Pieck linked the welfare of the German people with that of the Soviet Union and mad? it clear that the Kremlin had acquired another satellite State.

Dr. Pieck said: “The Soviet Union has implemented the holy right of the German people to independence, development, unity and peace. Away with pessimism and obstinacy. It is not important whether the two German Government recognise eacn other. What is important is they fight jointly for German unity.” Appealing to the West German Government to fight against “measures imposed by the Western imperialists,” Dr Pieck said: “The Government of the German Democratic Republic will never recognise the split which runs through Germany. It will not rest until dismantling has stopped ,the Ruhr and Occupation Statutes are abolished and a unified Germany created.” He asked the deputies to give three cheers for the unity of Germany, friendship with the Soviet Union and the freedom-lomng nations and close economic relations between the I: ast and the West. About 2000 people jammed into the small assembly room for the ceremony and great crowds gathered outside the building. The police snapped to attention in true P'russion fashion and saluted as Dr. Pieck left.

Earlier, Dr. Reinhold Lobendanz the 69-year-old Christian Democrat was elected President of the Upper House of the East German Parliament. His election followed a meeting of the delegates from the five Soviet zone provinces, who sat to form the Upper House. Herr Otto Buchwitz, a 70-year-old Communist, was made vice-Presi-dent.

The French-licensed Berlin newspaper, Kuner ,to-day christened the new Eastern State as “Pieckistan.” The American-licensed A.bend described the President as “Wilhelm the Third.”

Herr Karl Arnold. President of the Upper Chambc’- of tiie West German Parliament, said to-day that co-opera-tion between West Germany and the new East German Government would be possible if the Eastern Government could prove it was no satellite of Russia.

“We will be able to open relations with the new Eastern Government only If it proves to be a representative of the freely and democratically expressed will of the East zone population, Herr /Arnold said.

Red Demonstration For the Election BERLIN, October 11.

In the greatest demonstration Berlin has seen since the days of the Nazis, 30,000 blue-shirted German youths, carrying torches, marched along Unter Den Linden to-night to celebrate the election of Mr Wilhelm Pieck as the first President of the East German Republic. Berlin’s Soviet sector reverberated to the crash of brass bands leading the marchers. Searchlights were trained upwards, silhouetting the ruins of the bomb-shattered city. Celebration rockets made a pattern of gay colours in the sky. A half-million people stood in the flickering shadows cast by the hundreds of torches, cheering as the demonstrators marched by carrying life-size portraits of Pieck, Prime Minister Otto Gratewohl, Stalin and other Communist leaders.

Smartly-uniformed detachments of the “people's police” were another reminder of the old Nazi days. Some of them goose-stepped as they marched past the grandstand in front of the Berlin University, where the new President stood to take the salute.

Addressing the rally. Mr Pieck said his Government would try to speak for all Germans, whether the Western Allies liked it or not.

“We feel sorry that one part of the German people in the West is subjected to the discriminatory Occupation Statute and denied the rights of free and independent national life”, he said. “The responsibility rests upon the democratic forces of the German people whether they will be able to foil the plans of dollar capitalism to turn Western Germany into a campaign field for another war”.