Franz Dahlem

Franz Dahlem (14 January 1892 – 17 December 1981) was a German politician. Dahlem was a leading official of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and, after 1945, of East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED).

By the early 1950s he had become well known and popular with many comrades in the higher reaches of the SED (party) and was seen by some as a possible rival to the country's leader, Walter Ulbricht: he was stripped of his functions in 1953. He was formally rehabilitated in 1956, however.

He sat as a Communist member of the German Reichstag between 1928 and 1933. and, except for a few years following his fall from grace, as an SED member of the East German Volkskammer (''People's Chamber'') between 1947 and 1976. Of more significance in terms of the East German power structures, he was also a member of the ruling party's Central Committee from 1946 till 1953, and again from 1957 till his retirement in 1974. Provided by Wikipedia