Kurt Müller

Kurt Müller, born in Berlin in 1903, was one of the leading communist politicians in the Federal Republic of Germany.

He had been a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) since the age of 17. Kurt Müller had worked for the Communist International Youth Organisation in Moscow. He later became involved in the communist resistance during National Socialism and spent more than 10 years in National Socialist prisons and concentration camps (including Sachsenhausen concentration camp) until 1945.

After his release, Kurt Müller became Deputy Chairman of the KPD in West Germany and was elected to the first German Bundestag Parliament in 1949. In March 1950, he travelled to East Berlin for a meeting with the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED Politburo) member Franz Dahlem. But instead of Dahlem, the Stasi was waiting, arresting Müller and taking him to the central remand prison in Hohenschönhausen. Kurt Müller thus became a victim of the Stalinist purges.

The accusation against him was that he had joined the Trotskyists in Moscow. After three years in custody, Kurt Müller was sentenced to 25 years of forced labour by a Soviet military court in March 1953 and deported to the Soviet Union. However, he was released just two years later. Back in West Germany, Kurt Müller did everything he could to denounce the political injustice he had suffered. In 1956, he wrote two letters to the GDR Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl demanding an explanation – in vain. He turned his back on the KPD when he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1957. He worked as a research assistant at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation until old age. Kurt Müller died in Constance in 1990. Kurt Müller was only vindicated in 1990.