portrait, 1932 Warnke was born in
Hamburg on 24 February 1902 to a working-class family. He joined the
Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1923 and became actively involved in trade union activism. In 1932 he was elected to the
Reichstag and held his seat until the
Nazi seizure of power in 1933. Later that same year he became secretary of the
Profintern in
Saarbrücken and
Paris and actively opposed the Nazis during the remainder of the
Interwar period. He lived in a number of countries during his exile from Nazi Germany. During
World War II he was in Sweden where he worked with a number of organizations for exiled Germans. After the defeat of the Nazis, Warnke returned to
Soviet-occupied Germany and helped found the
Free German Trade Union Federation (FDGB). He succeeded
Hans Jendretzky as First Chairman of the organization, serving from 1948 until his death in 1975. He was elected to the
Volkskammer in 1949 and was also elected to the
State Council of East Germany in 1971. ==References==