Consolidation of authority did not go unremarked by contemporaries. After the death of Stalin (whose funeral was attended by Ulbricht, Grotewohl and other German communists) in March of that year, Ulbricht's position was in danger because Moscow was considering taking a soft line regarding Germany. ''- 13 July 1953 The June
1953 East German uprising forced Moscow to turn to a hardliner, and his reputation as an archetypal Stalinist helped Ulbricht. On 16 June 1953, a protest erupted at East Berlin's
Stalin Allee as enraged workers demanded comprehensive economic reforms. The frustrations led many to flee to the West: over 360,000 did so in 1952 and the early part of 1953. Ulbricht managed to rise to power despite having a peculiarly squeaky falsetto voice, the result of a bout of
diphtheria in his youth. His Upper Saxon accent, combined with the high register of his voice, made his speeches sound incomprehensible at times.
Construction of a socialist society in GDR At the third congress of the SED in 1950, Ulbricht announced a
five-year plan concentrating on the doubling of industrial production. As Stalin was at that point keeping open the option of a re-unified Germany, it was not until July 1952 that the party moved towards the construction of a socialist society in East Germany. The "building of socialism" (
Aufbau des Sozialismus) had begun in earnest as soon as talks of reunification faltered. By 1952, 80% of industry had been
nationalized. The
Council of Ministers of East Germany decided to close the
Inner German Border in May 1952. The
National People's Army (NVA) was established in March 1956, an expansion of the
Kasernierte Volkspolizei which been set up already in June 1952. The
Stasi (MfS) was founded in 1950, rapidly expanded and employed to intensify the regime's repression of the people. The states (
Länder) were effectively abolished in July 1952 and the country was governed centrally through districts. in
Trinwillershagen in January 1953 Ulbricht uncritically followed the orthodox Stalinist model of industrialization: concentration on the development of heavy industry. In 1957, Ulbricht arranged a visit to an
East German collective farm at
Trinwillershagen in order to demonstrate the GDR's modern agricultural industry to the visiting
Soviet Politburo member
Anastas Mikoyan. The collectivization of agriculture was completed in 1960, later than Ulbricht had expected. Following the death of President
Wilhelm Pieck in 1960, the SED wrote the president's post out of the constitution. Taking its place was a collective head of state, the
Council of State. Ulbricht was named its chairman, a post equivalent to that of president. His power consolidated, Ulbricht suppressed critics such as
Karl Schirdewan,
Ernst Wollweber,
Fritz Selbmann, Fred Oelssner, Gerhart Ziller and others from 1957 onward, designated them as "factionalists" and eliminated them politically.
The Berlin Wall Despite economic gains, emigration still continued. By 1961, 1.65 million people had fled to the west. Fearful of the possible consequences of this continued outflow of refugees, and aware of the dangers an East German collapse would present to the
Eastern Bloc, Ulbricht pressured Soviet Premier
Nikita Khrushchev in early 1961 to stop the outflow and resolve the status of Berlin. During this time, the refugees' mood was rarely expressed in words, though East German laborer Kurt Wismach did so effectively by shouting for free elections during one of Ulbricht's speeches. When Khrushchev approved the building of a wall as a means to resolve this situation, Ulbricht threw himself into the project with abandon. Delegating different tasks in the process while maintaining overall supervision and careful control of the project, Ulbricht managed to keep secret the purchase of vast amounts of building materials, including barbed wire, concrete pillars, timber, and mesh wire. On 13 August 1961, work began on what was to become the
Berlin Wall, only two months after Ulbricht had emphatically denied that there were such plans ("Nobody has the intention of building a wall"), thereby mentioning the word "wall" for the very first time. Ulbricht deployed GDR soldiers and police to seal the border with West Berlin overnight. The mobilization included 8,200 members of the People's Police, 3,700 members of the mobile police, 12,000 factory militia members, and 4,500 State Security officers. Ulbricht also dispersed 40,000 East German soldiers across the country to suppress any potential protests. Once the wall was in place, Berlin went from being the easiest place to cross the border between East and West Germany to being the most difficult. The 1968 invasion by Warsaw Pact troops of Czechoslovakia and the suppression of the
Prague Spring were also applauded by Ulbricht. East German soldiers were among those massed on the border but did not cross over, probably due to Czech sensitivities about German troops on their soil during World War II. It earned him a reputation as a staunch Soviet ally, in contrast to
Romanian leader
Nicolae Ceaușescu, who condemned the invasion.
The New Economic System From 1963, Ulbricht and his economic adviser
Wolfgang Berger attempted to create a more efficient economy through a
New Economic System (
Neues Ökonomisches System or NÖS). This meant that under the centrally coordinated economic plan, a greater degree of local decision-making would be possible. The reason was not only to stimulate greater responsibility on the part of companies, but also the realization that decisions were sometimes better taken locally. One of Ulbricht's principles was the "scientific" execution of politics and economy: making use of sociology and
psychology but most of all the
natural sciences. The effects of the NÖS, which corrected mistakes made in the past, were largely positive, with growing economic efficiency. The New Economic System, which involved measures to end price hikes and increase access to consumer goods, was not very popular within the party, however, and from 1965 onwards opposition grew, mainly under the direction of
Erich Honecker and with tacit support of Soviet leader
Leonid Brezhnev. Ulbricht's preoccupation with science meant that more and more control of the economy was being relegated from the party to specialists. The ideological hardliners of the party also accused Ulbricht of having motivations that were at odds with the communist ideals.
Cultural and architectural policy The communist regime demolished large numbers of important historical buildings. The
Berlin Palace and the
Potsdam City Palace were destroyed in 1950 and 1959. About 60 churches, including intact, rebuilt or ruined ones, were blown up, including 17 in East Berlin. The Ulrich Church in
Magdeburg was razed in 1956, the Dresden
Sophienkirche in 1963, the Potsdam
Garrison Church in June 1968 and the fully intact Leipzig
Paulinerkirche in May 1968. Citizens protesting the church demolitions were imprisoned. Ulbricht attempted to shield the GDR from the cultural and social influences of the capitalist parts of the
Western world, particularly its
youth culture. He intended to create the most comprehensive youth culture of the GDR, which should be largely independent of capitalist influences. In 1965 at the 11th Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the
SED, he made a critical speech about copying culture from the Western world by referring to the "
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" of
the Beatles song: "Is it truly the case that we have to copy every dirt that comes from the West? I think, comrades, with the monotony of the
yeah, yeah, yeah and whatever it is all called, yes, we should put an end to it".
Dismissal and death By the late 1960s, Ulbricht was finding himself increasingly isolated both at home and abroad. The construction of the Berlin Wall became a public relations disaster for him, not only in the West, but even with the Eastern Bloc. This became gradually critical as East Germany faced increasing economic problems due to his failed reforms, and other countries refused to offer any kind of assistance. His refusal to seek rapprochement with West Germany on Soviet terms, and his rejection of
détente infuriated Soviet leader
Brezhnev who, by that time, found Ulbricht's demands for greater independence from Moscow increasingly intolerable (especially in the aftermath of the
Prague Spring). One of his few victories during this time was the replacement of the GDR's original
people's democratic constitution with a completely Communist document in 1968. The document formally declared East Germany to be a socialist state under the leadership of the SED, thus codifying the
de facto state of affairs since 1949. During his later years, Ulbricht became increasingly stubborn and tried to assert dominance vis-a-vis other Eastern bloc countries, and even the Soviet Union. He declared at economic conferences that post-war times when East Germany had to offer other socialist countries free patents, were over once and for all and everything actually had to be paid for. Ulbricht began to believe that he had achieved something special, like Lenin and Stalin had. At the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the
October Revolution in Moscow, he untactfully boasted about having personally known
Lenin and having been an active communist in the USSR already 45 years ago. In 1969 Ulbricht's Soviet guests at the State Council (
Staatsrat) showed clear signs of dissatisfaction when he lectured them heavily on East Germany's supposed economic successes. On 3 May 1971 Ulbricht was forced to resign from virtually all of his public functions "due to reasons of poor health" and was replaced, with the consent of the Soviets, by
Erich Honecker. Ulbricht was allowed to remain as
Chairman of the State Council, the effective
head of state, and held on to this post for the rest of his life. Additionally, the honorary position of Chairman of the SED was created especially for him. Ulbricht died at a government
guesthouse in Groß Dölln near
Templin, north of East Berlin, on 1 August 1973, during the
World Festival of Youth and Students, having suffered a stroke two weeks earlier. He was honoured with a
state funeral, cremated and buried at the
Memorial to the Socialists () in the
Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery,
Berlin. == Legacy ==