doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion German & Austrian Sporting Guns @ doublegunshop.com Who was Ernst Thalmann?

Who was the mysterious Ernst Thalmann of the Ernst Thalmann Werk, Suhl, DDR? Was Ernst a real person and if yes, what has happened to him since German Unification?

Ernst Thaelmann was leader of the KPD or German Communist Party during the Weimar Republic days, prior to the Nazi takeover and World War II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Th%C3%A4lmann). He was imprisoned by the Nazis and after eleven years of solitary confinement executed on Hitler's orders.

Thanks 'xa'! I checked out the 'wikipedia link'. Tons of info to pile through. I'd be interested to view the two films (1953 and 1954) pertaining to the middle and latter years of his life. Also, his written biography, but I'm limited to just this English language. Perhaps, films will carry English sub-titles, especially those sent outside Eastern Germany.

He was a man who lived when man thought that checkering was supposed to be flat...

It can't be the same fella. Not if Hitler had him executed but there is films of him from '53 and '54. Unless it was earlier films edited into some form after the war.

There is a long Soviet trradition to name things after Communtist leaders. There was Leningrad after Lenin, and Ulianovsk after Lenin (hih real surname), and Stalingrad, Stalino, Stalinabad, etc etc etc named after you-know-who, and ZIS auto works ("factory named after Stalin" would be the literal translation), and ZIM after Molotov, and... and... and... and when the East German government were uniting assorted Suhl gunmakers under the same parent company, they followed the example and named it after Thaellman, who was sort of like DDR's Lenin.