{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align: center;"

|+Bezirk Polleiters as of the Reichstag Fire Decree

!Bezirk

!Polleiter

!Incumbent since

!Notes

!Sources

|-

|

|Wilhelm Florin

|1932

|Orgleiter was .

|

|-

| (Pomerania)

|

|1931

|Orgleiter was .

|

|-

| (East Prussia)

|Hermann Matern

|1931

|Orgleiter was .

|

|-

|

|Otto Giesselmann

|1931

|Orgleiter was Anton Plenikowski as of 1929.

|

|-

| (Silesia)

|Augustin Sandtner

|1932

|

|

|-

| (Upper Silesia)

|

|1931

|Orgleiter was Franz Wuttke.

|

|-

| (Saxony)

|Fritz Selbmann

|1931

|Orgleiter was .

|

|-

|

|

|1932

|

|

|-

|

|

|1930

|

|

|-

| (Thuringia)

|Walter Duddins

|1930

|Orgleiter was .

|

|-

| (Lower Saxony)

|John Schehr

|1930

|Polleiter as of 1932. Orgleiter was .

|

|-

|

|Johann Sawadzki

|1932

|Orgleiter was .

|

|-

| (Waterfront:<br />Hamburg-Schleswig-Holstein)

|Anton Saefkow

|1932

|Orgleiter was Hans Sahling.

|

|-

| (Northwest: Bremen)

|Robert Stamm

|1930

|Orgleiter was Heinrich Schramm.

|

|-

| (Ruhr area)

|Max Opitz

|1932

|

|

|-

| (Lower Rhine)

|

|1932

|Orgleiter was .

|

|-

| (Middle Rhine)

|Bernhard Bästlein

|1931

|

|

|-

| (Hesse-Kassel)

|Karl Barthel

|1931

|

|

|-

| (Hesse-Frankfurt)

|Albert Kuntz

|1932

|Orgleiter was Wilhelm Beutel.

|

|-

| (Saar area)

|

|1930

|

|

|-

| (Baden-Palatinate)

|

|1932

|Orgleiter was .

|

|-

|

|Albert Buchmann

|1932

|Orgleiter was Eugen Wiedmaier as of January 1933.

|

|-

| (North Bavaria)

|

|1927

|Orgleiter was .

|

|-

| (South Bavaria)

|Hans Beimler

|1932

|

|

|}

The KPD employed around about 200 full-timers during its early years of existence, and as Broue notes "They received the pay of an average skilled worker, and had no privileges, apart from being the first to be arrested, prosecuted and sentenced, and when shooting started, to be the first to fall".

Party leadership

  • Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg (1919)
  • Leo Jogiches (1919)
  • Paul Levi (1919–1921)
  • Paul Levi and Ernst Däumig (1921)
  • Heinrich Brandler and Walter Stoecker (1921–1922)
  • Ernst Meyer (1922)
  • Heinrich Brandler (1922–1924)
  • Hermann Remmele (1924)
  • Arkadi Maslow and Ruth Fischer (1924–1925)
  • Ernst Thälmann (1925–1933)
  • John Schehr (1933–1934)
  • Wilhelm Pieck (1934–1946)
  • Max Reimann (1946–1956)

Election results

Federal elections

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: right;"

|-

|+ KPD federal election results (1920–1953)

|-

!rowspan="2"|Election

!colspan="3"|Votes

!colspan="2"|Seats

!rowspan="2"|Notes

|-

!No.

!%

!+/–

!No.

!+/–

|-

!1920

| 589.454

| 2.1 (No.&nbsp;8)

|

|

|

| style="text-align:left;"|Boycotted the previous election

|-

!May 1924

| 3.693.280

| 12.6 (No.&nbsp;4)

| &nbsp;10.5

|

| &nbsp;58

| style="text-align:left;"|After the merger with the left wing of the USPD

|-

!December 1924

| 2.709.086

| 8.9 (No.&nbsp;5)

| |&nbsp;3.7

|

| &nbsp;17

| style="text-align:left;"|

|-

!1928

| 3.264.793

| 10.6 (No.&nbsp;4)

| &nbsp;1.7

|

| &nbsp;9

| style="text-align:left;"|

|-

!1930

| 4.590.160

| 13.1 (No.&nbsp;3)

| &nbsp;2.5

|

| &nbsp;23

| style="text-align:left;"|After the financial crisis

|-

!July 1932

| 5.282.636

| 14.3 (No.&nbsp;3)

| &nbsp;1.2

|

| &nbsp;12

| style="text-align:left;"|

|-

!November 1932

| 5.980.239

| 16.9 (No.&nbsp;3)

| &nbsp;2.6

|

| &nbsp;11

| style="text-align:left;"|&nbsp;

|-

!March 1933

| 4.848.058

| 12.3 (No.&nbsp;3)

| &nbsp;4.6

|

| &nbsp;19

| style="text-align:left;"|During Hitler's term as Chancellor of Germany

|-

!1949

| 1.361.706

| 5.7 (No.&nbsp;5)

| &nbsp;6.6

|

| &nbsp;66

| style="text-align:left;"|First West German federal election

|-

!1953

| 607.860

| 2.2 (No.&nbsp;8)

| &nbsp;3.5

|

| &nbsp;15

| style="text-align:left;"|&nbsp;

|}

Presidential elections

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: right;"

|-

|+ KPD federal election results (1925–1932)

|-

!rowspan="2"|Election

!colspan="2"|Votes

!rowspan="2"|Candidate

|-

!No.

!%

|-

!1925

| 1,871,815 (1st round)<br>1,931,151 (2nd round)

| 7.0 (No.&nbsp;4)<br>6.4 (No.&nbsp;3)

| Ernst Thälmann

|-

!1932

| 4,938,341 (1st round)<br> 3,706,759 (2nd round)

| 13.2 (No.&nbsp;3)<br> 10.2 (No.&nbsp;3)

| Ernst Thälmann

|}

See also

  • Roter Frontkämpferbund
  • Antimilitärischer Apparat
  • Rote Hilfe
  • Communist Party Opposition
  • Communist Workers' Party of Germany
  • Freies Volk
  • German resistance
  • German Revolution of 1918–1919
  • Hotel Lux, Moscow hotel where many German party members lived in exile
  • Socialist Workers' Party of Germany
  • Sozialistische Volkszeitung
  • Spartacus League
  • Union of Manual and Intellectual Workers

Notes

References

Sources

Further reading

  • Rudof Coper, Failure of a Revolution: Germany in 1918–1919. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1955.
  • Catherine Epstein, The Last Revolutionaries: German Communists and Their Century. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003.
  • Ruth Fischer, Stalin and German Communism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1948.
  • John Riddell (ed.), The German Revolution and the Debate on Soviet Power: Documents: 1918–1919: Preparing the Founding Congress. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1986.
  • John Green, Willi Münzenberg – Fighter against Fascism and Stalinism, Routledge 2019
  • Bill Pelz, The Spartakusbund and the German working class movement, 1914–1919, Lewiston, New York: E. Mellen Press, 1988.
  • Aleksandr Vatlin, "The Testing Ground of World Revolution: Germany in the 1920s," in Tim Rees and Andrew Thorpe (eds.), International Communism and the Communist International, 1919–43. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998.
  • Eric D. Weitz, Creating German Communism, 1890–1990: From Popular Protests to Socialist State. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997
  • David Priestand, Red Flag: A History of Communism, New York: Grove Press, 2009
  • Ralf Hoffrogge, Norman LaPorte (eds.): Weimar Communism as Mass Movement 1918–1933, London: Lawrence & Wishart.