THE KID FROM COLOGNE THE RISE OF PETER FLORIN, SOVIET CITIZEN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP78-02771R000100300008-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 3, 1998
• Sequence Number: 8
• Content Type: REPORT

Approved For Release 2000/09/13 : CIA-RDP78-02771 R0001 00300008-7
The Kid. from Cologne
The Rise of Peter Florin, Soviet Citizen
Pankow's delegation to the Geneva Foreigh Ministers' conference, the group
which the SED declares will "represent the interests of the German people," may
make the unique claim to being equipped with two foreign ministers. Next to
Dr. Lothar Bolz, the official "Minister,"stands the incomparably more vital and
powerful Peter Florin, Chairman of the Foreign Policy Committee of the People's
Chamber, and, more important, chief of the Foreign Policy Department of the SEED
Central Committee -- the political commissar of Pankow's diplomacy, insofar as
one can speak of this function in a satrapy of the Kremlin.
For experts on Communist forms of government, the superior position of
Florin, the party official, to "Minister" Bolz is a matter of course. For
every ministerial position there exists a parallel supervisor and guide in the
party leadership, and even the Communists do not trouble to deny it. Thus the
"leading political scientist of the DDR," Dr. Herbert Kroger, remarked in 195!+:
"The party of the working class, the SED, is the leading power in all state
organizations. Therefore no important measures can be taken by the state
without prior decision of the SED...." Bolz has frequently had painful notice
of the meaning of this sentence. When prominent gb.tests came to East Berlin, he
was allowed to show them around, but discussions were conducted either by
Ulbricht himself or by Comrade Florin.
This boss of SED foreign policy is thirty-eight, and thus belongs to the
young guard of the apparatus which Ulbricht has favored in the last few years.
Florin is the same type of pliant Machiavellian functionary, dedicated to
Ulbricht, as Erich Honecker (chief of the security department, SED Central
Committee), Paul Verner (chief of the SED apparatus for Berlin), Gerhard Grueneberg
(secretary of the Central Committee), and Willi Stoph (Defense Minister and
Politbureaucrat). Florin has two distinct advantages over these competitors:
he is a second-generation KPD leader, and he grew up in Russia.
"You were and remain one of our best," said Wilhelm Pieck at the Moscow
funeral ceremonies for Peter's father Wilhelm Florin. This was not just the
usual funeral flattery, for Wilhelm Florin had worked together with Pieck and
Walter Ulbricht during the Great Purge against the other German emigrants in
Moscow. Member of the Politburo after 1929, from 1933 on in Moscow, Wilhelm
Florin never lacked the proper amount of servility toward Stalin and his two
leading German proteges. Thus Peter Florin did not share the fate of some sons
of former KPD leaders who, after their fathers' liquidation, were sent to the
Vorkuta concentration camps. "The kid from Cologne", as Peter Florin was jokingly
known by the inhabitants of the Hotel Lux, the emigrants' residence, was able
not only to finish his education, but also to study chemistry on a state scholarship.
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He became a member of the Communist youth organization, Komsomol, and - a mark
of special favor - studied at the Comintern school. There he made good marks
in the special technique of being a Stalinist apparatchik, i.e., combining the
right mixture of ruthlessness and party loyalty. As a Soviet citizen, he spent
a few weeks at the front in 1944 - for which he received the Order of the Red
Star - until he was ordered back to Mc.-,cow for a more important task, to work
on the newspaper of the so-called "National Committee for a Free Germany."
Party propaganda remained Florin's speciality when he returned to Germany
in 1945. He took over the Communist newspaper "Freiheit" in Halle, Thuringia.
But his big chance came in 1949, after the "DDR" had been founded, when he
became chief of the most important department of the new Foreign Ministry,
the department for relations with friendly (i.e. satellite) states. Florin
was the only man in the Foreign Ministry who was allowed to reside in the
special compound for government brass. This may have been partly due to the
fact that he had married a Russian, Rebelkka Mirova, whose father had once
been an important figure in the Comintern. In 1954, Florin was made a candidate
member of the all-powerful Central Committee of the SED. A year before, he
had moved from the Foreign Ministry to the seat of the power behind it - the
job as political director for foreign policy which he still holds. His success
may be measured by the fact that he was elected a full member of the Central
Committee in 1958. If Florin can continue to apply the arts he learned at
the Comintern school, his future in th,;: upper class of the classless society
should be a bright one.
Approved For Release 2000/09/13 : CIA-RDP78-02771 R000100300008-7