Background
Grotewohl was born in the city of Braunschweig (which would be part of West Germany during the partition) on 11 March 1894 and his father was a master tailor.
Grotewohl was born in the city of Braunschweig (which would be part of West Germany during the partition) on 11 March 1894 and his father was a master tailor.
Following World War I started his political career as a leader of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) and minister in the Free State of Brunswick. Dismissed after the Nazi Machtergreifung in 1933 he was imprisoned several times. After World World War II he became a leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany and, fiercely opposed by chairman Kurt Schumacher, led his party into a merger with the Communist Party under Wilhelm Pieck.
With the establishment of the German Democratic Republic (German Democratic Republic) on 7 October 1949, Grotewohl became the German Democratic Republic"s first prime minister (Ministerpräsident), while Wilhelm Pieck served as state president
With the creation of the Council of Ministers (Ministerrat) government of the German Democratic Republic in 1950 Grotewohl, as Ministerpräsident, became its first chairman. The actual power holder however was Walter Ulbricht, General Secretary of the governing SED Central Committee from 1950 on.
Grotewohl retained the prospective of a left-wing social democrat within the SED. In a major speech to an SED party conference on 28 March 1956, Grotewohl condemned abuses in the legal system. He denounced illegal arrests, called for more respect for civil rights, and even asked the parliament to develop lively debate.
He also made a veiled criticism of Justice Minister Hilde Benjamin"s notoriously heavy-handed handling of political trials.
He retained his posts due to the Kremlin"s trust in him. In 1960 he was diagnosed with leukemia, from which he died on 21 September 1964. However, he had not been fully active since 1961, when he began receiving medical treatment in the Soviet Union.
He was awarded the Order of Karl Marx, the German Democratic Republic"s highest decoration, in 1952 and also the Soviet Union"s Order of Lenin, the German Democratic Republic"s Order of Merit for the Fatherland in gold and he was a freeman of the city of Dresden.
After his death, the Wilhelmstrasse in East Berlin was renamed Otto-Grotewohl-Straße in his honor. The street retained this name until 1991, following German reunification.
On 15 April 1986, the present-day Mohrenstraße U-Bahn station in eastern Berlin, then known as the Thälmannplatz station, was also renamed Otto-Grotewohl-Straßest The Third German School in Chapayesky Lane, Moscow, was named Otto Grotewohl School.
Grotewohl, after initial hesitation, yielded to the pressure by the Soviet Military Administration and Walter Ulbricht and in April 1946 together with Pieck formed the new Socialist Unity Party (SED).
Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany]
In 1922 Grotewohl with the majority of the USPD members joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Social Democratic Party of Germany) and from 1925 was a member of the Reichstag parliament.