Adolf Hennecke

Adolf Hennecke, (25 March 1905 in Meggen (Lennestadt) – 22 February 1975 in East Berlin) was an official of the German FDGB (Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund) and of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.

Hennecke obtained this assignment after the young miner Franz Franik refused to set such a performance record when extracting a layer of coal, fearing the reaction of his colleagues.

[2] At first, Hennecke too refused the task (because he was afraid of the reaction of his colleagues to such a norm-breaking effort) but finally he declared himself ready to try for a record performance.

On 13 October 1948, the first anniversary of the 1947 implementation of the Soviet Military Administration's Order 234 reorganizing the economy on Soviet principles,[1] Hennecke entered the Karl Liebknecht shaft of the Lugau-Oelsnitzer mine with two fellow SED members and a union representative and extracted in the course of a 13-hour shift more than 24.4 m3 (860 cu ft) of coal (instead of the normal 6.3 m3 (220 cu ft)) from a layer that Hennecke has prepared the day before.

[7] Later Hennecke became a department head in the State Planning Commission of the GDR and was a member of the central committee of the SED until his death.