[1] Arthur Heinrich Walter Pieck, the second of his parents' three recorded child, was born in Bremen where his father worked as a qualified carpenter and was active in local politics (SPD).

Arthur Pieck's parents had married early the previous year: his mother, born Christine Häfker, worked in the garment industry.

His father was an active left wing member of the SPD and a consummate networker, as a result of which Arthur, while still a boy, could come into contact with stars of the contemporary socialist movement without leaving the family home.

He joined the antiwar Spartacus League in 1916 which was the year in which he also joined the Independent Social Democratic Party ("Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" / USPD), a breakaway party formed by SPD members who found the SPD's parliamentary acquiescence in respect of war funding unacceptable.

At the end of December 1917 he celebrated his eighteenth birthday by refusing to report for "military service": between February and November 1918 he lived in the Netherlands where the government had managed to avoid direct involvement in the fighting of the First World War An early appetite for journalism was apparent from his production of "Der Kampf" ("The Struggle"), a news sheet for German army deserters who had taken refuge in the Netherlands.

[1] War ended in November 1918 and Pieck immediately crossed the border back into Germany where political, social and economic chaos prevailed.

When the USPD, in turn, broke apart, Pieck was one of those participating in the Berlin meeting which took place between 30 December 1918 and 1 January 1919 which came to be celebrated as the founding conference of the Communist Party of Germany.

During 1932, as the Nazi surge in Germany became unstoppable, he appears to have relocated from Berlin to Moscow where during 1932 he studied at the International Lenin School.

Their objective in Paris – at least as far as Pieck and party comrades in Moscow were concerned – was to set up and develop a western European branch office of the IRTB.

However, the project fizzled out when the Germans learned that Piscator was in danger of falling victim to the dictator's paranoia if he returned to Moscow.

Piscator stayed in Paris, emigrating to the United States three years later, while Arthur Pieck appears quietly to have returned to Moscow.

Between 8 July 1941 and May 1945 he served as a Senior Policy Commissar ("Oberpolitkommissar") and Captain ("Hauptmann") with the Central Administration ("Hauptverwaltung") of the Red Army.

[1] In December 1941 he was teamed up with Walter Ulbricht and the two of them were sent to work at the prisoner of war encampment at Spaskij Zavod near Karaganda in Kazakhstan.

From the end of November 1942 till January 1943 he was producing the German language newspaper "Neuste Nachrichten" ("Latest News") on the Stalingrad Front, activity for which he was awarded the Order of the Patriotic War medal.

In November 1945 Arthur Pieck married Margarete "Grete" Lode (1902–1952), a friend from his IRTB days as an organiser of Agitprop stage shows whom he had known since 1929 or earlier.

From 16 June 1947 till 15 October 1949 he served as National Department head of Personnel and Administration for the German Economic Commission.

Arthur Pieck gained that position on 16 October 1949, just five days after his father was elected the first (and as matters would turn out only) President of the new East Germany.

The military implications of a German state having access to a permanent pool of trained pilots and air industry expertise were uppermost in the minds of politicians.

However, geo-political priorities moved on, and in 1953 Lufthansa was founded, a West German airline with its primary hub reassuringly located next door to a massive US airbase south of Frankfurt am Main.

In the meantime, reflecting the intensely political nature of the airline business, when Deutsche Lufthansa was created in 1955 it made sense that its Director in Chief should be the son of the aging East German President.

He became a member of the East German delegation to the Standing Transport Commission of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance ("Comecon").