[3] Ewald Munschke was born into a working-class family in Berlin a few weeks after the start of the twentieth century.
[2] By the time he was twelve his mother was a widow and he was working in Berlin with a large hand cart, delivering drinks to bars and kiosks.
During the 1920s he held a succession of manual jobs, mostly involving transport or the building trade, but also including a period working as a packer in a soap factory.
[1][3] In January 1933 the NSDAP (Nazi party) took power and set about creating a one-party state in Germany.
[1] In 1936 Munschke joined the International Brigades to fight for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.
[3] Later, jointly with Anton Ackermann and Franz Dahlem, he headed up a commissars' "party school" in Benicàssim.
[4] He took a position in the new party's Berlin regional leadership team, later during the decade becoming head of the important personnel department (Kaderabteiling).
In the late summer of 1952 Eward Munschke was surprised to find himself being interviewed by the East German leader, Walter Ulbricht himself.
[1] On 1 October 1952, despite never having held any military rank in any national army, Munschke was promoted to the (police) rank of major general, with the job of "Kaderchef", tasked by Ulbricht to select capable and suitable young men ("befähigte und geeignete junge Männer auszuwählen ...") for the new quasi-military police brigade.
[1] In March 1961 Ewald Munschke was publicly and effusively congratulated by Walter Ulbricht on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday.