By the early 1950s he had become well known and popular with many comrades in the higher reaches of the SED (party) and was seen by some as a possible rival to the country's leader, Walter Ulbricht: he was stripped of his functions in 1953.

[2] Franz Dahlem was born into a Roman Catholic family[5] in Rohrbach-lès-Bitche, a small town in Alsace-Lorraine, then part of the German Empire (now in France), in the hills to the southeast of Saarbrücken.

In 1913 he joined the SPD (Social Democratic Party / Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands),[5] remaining a member of it till 1917.

[3] During the post-war year of revolutions Dahlem joined the workers' and soldiers' council, initially in Allenstein (East Prussia) and subsequently in Cologne, participating in support of implementation of the slogan "All power to the councils" ("Alle Macht den Räten!").

Here, together with Philipp Fries and Henriette Ackermann, he was elected to the local party leadership of the Middle Rhine region.

One reason Dahlem was sent to Berlin in 1921 to edit the "Internationalen Presse-Korrespondenz" was to enforce his separation from Central Committee members in his Rhineland home patch at a time when he was opposing the party leadership.

[6] Franz Dahlem was back in Berlin, secretly and illegally, between February and July 1934, undertaking "political work".

[2] Much of his activity was involved in trying to build and strengthen an international "people's front" opposition to the rising tide of fascism in Germany.

[2] Dahlem took the lead in preparing for and running the German Communist Party conference in Paris, which took place in February 1939, just over half a year before the launch of a more generalised war across Europe.

[1] The German army invaded Poland and the French government responded immediately by declaring war on Germany in September 1939.

For most people in Paris it would be another eight months before the fighting fully impacted daily life, but refugees from race-based and political persecution in Nazi Germany were affected sooner than most.

[2] During the first part of 1941 a large group of German Communist veterans of the Spanish Civil War were liberated by members of the French Resistance from the camp at Le Vernet, where security was poor.

[6] According to one source he survived his internment at Mauthausen only because of the solidarity shown to him by fellow veterans of the Civil War in Spain.

[12] Because of his Comintern involvement and his participation in the Spanish Civil War Dahlen had a high profile internationally at this time.

[2] He arrived back in Germany on 1 July with Wilhelm Pieck, returning to the region surrounding Berlin which, until October 1949, was administered as the Soviet occupation zone.

Back in 1950 Dahlem had already attracted the attention of the "Central Party Control Commission" ("Zentrale Parteikontrollkommission" / ZPKK) in the context of the Paul Merker affair.

[6] (Paul Merker was another popular figure in the upper echelons of the party who had posed a threat to Ulbricht's power base.)

[16] Barely two months after Stalin's death, in December 1952 Dahlem received a powerful rebuke from the party for "kaderpolitischer Fehler" (loosely: cadre political errors).

[6] A renewal of party interest in Noel Field may have been triggered by the Slánský show trial in Prague at the end of 1952.

Half a year later, on 15 May 1953, the Party Central Committee stripped Dahlem of all his functions, citing "political blindness in respect of the activities of imperialist agents"[n 1] (which seems to have been another reference to Noel Field).

[6] There was fevered talk of a Zionist conspiracy and Ulbricht pressed Moscow to give the go ahead to set up a show trial for Franz Dahlem along with one for Paul Merker.

[7] In the end Dahlem was spared a show trial, which one source attributes to the lessening of political savagery sometimes characterised as the Khrushchev Thaw,[6] though Ulbricht nevertheless had his way in respect of Paul Merker[17] whose show trial took place on 29/30 March 1955 and ended with the pronouncement of an eight-year prison sentence.