Tensions had arisen at the top of government over the extent which the country should be willing to respond positively to pressure from Moscow for a measure of De-Stalinization.
After a period of a year or so during which it might have been thought that the East German leader, Walter Ulbricht, was open to suggestions, the political downfall of Karl Schirdewan, Fred Oelßner and one or two others was seen as a sign that traditionalist economic hardliners would remain in control.
In September 1959 Oelßner published his self-criticism on account of his "opportunism and political blindness" ("Opportunismus und politische Blindheit") during the years 1956/57.
[1] Despite still only being sixteen, Oelßner joined the Independent Social Democratic Party ("Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" / USPD) in May 1919.
However, the USPD seems to have remained relatively active in the Halle-Merseburg locality (where Oelßner was based) through 1920, and it was only in December 1920 that he formally joined the Communist Party.
He then accepted a paid job, working for the Communist Party Central Committee under the direction of Wilhelm Koenen and Walter Stoecker.
After that, he undertook a higher degree course at the Economics Faculty at the Institute of Red Professors ("Институт красной профессуры").
He returned to Germany in the summer of 1932 and worked in Berlin under Ernst Schneller in the Propaganda Department of the party central committee.
[2] Back in Germany, Gestapo files from the start of 1941 list Oelßner as one of their Special manhunt targets (in der "Sonderfahndungsliste") within the Soviet Union.
[2] (In October 1941, the Communist Party and governmental organisations, diplomatic missions of foreign countries, leading cultural establishments and their staff were evacuated to Kuybyshe, but contingency preparations had been in place for such a move from at least as far back as the start of the war.
Between February and August 1944 he served as a member of an important working group planning a postwar programme for the (German) Communist Party.
On 30 April 1945 a Soviet aircraft flew the thirty men from Moscow to Minsk, and from there to an airfield at Kalau just outside Meseritz.
From there they were taken in a truck to Bruchmühle where the Soviet military commander, Marshal Zhukov had set up his headquarters some twenty miles to the east of Berlin.
Slightly further to the east Dresden capitulated to the Red army on 8 May 1945, the day (according to most Anglo-American sources) of the official surrender.
Within the Central Committee, between October 1947 and February 1949 he took on responsibility for a newly expanded department covering not just party education but also culture and schooling.
He worked till 1956 as editor-in-chief of Einheit (loosely "Unity"), a prestigious academic monthly journal published by the party, devoted to "the theory and practice of economic socialism".
[2] In December 1951 he was appointed to headship of the teaching chair for Political Economics at the Central Committee Academy for Social Sciences.
Under other circumstances this might have been seen as a full-time position and the basis for a long-term academic career, but in Oelßner's case sources stress that at this time most of the daily jobs associated with the post would have been delegated to others.
[1] Thanks to his outstanding fluency in Russian, combined with his high political offices in the East German political hierarchy, during the first part of the 1950s Oelßner participated as a simultaneous translator in important discussions involving Walter Ulbricht and Wilhelm Pieck, the East German leaders, with the leadership in Moscow (including Stalin) and with Vladimir Semyonov, head of the Soviet military administration based in Berlin-Karlshorst.
[2] Within the politburo Oelßner had emerged as a critic of plans for the "complete collectivisation of agriculture" which came to enjoy the backing of the "Ulbricht wing" after 1956.
[2] In the Soviet Union, following the death of Stalin and the "secret speech" delivered by Nikita Khrushchev in February 1956 (discussion of which was strongly discouraged within East German government circles), a view was developing that the communist regime's longer-term survival might best be secured not simply by repression, fear and rigged election results, but by seeking to win the genuine support of the population.
[9] Karl Schirdewan, another of the 12 (or 14) members of the East German politburo, was actually present when Khrushchev delivered his speech at the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in Moscow.
By early in 1958 Walter Ulbricht had evidently identified a threat to the status quo and possibly to his own political dominance.
[2][11] Others expelled from the Central Committee were Karl Schirdewan and Ernst Wollweber, accused of "factionalism" and "violations of party rules".
[11] Arguably Fred Oelßner did not fall so low as his fellow Central Committee expellees, Schirdewan and Wollweber.
He certainly did not suffer like Paul Merker, another former Politburo member who had incurred Walter Ulbricht's suspicions a couple of years earlier.
It may have helped that in September 1959 Oelßner published his self-criticism on account of his "opportunism and political blindness" ("Opportunismus und politische Blindheit") during the years 1956/57.