Marion Keßler (Senior Fellow)
Book project

Paul Merker, Politburo member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Socialist Unity Party (SED) was the highest-ranking East German Communist politician to fell victim of the Stalinist repression in the 1950s in the GDR. Paradoxically, Merker, a non-Jew, was targeted as a scapegoat in a so-called anti-Zionist campaign that was essentially part of Stalin's anti-Semitic policies. The planned book attempts to present the first full-scale political biography of Paul Merker.