Wilhelm Adam (Politician)

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For the reichswehr general, see Wilhelm Adam.

Wilhelm Adam (born 28 March 1893 in Eichen near Hanau; died 24 November 1978 in Dresden) was a German politician.

Adam's father was a farmer. From 1908 to 1913 he went to the teaching seminary at Schüchtern. Afterwards, he did his military service until 1918. From 1919 to 1929, Adam was working as a senior vocational school teacher at the army's vocational school in Langenselbold, Hesse, and from 1929 to 1934 in Weimar, Thuringia.

Alongside these duties, Adam also studied from 1922 to 1924 at the university in Frankfurt am Main and completed the examination for middle school teachers in 1927. In 1919 he became a member of the Langenselbold Military Association and in 1920 of the Young Germans' Order. In 1923, Adam joined the Nazi Party and was involved that same year in the Beerhall Putsch. In 1926, Adam left the Nazis and joined the German People's Party (DVP), with whom he stayed until 1929.

In 1933 he became a member of the Stahlhelm and an SA Oberscharführer. He worked at the Unit for Worldview Schooling with the Staff of Standard 94 in Weimar. After being transferred to the SA reserves in 1933 came Adam's reactivation in 1934 at the rank of captain, as well as a promotion to major once he had finished a course at military school in 1937. Thereafter, until 1939, Adam worked as company chief and a teacher at the infantry school in Döberitz, Saxony. In 1939 he became an adjutant in the XXIII Army Corps, and in 1941, Friedrich Paulus's adjutant. On 31 January 1943 Adam found himself a prisoner of the Soviet Union at Stalingrad. While a prisoner of war, he went to the Central Antifa (ie Anti-Fascist) School at Krasnogorsk and was a member of the Federation of German Officers. He was also sentenced to death by a German court in absentia.

In 1948, Adam returned to Germany. He was among the co-founders of the National Democratic Party of Germany. From 1948 to 1949 he worked as a consultant for the Saxony state government. From 1950 to 1952 he was Saxony's finance minister and from 1949 to 1963 a member of East Germany's Volkskammer.

From 1952, Adam also worked for the Kasernierte Volkspolizei ("Barracked People's Police", a military police force, KVP) with the rank of colonel. From 1953 to 1956 he was commander at the KVP – and later NVA – Officers' College. In 1958, Adam was sent into retirement. He kept on working, though, for the Labour Community of Former Officers. In 1968 he was decorated with the Banner of Work, and on the occasion of the twenty-eighth anniversary of East Germany's founding on 7 October 1977, he was appointed major general, retired.

On 24 November 1978 Adam died in Dresden.