Wilhelm Pieck in 1950Soviet Marshal Chuikov, USSR ambassador Vladimir Semyonov, and Wilhelm Pieck
Friedrich Wilhelm Reinhold Pieck (3 January 1876 in eastern Guben (today Poland) - 7 September 1960 in Berlin) was an (East)Germancommunist politician. He was a member of the Spartacus League. He was joint founder, and from 1946 to 1950 co-chairman of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED, together with Otto Grotewohl), and from 1949 to his death in 1960 the first and only president of the GDR.