Cold war tensions remained acute during the early 1950s and Soviet involvement the brutal suppression of the East German uprising in June 1953 fed an intensified mistrust in West Germany of the (pro-Soviet) Communist Party which in the 1953 general election achieved slightly above 2% of the national vote. That was the context in which, on 27 June 1954, Max Reimann and Josef Ledwohn were deprived of their parliamentary immunity. Ledwohn was arrested in August 1954. The charge under which he was arrested was the familiar one of "Preparing to commit High Treason" ("Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat"). Shortly after his arrest Friedel Ledwohn, his wife, emerged briefly from the shadows, opening a party meeting in Hamburg and receiving (according to a report in a politically sympathetic newspaper) congratulations from comrades as the wife of the imprisoned "patriot Josef Ledwohn".