Wilhelm Adam Wilhelm Adam ( 28 March 1893 in Eichen , now a part of Nidderau – 24 November 1978 in Dresden ) was a career military officer who served in three German Armies and later became an East German politician . Life . Adam ' s father was a farmer . After high school he attended from 1908 to 1913 the teacher training college in Schlüchtern . First World War . From 1 October 1913 , Adam served as a one - year volunteer in military service with the 5th Company of the 2nd Nassau Infantry Regiment 88 . At the beginning of the First World War on 8 August 1914 , now a corporal , he moved to the front . He was wounded on 16 September 1914 and sent to a Protestant hospital in Düsseldorf . returning to the replacement battalion of his regiment 10 days later . On 1 April 1915 he was promoted to sergeant . From April to May 1915 he took an officer candidate course in Lockstedter and upon graduation on 22 May was promoted to lieutenant . On 14 June , he became a platoon leader at 1st Recruits Depot of the XVI Army Corps . On 5 October 1915 he was assigned to the 5th Company of the Infantry Regiment " Graf Werder “ ( 4 . Rheinisches ) Nr . 30 . After an illness in July 1916 , which he recovered from in a field hospital at Germersheim , he was transferred to the 1st Replacement Battalion of the 2nd Nassau Infantry Regiment 88 . On 28 September 1916 he became the commander of a machine gun company of the 424th Infantry Regiment . On 28 October 1916 , he was appointed the aide to the Landwehr Infantry Brigade 70 , a position he held until the end of the war . He was dismissed from the Army as a Lieutenant on 31 January 1919 . Weimar Republic . 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 German Order . In 1923 , Adam joined the Nazi Party and was involved that same year in the Beer Hall Putsch . In 1926 , Adam left the Nazis and joined the German People ' s Party ( DVP ) , with whom he stayed until 1929 . In National Socialism to the Second World War . In 1933 he became a member of the Stahlhelm and an SA Oberscharführer . He worked at the Unit for ideological training 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 near Berlin . Second World War . In 1939 he became an adjutant in the XXIII Army Corps , under the Army Commanders Walter von Reichenau and later in 1941 , Friedrich Paulus . On 17 December 1942 , he was awarded the Knight ' s Cross of the Iron Cross . On 31 January 1943 , now a colonel , Adam was captured by the Soviet Army after the surrender at Stalingrad , where he was interrogated by Nikolay Dyatlenko . While a prisoner of war , he went to the Central Antifa ( " i . e . " Anti - Fascist ) School at Krasnogorsk and became member of the National Committee for a Free Germany . He was also sentenced to death " in absentia " by a Nazi German court . Post - war period . In 1948 , Adam returned to the Soviet Zone of Germany . He was among the co - founders of the National Democratic Party of Germany , an East German political party that acted as an organization for former members of the Nazi Party and the Wehrmacht . 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 the People ' s Police to the National People ' s Army . In 1952 , Adam became a colonel in the " Kasernierte Volkspolizei " ( KVP ) ( " Barracked People ' s Police " ) , the forerunner of the East German National People ' s Army . From 1953 to 1956 he was commander of the Officers ' College of the KVP – and later became the National People ' s Army . In 1958 , Adam was sent into retirement . He kept on working , though , for the Working Group of Former Officers . In 1968 he was decorated with the Banner of Labor , and on the occasion of the twenty - eighth anniversary of East Germany ' s founding on 7 October 1977 , he was appointed major general , retired in the East German Army . Adam died on 24 November 1978 in Dresden .