Wilhelm Krenz

The Krenz family was a prominent 500-year-old East Europan dynasty that began in the 15th century, when a yeoman trader moved from the countryside to the city of Monschau, joining the local merchant’s guild. There, though a combination of hard work and determination (Or, depending on which history books you read, unscrupulous under-the-table dealings and blackmail), the lowly yeoman trader became the richest men in the city and leader of the guild by the time be died. 
Over the next three centuries, putting the wealth he accumulated to good use, his descendants gradually expand their holdings, acquiring textile mills, iron mines, and steel forges, laying the foundation for a family who would come to dominate East Europan industry for centuries. The Krenz family truly rose to prominence in the 19th century during the Empire’s era of modernization and industrialization, when the guild they controlled was chosen to become the lead industrializers for East Europa (while the Zechmeister family was chosen as the weapons manufacturer for the Imperial Army). This turned the family fabulously wealthy and influential, eventually even being granted aristocratic titles, and the city of Monschau became a ‘company town’ for the Krenz family (With the entire city’s population either directly employed by, or dependent on them), their own ‘state-within-a-state’ similar to the landed estates that other Imperial nobles have.
However, the Krenz family never received true recognition from the rest of East Europan nobility, being regarded as nouveau riche upstarts due to their traceable low-born origins. As such, high expectations were place on every generation, with members expected to work hard and contribute to the family business, ensuring that they keep the legacy of wealth and status that their forefathers have built, while under constant stress of being surrounded by jealous rivals eager to take their place at the slightest display of weakness.
In was in this environment that Wilhelm Krenz was born, as the eldest son and future heir to the family business. While he was noted as being highly motivated and intelligent, he was also an eccentric: A person who would have much rather spend his time studying theoretical science and other ‘blue-sky’ thinking, instead of putting his time and energy towards learning the finer points needed to manage a family-owned industrial conglomerate. In order to make their future heir more grounded in reality, the family had him going ‘undercover’, posing as a common worker in one of their factories for two years before entering university, so that he can experience some real hardship to better appreciate what his family’s legacy had given him, and to get first-hand experience in how an industrial operation functions on ground level.
In that, the family succeeded, but not in the way they intended: The young Wilhelm experienced first-hand the unpleasantness of poor housing, inadequate heating during winter, limited food, and poor medical care, etc, that the common worker and their families had to endure. All of this compounded by the typical harsh discipline that Empire have towards her lower-class citizens even during peace time. Such as a system of strict social control, including workers having to swear a loyalty oath to both the Empire and the Krenz family every morning before the start of work, and that during work shifts they had to obtain written permission from their foremen each and every single time they need to use the bathroom.
Wilhelm Krenz returned to his privileged life after the two years, seemingly a much more grounded person, one that is ready to not ‘waste’ his intellect and actually contribute to the family legacy. However, unknown to them, the undercover experience had left scars and had a profound impression on him, planting the seed of a dangerous idea in his mind….
After he finished university, he was given the position as a manager in one of his family’s factories in Monschau. There, he attempted to introduce an idea that he has been thinking about for some time now: He provided social services and employee benefit schemes for the workers, introduced a system of insurance for the workers and their families in case of illness or death, and decrease mandatory working hours (with the option for workers to earn bonus income if they stay on for extra shifts). 
At first, the family was concerned that their future heir has in fact not become more grounded after his experience after all, and has in fact gone even more soft. However, once the numbers started coming in to show that the factory under his management has experienced an increase in productivity shortly after the measures were introduced, they began to wonder if their eccentric heir had a good idea after all, and perhaps this can be introduced across their entire family business…
But before any of that could happened, EW2 broke out. The Empire’s heavy demand of weapons and ammunition took top priority in resource allocation. Civilian production had to either be retooled towards serving the war effort, or be significantly downsized. The idealistic Wilhelm soon found all of the management reforms that he had introduced being rolled back, and the worker’s conditions now being even being worst compared to before. With that he gave up on the idea of being a peaceful internal reformer who changes the system from within, and started secretly contacting certain individual who ‘knew people’ that he had met while being undercover as a lowly worker….
Throughout the war, Krenz turned the factory he managed into a shelter where those from the lower classes with pacifist conviction can avoid being drafted and sent to the front by falsely claiming that they were ‘essential workers’, and allow underground trade unionist to use his factory and house as secret meeting places away from the prying eyes of the Imperial secret police.
After the end of EW2, the Empire found itself engulfed in civil unrest, it was obvious to many of the underground trade unionists that an armed struggle and rebellion against the Imperial government will soon be at hand. Once again, taking full advantage of the power and influence that his family name gave him, Krenz helped to move man, supplies and weapons around the country in preparation, falsifying papers claiming them to be ‘worker transfers’ and the ‘relocation of industrial equipment’, with no one daring to question documents with the signature of the heir to the Krenz dynasty.
When full scale revolution broke out all over East Europa, Krenz deliberately sabotaged the efforts of the police and military to defend the vital industrial center of Monschau from the rebels by gave false reports downplaying the progress of the worker uprisings in the city, while feeding the rebels with up to date information on the police’s movements. When armed police were sent in to resort imperial authority, they expected the rebels to be armed with, at the very worst, a few homemade bombs and outdated EW1 surplus rifles. Instead, they found themselves ambushed and fired upon with military grade automatic weapons and were utterly massacred. 
The few surviving police officers fled for their lives, and the military was called in. But even they failed to restore order due to confusing and often conflicting reports coming out of the city preventing accurate assessment of what was actually happening on the ground, and the rebels being surprisingly well armed and equipped, for what was supposed to just be a bunch of discontent workers. By the time the commanders finally caught on to what was going on, it was too late, and they were forced to abandon the city.
Monschau was now under revolutionary control, and the Krenz family was driven out of their ancestral home… all except for Wilhelm, who walked out of his office to a crowd of cheering workers.
Krenz served as the representative for Monschau in the provisional government, and later, in the East Europan People’s Congress after the formation of the UEESR. It wasn’t until two days after the retirement of the first Chairman of the Council of Trade Unions on 12 November, 1949 that he was offered to serve as his replacement in position. While some originally had apprehensions about putting the country’s economy into the hand of one of the former ‘bosses’ (even one who was ‘redeemed’ and played an important role in the revolution), the concerns were soon dispelled, with him making the protection of East Europan families from poverty and raising the average standard of living one of his top priories, doing all of that while still maintaining a steady growth in economic and industrial output.
Under Krenz’s leadership, the UEESR also devoted their resources towards R&D in key areas with both military and civilian application, such as the invention of synthetic rubber, largely solving the issue of the country being chronically short on rubber, allowing their mass motorization efforts to not be hampered (East Europa is a land of tundras, steppes, and forest, and as such, does not contain any tropical jungles that can produce rubber, while most foreign nations with jungles in them were either affiliated with the Federation or the Empire). 
He was also instrumental in the UEESR’s third 5-year plan, in which the country’s existing rail networks were greatly expanded, with modern transportation decisively creating a greater sense of unity and coherence between the autonomous republics, not to mention massive economic opportunities. The rail network reportedly impressing even some observers from the Federation and Gallia. An idealist at heart, Krenz had already drawn up plans for the future expansion of the rail network throughout the entire continent, so that when the first step of the world revolution finally frees Europa from tyranny, all people can be linked together.
After getting his post in the government, Krenz soon became acquainted with RED Director Brigitte Haulet. They were able to bond over their similar backgrounds and revolutionary zeal, with private correspondence intercepted by Imperial Intelligence suggesting that the two of them have been ‘seeing each other’ outside of work ‘in the name of comradeship’ (The letter in question involved Krenz trying to invite Haulet to a Feast of All Spirits dinner, but she wasn't interested in that ‘prehistoric’ holiday. And instead invited him to come over to her place after work, so that she may ‘show him’ something that she learned during her agitator days in Central Alkebulan).
In his free time, Krenz was also known indulge in his small hobby: Science fiction. His publish works, which were freely distributed to all members of the armed forces and the national workforce to boost to morale, include “Lord Horkheimer’s Flying Castle” (A story set in a fantasy world, about an evil lord who ruled over the oppressed peasants of his land while living in an intimidating flying castle. Until an outsider taught them how to build flying machines of their own, allowing the peasants to overthrow Lord Horkheimer and free themselves once and for all), “The Oxygen Merchant” (A story about an evil scientist and megalomaniac capitalist who plots to steal all of the world's oxygen, to ‘privatize’ it, charging everyone from birth a monthly subscription fee for breathing. Until he was defeated by the hero using the power of science, who redistributed the air to the entire world). And most famously, his 1948 novel, “The Jupiter Project”. In it, Krenz offers an inspiring vision of how far the UEESR will have come by the year 2048, describing a period of peace and prosperity for the working class though the creation of a post-scarcity and post-ragnite economy in which technological advancements allow for great abundance with minimal human labor needed. While the people’s revolution has emerged victorious not only across Europa, but in the entire world. Followed by a golden age of space exploration, with communism leaving the boundaries of the planet, and expands across the solar system.