The former East German Prime Minister Hans Modrow is dead. The long-time SED functionary and later PDS and then Left politician died on Saturday night at the age of 95, as the left-wing faction in the Bundestag announced.
“Our party is losing an important personality with this,” said parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch and former parliamentary group leader Gregor Gysi.
From November 1989 to April 1990, Modrow controlled the fortunes of the GDR. After the fall of the Wall, he negotiated the first steps toward rapprochement with the federal government.
The longtime SED functionary and later PDS and Left Party politician was considered a convinced socialist who had kept a small piece of critical distance to the all-powerful SED during the GDR era.
The left-wing politician, once referred to as the Gorbachev of the GDR, was born the son of a sailor and baker on January 27, 1928 in Jasenitz, which was then Prussian and now belongs to Poland. At the end of the Second World War he was drafted into Hitler’s so-called Volkssturm.
Rise to the innermost circle of power in the GDR
In Soviet captivity, the youngster went to an Antifa school, a re-education center for German soldiers. After training as a machine fitter in what later became East Germany, Modrow made a career for himself in the FDJ, the junior organization of the state party SED.
He was a member of the GDR People’s Chamber for 32 years. Before reunification, the father of two daughters was also a member of the Central Committee, the party’s highest body, for more than 20 years. However, he only rose to the Politburo, the inner circle of power, at the time of reunification and after Erich Honecker was ousted.
Despite his solid party career, in the 1980s Modrow was seen as an alternative to the old SED leadership and as a supporter of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost reform policy. He was a co-initiator of the Dresden Dialogue with the opposition group of the 20th
As Dresden’s SED district chief, Modrow was at least partly responsible for the crackdown by the People’s Police against demonstrators at Dresden’s main train station in the fall of the fall.
On November 13, 1989, just four days after the fall of the Wall, Modrow was elected Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the GDR, succeeding Willi Stoph. However, he only moderated the transition – for around 150 days.
In the first free People’s Chamber elections on March 18, 1990, the SED-PDS lost power and Modrow lost his office a month later.
Active for the PDS and the Left after reunification
While he initially emphasized the independence of the GDR, he later professed German unity in the form of a confederation. “We didn’t want to give up the GDR,” said the mostly modest man with the hoarse voice and silver hair in an interview.
We didn’t want to give up the GDR.
Hans Modrowformer SED politician
In the first free People’s Chamber elections on March 18, 1990, the CDU won ahead of the SPD and the PDS, which emerged from the SED. In mid-April, Modrow handed over government affairs to the chairman of the GDR CDU, Lothar de Maizière. However, he remained loyal to politics.
Modrow was a member of the Volkskammer for some time, became honorary chairman of the PDS, sat in the Bundestag for several years and represented his party in the European Parliament for five years until 2004.
Of course, the political process of coming to terms with the situation did not go unnoticed by Modrow. In 1995, at the end of a long court battle, he was given a nine-month suspended sentence for his involvement in election fraud in the GDR. The suspended sentence was increased to ten months in another trial for perjury.
Admonishing voice in the left
Until last year, Modrow, as chairman of the Left Council of Elders, interfered in party politics, criticized its orientation and found that the party was “now in West German hands”.
He was considered the voice of those mostly older party members who still adhere to the idea of state socialism today. Modrow does not want to describe the GDR as an “injustice system”. The GDR was “neither paradise nor hell,” he once said.
According to his own statements, he was spied on by the Federal Intelligence Service for around six decades. Modrow had obtained access to the files in court.
When asked how he looked back on his life, Modrow said four years ago in an interview with the “Lausitzer Rundschau”, among others: “We loved and lived in the GDR – and after 1990 too.” He was very happy, his Grandchildren and great-grandchildren experienced “no older relatives who quarreled with each other”. (dpa, AFP)
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