The last GDR prime minister of the state party SED, Hans Modrow, is dead. After the fall of the Wall, he negotiated the first steps towards rapprochement with the German government. From November 1989 to April 1990, the trained engineer checked the fortunes of the GDR.
Modrow died on Saturday evening at the age of 95, the left announced in the Bundestag. “Our party loses an important personality with this,” said group chairman Dietmar Bartsch and former group chairman Gregor Gysi.
Modrow was born in Jasenitz (Vorpommern) in 1928 and, after completing his apprenticeship as a machinist, was drafted into the Volkssturm at the age of 17. In 1949 he deliberately returned to the newly established GDR as a Soviet prisoner of war, although his family was now living in the west near Hamburg. After the Allied victory over Hitler’s fascism, “he always wanted a new, better society”.
“Personally, I am no stranger to the Sozis”
The convinced socialist was seen by many in the GDR as a beacon of hope. He had kept a critical distance from the dogmatic leadership. “Personally, I am no stranger to the socialists,” he said in October 2021, referring to the social democrats. “I was friends with Egon Bahr.” Under Chancellor Willy Brandt (SPD), Bahr worked on a new Ostpolitik and an improvement in relations with the GDR.
The doctor of economics and social sciences was proud that in his short time as head of government of the GDR he had seen the results of the land reform – the large-scale expropriations between 1945 and 1949 – and the acquisition of state houses and lands for the GDR citizens (Modrow law). His critics accuse him of selling the country mainly to government officials.
He advised the left into old age as chairman of their council of elders. He made it clear that as a former Prime Minister he saw himself as “continuing to bear a responsibility towards the former GDR citizens”.
Source: Krone
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