Bernhard Quandt

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Bernhard Quandt at the fifth party congress of the SED, 1958
Bernhardt Quandt at a youth consecration in 1963 in the Mestlin cultural center

Bernhard Quandt (born April 14, 1903 in Rostock ; † August 2, 1999 in Schwerin ) was a German politician of the KPD and SED functionary.

biography

Quandt was born the son of a single woman; his father was a soldier in the imperial army and died four months before he was born in a riding accident in Parchim .

Registration card of Bernhard Quandt as a prisoner in the National Socialist concentration camp Dachau

The family - the mother had meanwhile married a carpenter - lived in Rostock and in Wismar . As a six year old he attended elementary school there . In 1912 the family moved to Gielow and the mother ran a small Büdnerei . From 1917 he learned the trade of iron turner there and worked as a journeyman in this company. In 1920 he joined the SPD. He worked in Hamburg from 1922 and switched to the KPD in 1923. He was politically active, in 1927 he became community representative of Gielow and sub-district leader of his party in Waren / Stavenhagen and from 1932 briefly a member of the state parliament of Mecklenburg-Schwerin . He worked in different professions.

After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, he was arrested several times and finally interned in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from October 1939 . He survived imprisonment and was appointed district administrator in Güstrow by the Soviets on his return .

From 1948 he was Minister of Agriculture of Mecklenburg and 1951/52 Prime Minister of the state. After the dissolution of the states in the GDR in 1952, he was first secretary of the SED in the Schwerin district until 1974 .

During his time as First Secretary, Quandt successfully opposed, among other things, the decisions of the Politburo to build multi-storey prefabricated housing estates in the countryside, which in his opinion would have "ruined" the historically grown village design.

He was also a member of the Central Committee of the SED from 1958 to December 3, 1989 and the State Council of the GDR . In this capacity, at the last meeting of the Central Committee of the SED in 1989, he tearfully demanded the reintroduction of the death penalty and the shooting of all those (the “criminal gang of the old Politburo”) whom the party (SED) was in such a disgrace (meant was the Loss of power as a result of the revolutionary events in autumn 1989 ). “We have repealed the death penalty in the State Council. I am in favor of us reintroducing it and that we shoot everyone who has brought our party into such a disgrace! ”Nevertheless, Quandt was elected to the council of elders of the SED-PDS in 1990.

Award

On May 6, 1955, Quandt was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Lars Pelen: Bernhard Quandt, in: Mecklenburg in the German history of the 19th and 20th centuries, ed. v. Ilona Buchsteiner , Ingo Koch Verlag, Rostock 2001, pp. 331-348.
  2. ^ J. Bölsche et al .: Not revenge, no, pension !, in: Der Spiegel, edition 48/1999 v. November 29, 1999 [1] .
  3. ↑ The miracle of Leipzig - We are the people , TV docudrama 2009 (MDR / Arte) by Sebastian Dehnhardt .

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Quandt, Bernhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (KPD, SED) and SED functionary, MdV
DATE OF BIRTH April 14, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Rostock
DATE OF DEATH August 2, 1999
Place of death Schwerin