Gunter Rettner

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In the stable yard in Dresden 1985 (from left to right): Herbert Weiz , Oskar Lafontaine , Gunter Rettner, Hans Modrow and Gerhard Schill

Gunter Rettner (born January 28, 1942 in Zeitz ; † December 11, 1998 in Finowfurt ) was a German FDJ functionary and the SED functionary.

Life

FDJ functionary

The son of an industrial clerk and a seamstress completed an apprenticeship as a bricklayer in Zeitz and Gera after attending elementary school and high school and then worked in this profession for some time. At the beginning of his apprenticeship he joined the FDJ in 1956, was secretary of the FDJ district leadership Gera-Stadt between 1962 and 1964 and became a member of the SED in 1963. From 1964 to 1965 he studied at the Komsomol University in Moscow and after his return was until 1968 secretary for agitation and propaganda of the FDJ district leadership in Gera . During this time he already had contacts with representatives of the Socialist Youth of Germany - Die Falken . Subsequently, he was initially deputy head of the Central Working Group (ZAG) department in the Central Council of the FDJ and then studied from 1971 to 1974 at the party college of the CPSU in Moscow, which he graduated with the academic degree of a social scientist.

After his return to the GDR , he was head of the ZAG department in the Central Council of the FDJ until 1975 and then until 1983 Secretary for Western Work and member of the office of the Central Council of the FDJ one of the closest collaborators of the then 1st Secretary of the Central Council, Egon Krenz . In 1975 he was also a representative of the FDJ in the Presidium of the Peace Council of the GDR .

After leaving the FDJ, in 1983 he was first deputy head of the West Department of the Central Committee of the SED , which was renamed the Department of International Politics and Economics (IPW) in 1984.

Central Committee Head of Department for Western Policy

At the 11th plenary session of the Central Committee in November 1985, he finally succeeded Herbert Häber as head of the Department for International Politics and Economics of the Central Committee of the SED.

On the XI. At the SED party congress in April 1986 he was first a candidate and then in 1988 a member of the SED Central Committee, of which he was a member until December 3, 1989. In 1989 he was also head of the Central Committee for Transport for a short time as the successor to Julius Cebulla .

As the department head for international politics and economics, he had significant contacts in the Federal Republic of Germany , the SEW and leading politicians of the SPD such as Gerhard Schröder , Anke Fuchs , Peter Glotz , and especially Oskar Lafontaine and especially from the Berlin regional association. In 1984 he was initially an “observer” and then in 1988 finally even a “guest” at the state party congresses of the SPD Berlin. In addition, there were also regular discussions with politicians from the CDU and CSU .

As the Central Committee department head responsible for Western policy, he wrote a report to Erich Honecker in March 1987 about a meeting with Harry Ristock , the left-wing veteran of the Berlin SPD . The two met in West Berlin to prepare for the annual round of talks between representatives of the SED central committee and the Berlin SPD leadership. But first of all, Ristock described the discussion in the party executive committee of the SPD about the recently lost federal election . It is now a matter of " opening up the party to possible coalition partners outside the CDU / CSU as quickly as possible and winning the majority with Oskar Lafontaine in 1991". Oskar Lafontaine is Willy Brandt's favorite and, as it were, as a “double grandson”, also “a grandson of Erich Honecker”. The two of them get along extremely well, and "it would be a blessing for both parties and states if Erich Honecker remained Secretary General for a long time and Oskar Lafontaine became the new party chairman".

In autumn 1987 there was a meeting with another top politician of the SPD, the member of the German Bundestag and foreign policy spokesman for the party, Karsten Voigt . He gave Rettner copies of NATO analyzes and theses - even before they had been finally discussed and approved by the NATO military committee . This is evidenced by an internal SED protocol of October 27, 1987. Recognizable proud of its exclusive procurement, Rettner sent Voigt's documents with “socialist greetings” to Politburo member Egon Krenz. The table of contents of the documents make clear what Voigt must have given Comrade Rettner. The “draft report” from the sub-committee “Conventional Defense - New Strategies and Operational Concepts”, written in September 1987, describes the “concepts of air and ground war”, the “modernization program” of chemical weapons and the “nuclear threshold” “In the defense strategy“ Follow-on-Forces-Attack ”, FOFA for short.

When Oskar Lafontaine protested at the end of November 1987, like other West German politicians, against the search and arrest of seven employees of the environmental library of the Zionskirche (Berlin) by the Ministry for State Security , Honecker feared a “change of direction” in Lafontaine. So Rettner paid a visit to Lafontaine in the Saarbrücken State Chancellery and immediately got down to business in a conversation with Lafontaine. He forbade any “interference in internal affairs”, called the arrested persons “people” who “acted against the laws of the GDR” and then campaigned for “a realistic approach to normalizing relations between the two German states”. Then came the decisive sentence: "Conversely, Lafontaine also benefited from the fact that relations between the GDR and Saarland are particularly good." In the minutes that Rettner then prepared for the Politburo , it was said that Lafontaine had "visibly affected" replied, that it had "never been his intention" to "discredit Erich Honecker's policies" and that he had "primarily finished his statement." domestic political point of view ”. Then the SPD politician added that he had "deep confidence" in the SED General Secretary.

In April 1988 he took part alongside Egon Krenz, the then secretary of the SED Central Committee for Security Issues, Youth and Sport , and the head of the Permanent Mission of the Federal Republic of Germany to the GDR , Hans Otto Bräutigam , in which it was about youth and Sports exchange between FRG and GDR went.

On October 1, 1989, he received a letter from the then chairman of the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin (SEW), Dietmar Ahrens, in which he told him about a conversation between the Governing Mayor of Berlin Walter Momper and the head of the International Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Valentin Falin reported. In it, Momper expressed rumors about a mass border breach in the GDR as part of the GDR's 40th anniversary.

Because of its close ties to Krenz he was from that part of a "rejuvenation" in October 1989 alongside Wolfgang Herger , Günther Jahn , Hartmut König , Helga Labs , Hans Modrow , Erich postman , Wilfried Poßner , Hans-Joachim Willerding and Eberhard Aurich even membership in the Politburo of the SED is planned.

In mid-November 1989 he met with the federal treasurer of the CDU Walther Leisler Kiep in preparation for a meeting with the head of the Federal Chancellery , Rudolf Seiters . The minutes of the meeting of November 16, 1989 confirmed that the Kohl government, even under Krenz, was committed to the continued existence of the SED state. Bonn was ready to support the ailing comrades with extensive relief measures. In a four-hour conversation on November 15, 1989 in the East Berlin Palace Hotel, Rettner and Kiep were supposed to prepare a visit from Chancellery Chief Seiters.

In 1990 he worked alongside Hartmut König , another former secretary of the Central Council of the FDJ, worked on Egon Krenz's book “When walls fall. The peaceful revolution. Prehistory - Process - Effects ".

Later he was next to Klaus Eichler and Frank Bochow , also former functionaries of the FDJ, partner of the Touristik-Union-Kontakt International GmbH (TUK), a company that drew its assets from the property of the SED.

Awards

For his services in the FDJ and the SED he received the Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze in 1977 and in silver in 1983.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinrich Eppe: Socialist Youth in the 20th Century: Studies on the Development and Political Practice of the Worker Youth Movement in Germany . 2008, ISBN 3-7799-1136-1 , p. 286.
  2. ↑ THE SED'S 11TH CENTRAL COMMITTEE PLENUM  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.osaarchivum.org  
  3. ↑ Jenny Niederstadt: "Request instructions!". The West Berlin SEW and its daily newspaper “The Truth” on the SED course . ( Memento of the original from March 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.berlin.de
  4. ↑ Christian von Ditfurth: Fear of the files. Archives reveal how SPD politicians dealt with SED politicians .
  5. ↑ Gerhard Kunze: Border experiences: contacts and negotiations between the state of Berlin and the GDR 1949–1989 . 1999, ISBN 3-05-003442-4 , p. 473.
  6. ↑ From confrontation to dialogue. On the change in the relationship between the two German states in the sixties and seventies . Federal Agency for Civic Education
  7. ↑ The deep trust of the "double grandson". The political scientist Jochen Staadt describes an explosive chapter in Oskar Lafontaine's biography: the close contacts with Honecker and the SED . In: FOCUS
  8. ↑ Scandal: Reveal Secret NATO Plans? In: FOCUS
  9. ^ NATO documents for the old friend in the SED. Allegation of treason against Karsten Voigt . In: The world
  10. ↑ Spies in the Archives . In: Berliner Zeitung , May 31, 2006
  11. ^ Oskar Lafontaine - Oskar and the pioneers In: Cicero
  12. ↑ Gerhard Kunze: Border experiences: contacts and negotiations between the state of Berlin and the GDR 1949–1989 . 1999, ISBN 3-05-003442-4 , p. 360.
  13. ↑ November 07, 1989. GDR - Krenz daily report u. a. Political office meeting of the SED; Call from the Czechoslovak party leader Jakes. Source: Krenz II 226-229
  14. ↑ Germany policy. Don't start a fire . In: Der Spiegel . No. 38 , 1994 ( online ).
  15. ↑ Egon Krenz: When walls fall .
  16. ^ Stefan Bollinger: GDR 1989/1990 - from departure to connection . (PDF; 83 kB)
  17. ↑ Saving SED coal . In: Der Spiegel . No. 20 , 1991 ( online ).
personal data
SURNAME Rettner, Gunter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German FDJ functionary and SED functionary
DATE OF BIRTH January 28, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Time
DATE OF DEATH December 11, 1998
Place of death Finowfurt