Hans Modrow

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hans Modrow (2018)

Hans Modrow (born January 27, 1928 in Jasenitz , Randow district , Pomerania ) is a German politician . He was first secretary of the district leadership of the SED in Dresden . During the turning point and peaceful revolution from November 13, 1989 to April 12, 1990 he was the last chairman of the GDR's Council of Ministers and thus head of the Modrow government . Later he was a member of the Bundestag and the European Parliament . He was honorary chairman of the PDS and is chairman of the council of elders of the party Die Linke .

Youth and education

After completing specialist training as a machine fitter from 1942 to 1945, at the age of 17 , he was appointed to the Volkssturm during World War II and was taken prisoner by the Soviets . In the Soviet Union, Modrow attended an anti-fascist front school for anti-fascist training for members of the German armed forces .

In 1949 he returned to Germany from captivity and worked as a machine fitter in the locomotive construction / electrical engineering works (LEW) Hennigsdorf . From 1949 to 1961 Modrow was involved in various functions of the youth organization FDJ in Brandenburg, Mecklenburg and Berlin . He became a member of the SED and the Free German Trade Union Federation . From 1952 to 1953 he attended the Komsomol University in Moscow . From 1954 to 1957 he completed a distance learning course at the Karl Marx party college of the SED and graduated as a social scientist. From 1959 to 1961 a distance learning course at the Berlin School of Economics Bruno Leuschner (HfÖ) followed, which led to a degree in business administration. In 1966 Modrow joined the Humboldt University in Berlin with the work “Determination, selection and development of young executives for management positions in socialist industry , written together with Rainer Falke . Shown using the example of large companies of the VVB high-voltage equipment and cables " for Dr. rer. oec. PhD.

politics

Before the turning point and peaceful revolution

Modrow quickly made a career within the SED: in 1954 he became a member of the Berlin district leadership of the SED and in 1958 a member of the People's Chamber , which he remained until the end of the GDR in 1990. In September 1961 he was elected first secretary of the SED district leadership Berlin-Köpenick, then he was secretary of the SED district leadership Berlin , responsible for agitation . From 1967 to 1989 he was a member of the Central Committee (ZK) of the SED. Modrow worked in the Central Committee from 1967 to 1973 as a department head for agitation. From 1973 to 1989 Modrow was the first secretary of the district leadership of the SED in Dresden .

In 1975 he was awarded the GDR Patriotic Order of Merit in gold and in 1978 the Karl Marx Order .

After his election as head of government, November 13, 1989

In contrast to other top functionaries of the SED, Modrow was considered to be of integrity and his personal lifestyle remained modest. For example, he lived with his family in a three-room apartment in the center of Dresden. His attitude towards the Soviet head of state Mikhail Gorbachev and his course of perestroika and glasnost in the Soviet Union is not clear .

In 1987 he was planned to succeed Erich Honecker in a Soviet plan that was not carried out.

1989/1990

On October 3, 1989, he had 1,320 people from Dresden who were demonstrating as the refugee trains passed through arrest. On October 13, 1989, the Dresden police leadership, under his command, presented a detailed secret plan to suppress the civil unrest. According to his own accounts in 1991, he tried to reverse what he believed to be a “nonsensical decision” to run the trains through the GDR.

On November 8, 1989, Modrow became a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED and in December became deputy chairman of the party renamed SED-PDS. On November 13th, he was elected chairman of the GDR's Council of Ministers as the successor of Willi Stoph in the People's Chamber with one vote against ( Margot Honecker ). His government was sworn in on November 18th.

In a conversation on December 3, 1989 with Wolfgang Berghofer and Markus Wolf , among others , Modrow said, according to Berghofer: "Comrades, if we want to save the party, we need the guilty", to Berghofer's reply: "We are the guilty", Modrow replied, you couldn't see it like that. The masses should quickly be presented with someone in charge. “That can't be the SED.” The guilty party should be the Ministry of State Security. Wolf then jumped up and protested: "Hans, we - shield and sword of the party - have never done anything without orders from you." According to Berghofer, Modrow suggested Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski as the "person mainly responsible for the misery" .

During a visit by Modrow to Moscow on January 30, 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev explained to him that the " unification of Germans " was not being questioned by him. Modrow gave him a list of wishes that Gorbachev was supposed to bring into negotiations with his Western partners. Subsequently, Modrow and with him the party leadership of the SED-PDS confessed in a declaration on the “common ground of the German nation”. On February 5, 1990, Modrow accepted representatives of the new opposition groups of the central round table as ministers without portfolio in the government. The government of national responsibility came into being .

Hans Modrow, Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl , the Governing Mayor (West Berlin) Walter Momper (with red scarf) and in the background between Kohl and Momper the Lord Mayor (East Berlin) Erhard Krack during the opening of the Brandenburg Gate on December 22, 1989. On the right edge of the picture you can also see Walter Scheel , Otto Graf Lambsdorff and Hans-Dietrich Genscher (with a green coat).

With the so-called Modrow Law passed on March 7, 1990, shortly before the first free elections to the People's Chamber on March 18, 1990, it gave GDR citizens the opportunity to purchase the land on which their houses stood at low cost. For legal reasons (e.g. because the owners had fled to the West), property in the GDR was often separate from the property. According to estimates by the state administration in Weimar, the law caused losses of around 250 million marks for local authorities and the state in Thuringia alone. In Bernhard Vogel's opinion , these losses are “fictitious”, since properties have been valued on which a house already stands that has another owner.

In February 1990 Modrow became honorary chairman of the PDS.

After reunification

Hans Modrow (1999)

From October 3, 1990 to 1994, Hans Modrow was a member of the PDS in the German Bundestag . In 1999 he was elected to the European Parliament. He worked there in the Committee for Development Aid and was jointly responsible for the EU accession talks with the Czech Republic . Despite initial interest, he did not run for the 2004 European elections because PDS chairman Lothar Bisky said he needed him urgently for other tasks and therefore no longer put Modrow on the list of proposals for the European party congress. Since 2007 he has been chairman of the elders' council of Die Linke .

In April 2006 Modrow replied to the question of whether the political leadership of the GDR had not approved of the dead in the Wall , to the magazine Cicero : "Responsibility for the dead is borne by those responsible on both sides." For him, the GDR was an "attempt a socialist development ”,“ in which democracy was also effective with restrictions. ”The statements also caused outrage in his own party.

Modrow denies the order to shoot at the GDR border by describing it as a firearms use regulation and pointing out that similar regulations also exist in other countries.

Modrow's contacts to neo-Stalinist groups are criticized .

In November 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded Modrov the Order of Friendship .

In 2019 Modrow received the Cuban Order of Solidarity .

Conviction for election fraud and perjury false testimony

On May 27, 1993, he received a warning from the Dresden Regional Court for inciting electoral fraud in the GDR , after the Federal Court of Justice had affirmed in 1992 that falsifying socialist local elections in the former GDR were “criminal” even after reunification. In the appeal proceedings, the Federal Court of Justice overturned this decision, in particular because of excessive considerations of mitigation of debt. Another chamber of the regional court finally sentenced Modrow to a suspended sentence of nine months in 1995 and set a suspended sentence of 5000 DM against him.

In 1994, the German Bundestag lifted Modrow's immunity , thus making it possible to bring charges of perjury false testimony to the “Special Committee to Investigate Abuses of Office and Power as a Result of SED Rule”. In 1996 Modrow was found guilty and sentenced to ten months suspended prison sentence. The sentence includes a nine-month suspended sentence imposed in August 1995 for voting fraud. Modrow had claimed in 1992 that he had no right to give instructions to the working class fighting groups , the People's Police and the Stasi district administration established by the SED . He also claimed that at the Dresden civil rights demonstrations of the 7th / 8th October 1989 no combat groups had been deployed, and it was impossible that the SED and Stasi had worked together in Dresden against those wishing to leave the country. His claims have been refuted by files.

Private

Modrow was married to Annemarie Straubing († 2003). He has two daughters and lives with them in Berlin.

Observation by the BND and the protection of the constitution

As can be seen from the answer to a question from the left-wing faction, Modrow has been observed by the BND since 1958 and by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) since 1965. The BfV observation was discontinued on March 1, 2013. Following a lawsuit by Modrow against the partial refusal to hand over the files, a settlement within the meaning of Section 106 VwGO was reached . The 6th Senate of the Federal Administrative Court confirmed Modrow's right to inspect the files on the condition that the files are older than 30 years, do not conflict with the public interest and the protection of the source is not violated. In a personal statement, which he was only allowed to give on record, Modrow demanded equal rights in dealing with secret service files to clarify German-German history with special consideration of the activities of their secret services.

Observation by the MfS

In 1988, the Ministry of State Security began to monitor and spy on Modrow on the orders of Minister Erich Mielke following instructions from Erich Honecker . The aim was to collect incriminating material in order to be able to bring Modrow to justice for high treason . This emerges from BND documents that Modrow received in May 2018 as a result of his lawsuit for the surrender of files. The information comes from a Stasi defector - Horst Böhm, the former head of the Dresden Stasi district administration, in whose safe the relevant documents were discovered, had previously committed suicide.

Publications

  • How a youth control brigade should work! Berlin 1952.
  • What tasks does the FDJ have in the fight for the victory of socialism in the GDR? Berlin 1959.
  • As the leader of an author collective: The GDR and Japan. Berlin 1983.
  • For a new Germany, better than the GDR and FRG. Berlin 1990.
  • With Wolfgang Meyer : departure and end. Berlin 1991.
  • Ed .: The Great House. Insiders report from the Central Committee of the SED. Berlin 1994.
  • Ed .: May 8, 1945. End and beginning. Berlin 1995.
  • Ed .: The Great House from the outside. Experience in dealing with the power center in the GDR. Berlin 1996.
  • Ed .: Our sign was the sun. Lived and experienced. Berlin 1996.
  • With Hans-Dieter Schütt : I wanted a new Germany. Berlin 1998.
  • Perestroika - as I see it. Personal memories and analysis of a decade that changed the world. Berlin 1998.
  • With Manfred Sohn : Before the big jump? Overview of the politics of the Japanese Communist Party. Schkeuditz 2000.
  • From Schwerin to Strasbourg. Memories of half a century of parliamentary work. Berlin 2001.
  • On the mortgage of the communist legacy. Reflections on the historic defeat of communism. Conference contributions. Berlin 2003.
  • Peace is more than just a word ... - On the 70th birthday of Prof. Rolf Lehmann, General a. D. In: Common Security - A Difficult Learning Process. Prof. Dr. Rolf Lehmann on his 70th birthday. (Ed.) Dresdener Studiengemeinschaft Sicherheitsppolitik (DSS) e. V .: DSS working papers , Dresden 2004, issue 70, pp. 17-20. urn : nbn: de: bsz: 14-qucosa2-340207
  • Edited with Hans Watzek : Junkerland in peasant hands. The German land reform and its consequences. Berlin 2005.
  • Edited with Ulrich Maurer : Overtaking is on the left. What can, what wants, what is the Left Party supposed to do. Berlin 2005.
  • Edited with Ulrich Maurer: Left or lame? The new party between order and adaptation. Berlin 2006.
  • On a historical mission. On the road as a German politician. Berlin 2007.
  • Edited with Dietmar Schulz: Latin America, a new era? Berlin 2008.
  • Ed .: Times and caesuras. Stefan Doernberg on his 85th birthday. Berlin 2009.
  • With Gabriele Oertel: Hans Modrow - say what is. Berlin 2010.
  • Volker Hermsdorf / Hans Modrow: anvil or hammer. Talks about Cuba. Berlin and Böklund 2015, ISBN 978-3-95514-020-5 .

literature

Movie

Web links

Commons : Hans Modrow  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christine Gohsmann and Jochen Weichold: Dr. Hans Modrow, Member of the Bundestag (1990 to 1994). (PDF) In: Archive Democratic Socialism; Finding aids / 04.2001 , accessed on June 7, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Neues Deutschland , October 1, 1975, p. 5
  3. ↑ Karl Marx Order awarded to Hans Modrow , In: Neues Deutschland, January 28, 1978, p. 2
  4. ↑ Manfred Rexin: Not just vicarious agent. In: zeit.de . April 13, 1990, accessed January 2, 2015 .
  5. ↑ How Gorbachev wanted to get rid of Honecker in 1987
  6. ↑ Honecker apparently wanted to replace the KGB in 1987
  7. ↑ Password bath heater . In: Der Spiegel . No. 15 , 1993 ( online ).
  8. ^ A b Gerhard Besier: SED / PDS: Vom Ehrlichen Hans. In: Focus Online . November 25, 1996, accessed January 2, 2015 .
  9. ^ In Aufbruch und Ende , Konkret Literatur Verlag, 1991.
  10. ↑ Matthias Meisner: After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Hans Modrow was elected Prime Minister of the GDR - but the reformer's reputation soon faded. In: tagesspiegel.de . November 12, 1999, accessed January 2, 2015 .
  11. ↑ Markus Wehner : The party, the party, it's never to blame. In: FAZ.net . April 16, 2007, accessed January 2, 2015 .
  12. ↑ Sven Felix Kellerhoff : "We need those to blame". In: welt.de . April 12, 2007, accessed January 2, 2015 .
  13. ↑ "We need someone to blame". In: fr-online.de . April 12, 2007, accessed January 2, 2015 .
  14. ↑ Manfred Wilke: MAUERFALL: scapegoat of the party. In: Focus Online . April 23, 2007, accessed January 2, 2015 .
  15. ↑ Stasi scapegoat? In: horch-und-guck.info. 2009, archived from the original on January 2, 2015 ; accessed on January 2, 2015 .
  16. ↑ Hannes Bahrmann, Christoph Links: Chronik der Wende, Vol. 2 , Cr. Links Verlag, 1995, p. 89
  17. ↑ Markus Lesch: Modrow law becomes a time bomb. In: welt.de . February 7, 1997, accessed January 2, 2015 .
  18. ^ "Die LINKE": Council of Elders of the party
  19. ↑ Dirk von Nayhauss: “I wasn't a hero” Interview with Hans Modrow. In: Cicero , May 2006, accessed December 6, 2010
  20. ↑ sz-online: criticism of Modrow in the Left Party. (No longer available online.) In: sz-online.de. April 28, 2006, archived from the original on January 2, 2015 ; accessed on January 2, 2015 . 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.sz-online.de
  21. ↑ Stefan Berg, Markus Deggerich: Rearguard of the working class . In: Der Spiegel . No. 34 , 2008 ( online ).
  22. ↑ Sven Felix Kellerhoff: Why the deniers of the shooting order lie. In: welt.de . April 2, 2009, accessed January 2, 2015 .
  23. ↑ My Freedom - Stories from Germany P. 50–58. Limited preview in Google Book search, pp. 50–58
  24. ↑ Stefan Berg: Coming to terms with the past: Modrow's contacts with neo-Stalinists strain the left. In: Spiegel Online . March 5, 2009, accessed January 2, 2015 .
  25. ↑ Decree of the President of the Russian Federation dated November 27, 2017 N 573 “On receiving the state awards of the Russian Federation” (Russian)
  26. ↑ Hans Modrow, a great friend of Cuba, was awarded the Order of Solidarity , Granma , February 11, 2019
  27. ^ Wolfgang Tiedke: Hans Modrow again in court. In: Berliner Zeitung , August 1, 1995, accessed on December 6, 2010
  28. ^ Klaus Marxen : Criminal justice and GDR injustice: electoral fraud. Walter de Gruyter, 2000, ISBN 978-3-11-016134-2 , p. 326. Limited preview in the Google book search
  29. ^ Les .: Hans Modrow convicted of false oaths. In: welt.de . December 17, 1996, accessed January 2, 2015 .
  30. ↑ René Heilig: BND spied at least 71,500 GDR citizens from new Germany on January 17, 2015
  31. ↑ Steffen Könau: GDR Prime Minister: The last fight of Hans Modrow . In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung . ( mz-web.de [accessed on March 1, 2018]).
  32. ↑ Modrow gets more insight into BND files . In: Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk . ( mdr.de [accessed on March 2, 2018]).
  33. ↑ »There is still a duality« Neues Deutschland, March 12, 2018
  34. ↑ Andreas Debski: Honecker wanted to have Modrow locked in prison - Hans Modrow (90), former SED district chief of Dresden and last GDR Prime Minister of the SED, received the first documents from the archives of the Federal Intelligence Service. The files show that Modrow was to be charged with high treason and imprisoned shortly before the end of the GDR. Leipziger Volkszeitung , online portal. Retrieved June 29, 2018 .
  35. ↑ Note on the film premiere
personal data
SURNAME Modrow, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SED), MdV, MdB, MdEP
DATE OF BIRTH January 27, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Jasenitz