Political system of the GDR
The political system of the GDR was a dictatorship without an existing separation of powers . It combined the properties of real socialism with the principles of so-called democratic centralism . Political power was not distributed among various bodies, but came from the comprehensive and uncontrolled ruling center of leadership and rule of the GDR, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), which headed the SED, which in turn had sole control over all areas the GDR raised. The German Democratic Republic was in its self-image a socialist state and implemented the basic principles of a people 's republic . Since the form of government was shaped by the rule of a party , the so-called state party , the GDR also speaks of a party dictatorship.
Structure and function of the state organs
People's Chamber
Formally the highest organ was the People's Chamber , the parliament of the GDR, which was not a parliament in the sense of a representative democracy , but supposedly was supposed to embody the undivided sovereignty of the people in a radical democracy and in the relationship between social groups. This elected the members of the State Council as the collective head of state and the Council of Ministers as the government of the GDR. She also elected the President and the judges of the Supreme Court and the Attorney General , who could be recalled by the People's Chamber at any time, i.e. without judicial independence. It met only about four times a year and decided unanimously until 1989 with one exception (1972 the introduction of the time limit solution for abortions through the law on the interruption of pregnancy ). An opposition was not allowed in the SED dictatorship.
The 500 members of the People's Chamber were elected every four years, from 1971 five years on, by a general, equal election, but the election was only secret according to the constitutional claim. The composition of the people's representative body was already determined before the elections, as the distribution of the seats among the parties and mass organizations of the Democratic Bloc was determined beforehand via a unified list. The democratic form was devalued by the electoral form with a unified list of the National Front , as a result of which a comprehensive claim to leadership of the SED was secured. The GDR electoral system did not provide for free elections and in practice no secret elections . It was customary to use "folding" to vote for all proposed candidates without using a voting booth . Deviations were sometimes noted and could have negative consequences. Individual names could be removed from the list, but this was rarely practiced. The use of the voting booth was already suspicious. Elections thus became a mere acclamation of the alleged popular will, which usually led to official election results with 99 percent approval. On top of that, however, the counted results were falsified for publication in the sense of the SED, as was proven in the last local elections in May 1989 .
State party and block parties
As in other real socialist states, state power did not lie with the formally highest bodies at the respective level, but in fact with the ruling party, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany . It coordinated its procedures closely with the Soviet Union , where power lay with the CPSU . In fact, power was therefore exercised by the respective structures of the SED state party, that is, the members of the Politburo and the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the SED . The SED's claim to absolute leadership had been officially anchored in the constitution of the GDR since April 6, 1968 and was deleted by the old People's Chamber on December 1, 1989 at the turn of the year. Article 1 of the Constitution of the GDR stated:
“The German Democratic Republic is a socialist state of workers and peasants. It is the political organization of the working people in town and country under the leadership of the working class and its Marxist-Leninist party. "
In addition to the SED, there were four other parties, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany (LDPD), the National Democratic Party of Germany (NDPD) and the Democratic Peasant Party of Germany (DBD). They were called block parties because they were united with the SED in the National Front ; this originally emerged from the anti-fascist-democratic bloc.
This also included the mass organizations Free German Trade Union Federation (FDGB), Free German Youth (FDJ), Democratic Women's Federation of Germany (DFD) and the Kulturbund . The mass organizations had their own representatives in the GDR people's representations. Most of them were members of the SED and so strengthened the real power of the SED. However, the bloc parties also followed the SED policy. The bloc parties each got a minister in the government.
Government bodies
The Council of Ministers of the GDR had almost 40 members since 1967, most of them from the SED and since 1971 only one from each of the bloc parties. The focus of his work was the planning and management of the nationalized economy, for which numerous line ministries were responsible.
The collective head of state, since 1960 the State Council of the GDR , consisted of 22-29 members under the chairman Walter Ulbricht , from 1973 Willi Stoph and from 1976 Erich Honecker . Since 1974 he has had purely representative tasks. Before that, Wilhelm Pieck was the representative president of the GDR .
The actual power lay with the SED leadership: the general secretary headed the center of power, the Politburo of the SED, with around 25 people . There was strict party discipline and a so-called parliamentary group ban, which means that unanimity had to be achieved. The members and candidates were formally elected by the Central Committee of the SED , which met two to three times a year between the party conventions, which took place every five years. The Secretariat of the Central Committee was a bureaucratic apparatus of about 2,000 functionaries among eleven secretaries who represented various fields and were members of the Politburo. This resulted in a dual structure of state (ministries etc.) and party (Politburo, secretariats etc.) in which the party had priority. The internal party elections were determined in advance by the apparatus' lists of proposals. A central party control commission monitored the expected behavior of all 2.26 million members of the SED (1989) and exercised control through regular exchange of party books.
Another center of power was formed in 1960 by a National Defense Council chaired by the Secretary General, to which only SED members were allowed to belong. He had the sole right to issue instructions to the central management areas and the district management . He was also responsible for securing the border through the order to shoot at the Berlin Wall and the inner-German border.
State building
The strictly centralized state structure continued with the administrative division into 15 districts and 217 districts in the state and SED. The district council elected by the district assembly was dominated by the SED district leadership under the 1st district secretary, who were subordinate to the central SED leadership. A district planning commission carried out the requirements of the state planning commission . One level below were the rural districts and independent cities (urban districts) with the same structures (district council, council of the district / city council , SED district leadership with the 1st district secretary, district planning commission), among these in turn the municipalities (or city districts). There was no communal autonomy and self-administration. The boundaries between the party and state organs remained deliberately unclear in order to always be able to decide according to political criteria without administrative constraints.
Legal and security organs
The legal system of the GDR did not correspond to the western conception of the rule of law . There was no guarantee of legal recourse or administrative courts to sue against state measures. According to Article 103 of the Constitution, this should replace an extensive right to petition or submit petitions to state organs, the decision of which, however, was subject to the state's arbitrariness. In the GDR lawyers were not independent of the state. They had no right to inspect the files . Like the judges, lawyers only received a summary report. There was no possibility of having the files checked by a lawyer (especially in criminal proceedings). Citizens who attracted attention through oppositional statements and actions for political reasons were criminalized and imprisoned as criminals . The Penal Code was formulated so arbitrarily extensible in some politically relevant paragraphs that apparently legal convictions fell slightly, especially because of the " elastic clause " § 106 ( "anti-state propaganda").
The direct state security organs such as the National People's Army , the police and the extensive surveillance and informing apparatus of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) were under particularly close control by the SED . The filling of the most important offices in all areas required their confirmation ( nomenklatura ), there was no doubt of their subordination to the party.
society
In addition, the entire society was politicized in order to secure rule. With the totalitarian ideologization and the associated censorship in the media, literature and art, an image of the enemy was propagated at the same time with a new terminology , which was directed against the West and which especially the youth should internalize. The demarcation from the Federal Republic was a question of existence for the GDR. Politically dissenters were subjected to reprisals. The entire educational system in the GDR was subject to the ideological guidelines of the SED, in terms of educational content, almost complete coverage in the Free German Youth , military instruction and the compulsory training of all students in Marxism-Leninism .
Foreign policy involvement
The GDR was internationally involved in the Warsaw Pact and in the Council for Mutual Economic Aid (Comecon) and has been a member of the United Nations since 1973 . Significant was the signing of the CSCE Final Act in Helsinki in 1975, in which the GDR once again committed itself to binding human rights .
literature
- Jürgen Frölich (Ed.): "Bourgeois" parties in the Soviet Zone, GDR. On the history of the CDU, LDP (D), DBD and NDPD from 1945 to 1953 . Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1995, ISBN 3-8046-8813-6 .
- Florian Gräßler: Was the GDR totalitarian ?. A comparative study of the rule system of the GDR based on the totalitarianism concepts of Friedrich, Linz, Bracher and Kielmansegg (= extremism and democracy . Vol. 30). Nomos, Baden-Baden 2014, ISBN 978-3-8487-1855-9 .
- Sigrid Meuschel : Legitimation and Party Rule. On the paradox of stability and revolution in the GDR 1945–1989 (= Edition Suhrkamp 1688 = NF 688). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-518-11688-6 (also: Berlin, FU, Habil.-Schr.).
- Hedwig Richter : The GDR (= UTB 3252 profiles ). Schöningh, Paderborn 2009, ISBN 978-3-8252-3252-8 , pp. 11-25.
- Klaus Schroeder : The SED state. History and structures of the GDR (= Bavarian State Center for Political Education. A 104, ZDB -ID 1173393-7 ). With the collaboration of Steffen Alisch. Bavarian State Center for Political Education, Munich 1998.
- Falco Werkentin : Law and Justice in the SED State (= Deutsche Zeitbilder ). 2nd revised edition. Federal Agency for Political Education, Bonn 2000 ISBN 3-89331-344-3 .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Gerhard Werle , Klaus Marxen , Toralf Rummler, Petra Schäfter: Criminal justice and GDR injustice: acts of violence on the German-German border. De Gruyter 2002; Reprint 2012. p. 654.
- ^ Constitution of the GDR: Section I: Foundations of the socialist society and state order. Chapter 1: Political Foundations , April 6, 1968 (as amended October 7, 1974).
- ^ Hans Georg Lehmann: Chronicle of the GDR. 1945/49 until today (= Beck'sche black series 314). 2nd revised edition. Beck, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-406-31596-8 .
- ^ Schröder: The SED state. P. 421.
- ↑ Beatrix Bouvier : The GDR - a welfare state? Social policy in the Honecker era. Dietz, Bonn 2002, ISBN 3-8012-4129-7 .