Werner Frohn

Werner Frohn (born April 12, 1929 in Zscherndorf , Bitterfeld district , † July 2, 2002 in Bitterfeld ) was an economic manager of the GDR and politician of the SED , who was general director of the VEB Petrolchemisches Kombinat Schwedt between 1970 and 1990 .

Life

Vocational training and party official

Frohn, the son of a blacksmith and a boiler worker, graduated after attending the elementary school , a vocational training for commercial employees in Government in Bitterfeld . During the Second World War he was drafted into military service in the Wehrmacht in 1945 and was held in a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp in Brandenburg from May to August 1945 .

After the end of the war he returned to the city administration of Bitterfeld, where he was finally head of the social affairs department until 1952. During this time in 1946 he joined the SPD and later the SED as a member. In addition to his professional activity, he was first secretary of the FDJ city ​​management in Bitterfeld between 1949 and 1951 and then head of the parties and mass organizations department of the SED district leadership in the Bitterfeld district, before he was then head of division or deputy head of a department in the VEB Elektrochemisches Kombinat between 1953 and 1964 Bitterfeld was. In the meantime he also acted as secretary of the basic SED organization in the VEB Elektrochemisches Kombinat Bitterfeld and completed a distance learning course at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig from 1954 to 1959 , which he graduated with a degree in economics .

General director of the VEB Petrolchemisches Kombinat Schwedt and member of the Central Committee

In 1964 Frohn was first economic director of the VEB Elektrochemisches Kombinat Bitterfeld and then in 1968 1st Deputy General Director of the VEB Petrolchemisches Kombinat Schwedt, before he became General Director of the VEB Petrolchemisches Kombinat Schwedt (PCK) between March 1970 and 1990 and works director of the parent company Schwedt, which after its new establishment began in April 1964 with the refinement of petroleum from the Soviet Union and thus became next to the VEB Leuna-Werke "Walter Ulbricht" (LWWU) the most important producer of fuels and raw materials for the production of synthetic fibers in the GDR. In addition to his work as general director of VEB PCK Schwedt, he was also chairman of the national committee for oil congresses, head of the GDR delegation in the standing commission for oil and natural gas in the Council for Mutual Economic Aid (RGW), member of the GDR- USA economic council and head of the Subcommittee for science and technology in the GDR-USA Economic Council.

Frohn, who was a member of the SED district leadership in the Frankfurt (Oder) district between 1971 and 1976 , was elected a member of the Central Committee at the 8th Party Congress of the SED from June 15 to 19, 1971 and belonged to it until the Central Committee resigned on December 3, 1989. During this time he was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in 1974 and in 1978 he was also one of the co-initiators of the Schwedt Initiative under the slogan “Produce less, more”, a new strategy in the GDR to increase labor productivity and free labor for other areas of production.

After his 1979 Banner of Labor was awarded, received Frohn 1980, in 1980 and his doctorate Dr. rer. oec. graduated from the Central Institute for Socialist Economic Management (ZISW), the honorary title of Hero of Labor and the Medal of Merit of the organs of the Ministry of the Interior . In addition, he was awarded the battle medal “For Merit for People and Fatherland” in 1981, the Patriotic Order of Merit again in 1982 and, most recently, the Karl Marx Order in 1989 , the most important and highly endowed order of merit in the GDR.

In November 1989 he became a member of the drafting committee that worked out an action program called Steps to Renewal . In addition to the chairman Siegfried Lorenz, this editorial committee included the members Hans Modrow , Eberhard Heinrich , Wolfgang Herger , Helmut Koziolek , Werner Scheler , Gerd Schulz , Gerhard Schürer , Hans-Jürgen Trümper , Moritz Mebel , Wolfgang Junker , Hans-Joachim Hoffmann , Alexander Schalck- Golodkowski , Gerhard Beil , Horst Brünner , Wolfgang Rauchfuß , Heinz Mirtschin , Oskar Fischer , Helga Labs , Hans-Joachim Willerding , Arnold Zimmermann and Helmut Semmelmann .

After German reunification in 1990, he took early retirement.

publication

• Rationalization in new dimensions. The Schwedt Initiative , Berlin 1979

literature

• Hagen Schwärzel , Andreas Herbst :  Frohn, Werner . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hans Michael Kloth: From "folding paper" to free voting: the democratization of the GDR in 1989/90 and the "election question" (=  research on GDR society ). Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-86153-212-3 , p. 372 ( limited preview in Google Book search).