He wasn’t bitter, said Hans Modrow in a newspaper interview in 2014 – but he wasn’t satisfied with the situation in reunified Germany either. The long-standing SED official repeatedly stated that he continues to stand up for his vision of a more just society. And spoke of a “duality in Germany” with a view to wage and pension differences in East and West.
Modrow goes down in history as the last GDR Prime Minister of the once all-powerful state party SED. He died on Saturday night at the age of 95.
The pensioner, who was mentally active until the end, had long since retired from active politics. However, he remained an adviser for the left until old age as chairman of the party’s council of elders. In a conversation with the German Press Agency at the beginning of October 2021, after the heavy defeat of the left in the federal elections, Modrow criticized that they had not sufficiently taken into account his analyzes on the subject of East Germany. As a former prime minister, he sees himself as “continued to have a responsibility towards the former GDR citizens.” He saw Germany at a “historic turning point” after the election. “This is more than the end of the Merkel era.”
Three very different parliaments
Modrow experienced three very different parliaments: from 1958 to 1990 he sat in the GDR People’s Chamber, from 1990 to 1994 he represented the SED successor party PDS in the Bundestag and from 1999 to 2004 in the European Parliament. In essence, he remained true to his basic convictions. “For me, the goal is still socialism,” he said in 2008. Capitalism does not solve the problems, as shown by the climate catastrophe, scarcity of resources and the widening gap between rich and poor. “If humanity wants to continue living, it will squander its chances with this capitalist development.”
In 1949 he consciously returned to the newly founded GDR from being a Soviet prisoner of war, although his family now lived in the west near Hamburg, Modrow said. After the Allied victory over Hitler’s fascism, he “always wanted a new, better society”.
The convinced socialist was seen by many in the GDR as a beacon of hope. He had kept a critical distance from the dogmatic leadership. “Personally, I’m no stranger to the Socialists,” he said in October 2021, referring to the Social Democrats. “I was friends with Egon Bahr.” Under Chancellor Willy Brandt (SPD), Bahr worked on a new Ostpolitik and an improvement in relations with the GDR.
Exiled to the provinces in 1973
The GDR rulers Erich Honecker and Erich Mielke saw Modrow as an insecure clerk who had to be kept away from the power center Politburo. In 1973 he was banished to the provinces as SED chief in Dresden. He did not return to Berlin until the turning point. But Modrow’s role in the violent suppression of civil protests on October 4, 1989 in Dresden was controversial.
On November 13, 1989, just four days after the fall of the Wall, Modrow was elected Chairman of the GDR Council of Ministers, succeeding Willi Stoph. He only stayed there for around 150 days: in the first free People’s Chamber elections on March 18, 1990, the SED-PDS lost power and Modrow lost his office a month later. He was succeeded as the last Prime Minister of the GDR until reunification by the CDU politician Lothar de Maizière. During his tenure, Modrow negotiated the first steps toward rapprochement with the federal government.
In retrospect, Modrow admitted that the GDR did not implement socialism either. “We couldn’t come to terms with ourselves, the socialist planned economy has failed.” Above all, he rated the denial of democratic civil rights as a major deficit. The SED propaganda had always fooled people into thinking they were in a better society that didn’t exist.
Don’t just demonize the GDR
But Modrow was just as clearly opposed to demonizing the GDR solely as an unjust state. There have been good approaches in education and health policy. Even in retrospect, he considered the building of the Wall to be justified. “The fact that August 13, 1961 clarified a confusing, dangerous situation between the blocs, ended the Berlin crisis and objectively provided the prerequisites for the policy of detente,” he wrote in his book “On a Historical Mission – As a German Politician on the Move”.
The rapid implementation of German unity has always annoyed Modrow. He held the then Soviet head of state and party leader Mikhail Gorbachev responsible for this. In the two plus four talks about German reunification, Modrow criticized in 2009 in “Neues Deutschland” that he had not played out the Soviet “fist deposit GDR” at all. “Gorbachev didn’t even sell the GDR.”
The doctor of economics and social sciences was proud that in his short time as head of the GDR government he had seen the results of the land reform – the large-scale expropriations between 1945 and 1949 – and the acquisition of state-owned houses and land for the GDR citizens (Modrow Law). could commit. His critics accuse him of selling the land primarily to officials. (apa/dpa)