Hans Modrow, Last Leader of Communist East Germany, Dies at 95

dpa/

East Germany’s last premier, Hans Modrow, is dead at 95, the far-left Die Linke party he was associated with announced on Saturday.

Modrow was a long-time head of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) and was elevated to leader of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in November 1989.

The promotion came as East Germany fell into disarray and preparations were made for its reunification with West Germany.

East Germany held a free and fair general election in March 1990 and Modrow left office in April.

He went on to serve in the Bundestag and the European Parliament.

“With this, our party loses an important personality,” said Dietmar Bartsch, leader of Die Linke in the German parliament and Gregor Gysi, the former parliamentary group leader.

“The entire peaceful course of establishing German unity was precisely a special achievement of his. That will remain his political legacy,” the two wrote in their remembrance.

Modrow was seen as someone who had kept a small, but critical, distance from the all-powerful SED during GDR times. For this he was sent in the 1970s away from the East Berlin power centre to Dresden.

This actually worked in his favour after the fall of the Wall on November 9, 1989. Only four days later, Modrow became premier after being elected chairman of the GDR Council of Ministers and held the position for about 150 days.

In March 1990, his government founded the Treuhandanstalt, an agency charged with organizing the transition in the east from a planned to a market economy. With the so-called Modrow Law, the GDR prime minister made it possible for numerous house and farm owners to buy the land on which their property stood, many of which had been expropriated after the war for very low prices.

Modrow was critical of the unified German state, saying it was achieved too quickly and unconditionally. The GDR should have obtained more concessions from West Germany, he argued.

As a man of the old guard, he mourned the former communist ideals of the GDR. In many interviews he condemned what he called the one-sided “unjust state.”

He advised Die Linke through his old age and saw himself as having a “continuing responsibility towards former GDR citizens.”

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