Memoirs from Egon Krenz – the main thing, no violence

Wolfgang Harich, the man with most of the years from all political prisoners in the GDR, said it. Frank Schirrmacher, the figure with the strongest intellectual radiance among all previous editors of the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”, wrote it. And also Peter Gauweiler, perhaps the last intellectual of the current CSU, has publicly expressed it: Egon Krenz, the last general secretary of the SED, earns praise for his acting in 1989. Because he largely-together with the head of the NVA capital Fritz Streletz-ensured that the use of state violence in autumn of that year. This included communicating with the bosses of the Soviet troops in the GDR, please blow out the regular autumn maneuvers and let their soldiers in the barracks.

No, that was not from Gorbachev, but from Krenz. The GDR, which understood peace as a state doctrine, did not roll up with the blood of dissatisfied citizens. In the third, final volume of his memoirs, Krenz in particular describes the processes around the decisive Monday demonstration on October 16, 1989 in Leipzig in detail and plausible. His representation of this thing will exist, even if further waves of the attempted GDR delegitimization are on.

Egon Krenz ‘description of his thinking and acting begins in this volume in 1988/89. What he announces over the following months recalls oppressive feelings that not only members of the SED in the GDR at the time. What should be with this small fatherland? His leadership ensured a leading time, especially in summer and early autumn, by refusing to take the rapidly increasing dissatisfaction. Instead of a liberating pronunciation, there was undiminished success propaganda. And those up there were perceived as a monolithic group down there due to the lack of visible differentiation, which also included Egon Krenz. When he and Günter Schabowski dared to grip on the emergency brake, the train was actually quite derailed.

And by no means because Erich Honecker refused to follow Gorbachev’s course. Its “perestroika” had proven to be a gigantic flop at the latest in 1987 because of their lack of conception for people in the Soviet Union. If western television, which it did not do, and the GDR television, which it was not allowed, had reported on the empty shelves in Moscow shops, the air from the propaganda balloons of “Glasnost” and “Perestroika” would be quickly forgetted. But could the GDR pull itself out of the swamp with its blatant productivity deficit to the West? The playful years since Walter Ulbricht’s fully disempowerment in 1971, did they get catch up?

The personnel switch to Honecker at the time was more conceptual. Ulbricht had relied on intelligent -intensely production for the Lawer -Low -Lawer GDR at the latest in 1961, on computerization, science as a productive power, a modern industrial basis and on using the lust for manufacturing with market elements. Honecker had been the man at the head of a front -ended front against this course, and then as number one in the party and state, he drove a policy on pump, which ultimately meant existence at the expense of the substance.

A flowerpot could not be won with the muscases – and without it. Gorbachev had eliminated remnants of the brotherly in the ratio of the “brother countries”, at least as far as the highest level concerned. Egon Krenz ‘representation makes the dilemma tangible again, even if it dives this and that in a reduced light, for example the factual Soviet sabotage of Ulbrich’s politics to a critical view of the Kremlin on its work.

In the short time – it was 49 days – that was at the head of the SED, things occurred of historical importance. The outstanding was the fall of the wall on November 9, 1989. He also credibly describes the processes of this day on which the SED central committee came together, insofar as they concern its actions. In his view of Schabowski’s behavior at the famous press conference with media from all over the world, I cannot follow. Krenz writes that at the ZK conference at 5.15 p.m. at the ZK conference he pressed his paper for the new travel regulation with the remark “This is the world message”. “Schabowski”, says Krenz, “should inform the press conference that this new regulation would be published on the other day. But he performed the text in the wording, although the blocking period had been set to 4:00 a.m.

Could that have worked? Hardly. What should Schabowski have informed of the world press? That the next day a travel regulation will be published without saying what is in this? Schabowski was a media professional enough to recognize the wooden path. It was most likely to him how little the crew of the Honecker-Türzer Moscow met ideas, where the wind in the internal party activities blew from the large house on Werderschen Markt. His three words “immediately” and “immediately”, which triggered the tsunami, who hit Gorbachev cold and, moreover, pulverized the rights of the USSR as an Allied power in Berlin, can also be interpreted as a kind of liberation as a spontaneous inspiration. Only it had to look like an accident. Schabowski had a Russian woman whose relatives lived in Moscow. And if you had to do with him more often, for example in your time as head of the ND editorial team, he knows that he had the Schwejk on it. His later “we-a-all-all-falsch-made” arias have strongly influenced the view of Schabowski, one way or the other, but they are irrelevant for the processes of November 9, 1989.

Nd.Diewoche – Our weekly newsletter

With our weekly newsletter . We’re Doing Look at the most important topics of the week and read them Highlights our Saturday edition on Friday. Get the free subscription here.

The strangest news that Egon Krenz reports: In her rather ghostly session on January 20 and 21, 1990, the arbitration commission of the SED PDS as such did not exclude him and Schabowski from the party. Günther Wieland, the then head of the Commission, later showed him the draft for its press release. It said in particular, in particular Krenz, but also Siegfried Lorenz, the former district chief of the SED in Karl-Marx-Stadt, and Schabowski », respecting the fact that the social upheaval in the GDR in autumn 1989 could be violated and the power-obsessed group around Erich Honecker could be replaced. Taking into account all of these circumstances, the arbitration commission refrained from excluding the three mentioned from the SED PDS. “The quoted was missing on page 3 on page 3 of” ND “, which” announced the “communication of the party’s central arbitration commission”, but only informed about the remaining of Lorenz in the party. What happened there? In the editorial team of the “ND”, which even sent three rapporteurs to the commission meeting, no one would have dared to embezzle. Or?

As we know, the German Justice 1997, Egon Krenz, the former interlocutor of many Bonn politicians, sentenced to six and a half years in prison for “homicide and responsibility for the GDR border regime. He had to serve almost four years. This fate alone should keep his better-to-be companions from being panted through their exhausted and today’s animosities compared to the once higher.

Egon Krenz: loss and expectation. Memories. Edition Ost, 384 pages, born € 26.
By Holger Becker, until 1995 science editor of this newspaper, and Udo Baarck is the book »Johannes Gillhoff. A biographical sketch “about the author of the Volksbuch” Jürnjakob Swehn, the America drivers “appeared.