1963 East German general election

1963 East German general election

←  1958 20 October 1963 (1963-10-20) 1967  →
434 out of 500 seats in the Volkskammer
Turnout	99.25% ( 0.35pp)
Majority party   Leader Walter Ulbricht Party SED Alliance National Front Seats won 127 Seat change 10
Chairman of the Council of Ministers before election Otto Grotewohl SED Chairman of the Council of Ministers after election Otto Grotewohl SED

General elections were held in East Germany on 20 October 1963. They were to originally be held in November 1962 but were postponed. 434 deputies to the Volkskammer were elected and 66 deputies appointed by the Magistrate of East Berlin, with all of them being candidates of the single-list National Front, dominated by the communist Socialist Unity Party of Germany. The seat count outside of East Berlin was expanded in this election by 34, making the Volkskammer a round 500 members large. The new seats (plus 12 seats allocated to the Peasants Mutual Aid Association in previous elections) exclusively went to the SED and the mass organizations, the bloc parties' all staying at 52 seats.

Like all East German elections before the Peaceful Revolution, this election was neither free nor fair. Voters were only presented with a closed list of candidates (pre-approved by the SED Central Committee Secretariat) put forward by the National Front. The list predetermined an outcome whereby the SED had both the largest faction in the Volkskammer and a majority of its members, as almost all of the Volkskammer members elected for one of the mass organizations were also members of the SED. While voters could reject the list, they would have to use the polling booth, the use of which was documented by Stasi informants located at every polling site, and had to cross out every name, as "Yes" and "No" boxes were removed after the 1950 election. Abstaining from voting was also seen as oppositional and punished. While legally permissible according to East German election laws, widespread election monitoring was not done out of fear for repression until the 1989 local elections. ^{[1] [2] [3]}

Results

See also: List of members of the fourth Volkskammer

Party or alliance				Votes	%	Seats	+/–
	National Front		Socialist Unity Party of Germany		99.95	127	+10
			Free German Trade Union Federation			68	+15
			Christian Democratic Union			52	0
			Liberal Democratic Party of Germany			52	0
			National Democratic Party of Germany			52	0
			Democratic Farmers' Party of Germany			52	0
			Free German Youth			40	+11
			Democratic Women's League of Germany			35	+6
			Cultural Association of the GDR			22	+4
Against					0.05	–	–
Total						500	+34
Total votes				11,533,859	–
Registered voters/turnout				11,621,158	99.25
Source: Nohlen et al.

References

• Dieter Nohlen, Dolf Sternberger, Bernhard Vogel and Klaus Landfried (Ed.). Die Wahl der Parlamente und anderer Staatsorgane. Herausgegeben von Dolf Sternberger und Bernhard Vogel. Redaktion von Dieter Nohlen Band I: Europa. Berlin: Verlag Walter de Gruyter & Co. 1969. p. 376.
• Cyril Edwin Black and Ernst Christian Helmreich. Twentieth Century Europe: A History. New York: Knopf. 1972. p. 677.

External links

• Law on the Elections to the People's Representatives of the GDR of 31 July 1963
• Decision of the State Council of the German Democratic Republic on the constituencies and the number of representatives to be elected in each constituency for the election to the People's Chamber of the German Democratic Republic in 1963

1. Wahlen in der DDR (PDF) (in German). Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship . Retrieved 2025-12-04.
2. Bundesstiftung Aufarbeitung Brand (2022-08-08). MitBeStimmen: Wahlen in der DDR: So unterschiedlich sind Demokratie und Diktatur . Retrieved 2025-12-04– via YouTube.
3. MDR Investigativ (2019-05-21). Wahlfälschung bei der DDR-Kommunalwahl 1989 - Der Anfang vom Ende | FAKT . Retrieved 2025-12-04– via YouTube.