The Socialist Unity Party of Germany was the founding and ruling party of the German Democratic Republic from the country's foundation in 1949 until its dissolution after the Peaceful Revolution in 1989. It was a Marxist–Leninist communist party, established in 1946 as a merger of the East German branches of the Communist Party of Germany and Social Democratic Party of Germany.
Egon Rudi Ernst Krenz is a German former politician who was the last Communist leader of the German Democratic Republic during the Revolutions of 1989. He succeeded Erich Honecker as the General Secretary of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) but was forced to resign only weeks later when the Berlin Wall fell.
The Volkskammer was the supreme power organ of East Germany. It was the only branch of government in the state, and per the principle of unified power, all state organs were subservient to it.
The original Constitution of East Germany was promulgated on 7 October 1949. It was heavily based on the Weimar Constitution and nominally established the GDR as a liberal democratic republic. In 1968, the East German government adopted a new, fully Communist constitution that was based on Marxism–Leninism, political unitarism, and collective leadership. There were further amendments to the 1968 constitution in 1974. With the political events of 1989, there were attempts to draft a new constitution for East Germany, but these efforts never materialized due to the dissolution of East Germany and the accession of its states into the neighboring Federal Republic.
The Liberal Democratic Party of Germany was a political party in East Germany. Like the other allied bloc parties of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in the National Front, it had 52 representatives in the People's Chamber.
The National Front of the German Democratic Republic was officially an alliance of parties and mass organisations (1950–1990). In fact, only one party held power in the GDR, namely the communist SED. The National Front was an instrument to exercise control over the other parties and organisations. The precursor of the National Front was the Democratic Bloc.
These are lists of political office-holders in East Germany. The political leadership of East Germany was distributed between several offices. However, until the Volkskammer removed a section in the GDR's constitution guaranteeing their monopoly on political power on 1 December 1989, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) held ultimate power and authority over state and government. Thus, the head of the SED's Politburo of the Central Committee was the de facto leader of the country.
The president of the German Democratic Republic was the head of state of the German Democratic Republic, commonly known as East Germany, from 1949 until 1960. The office was created by the Constitution of 1949. The president of the Republic was elected by the People's Chamber (Volkskammer) and the Chamber of States (Länderkammer), the two chambers of parliament. The office was mostly ceremonial in nature. If necessary, the President of the Volkskammer acted as the president of the Republic.
The German Democratic Republic was created as a socialist republic on 7 October 1949 and began to institute a government based on the government of the Soviet Union during the Stalin era. The equivalent of the Communist Party in East Germany was the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, which along with other parties, was part of the National Front of Democratic Germany. It was created in 1946 through the merger of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany. Following German reunification, the SED was renamed the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), which eventually merged with the West German Electoral Alternative for Labor and Social Justice to form the modern Left Party.
The German Democratic Republic (GDR), German: Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), often known in English as East Germany, existed from 1949 to 1990. It covered the area of the present-day German states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Berlin, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt, and Thüringen. This area was occupied by the Soviet Union at the end of World War II excluding the former eastern lands annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union, with the remaining German territory to the west occupied by the British, American, and French armies. Following the economic and political unification of the three western occupation zones under a single administration and the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany in May 1949, the German Democratic Republic was founded on 7 October 1949 as a sovereign nation.
General elections were held in East Germany on 18 March 1990. They were the first free elections in that part of Germany since 1932, and were the first and only free elections held in the state as the parliament worked towards German reunification with success.
Albert Norden was a German communist politician.
A bloc party, sometimes called a satellite party, is a political party that is a constituent member of an electoral bloc. However, the term also has a more specific meaning, referring to non-ruling but legal political parties in a one-party state although such minor parties rarely if ever constitute opposition parties or alternative sources of power. Other authoritarian regimes may also have multiple political parties which are nominally independent in order to give the appearance of political pluralism, but support or act in de facto cooperation with the government or ruling party.
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, with all of them being candidates of the single-list National Front, dominated by the communist Socialist Unity Party of Germany.
General elections were held in East Germany on 15 October 1950. They were the first held since the founding of the country on 7 October 1949. There were 466 deputies in the Volkskammer, including 66 from East Berlin who were not directly elected.
Elections for the Third German People's Congress were held in East Germany on 15 and 16 May 1949. Voters were presented with a "Unity List" from the "Bloc of the Anti-Fascist Democratic Parties," which was dominated by the Communist-leaning Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). The ballot was worded "I am for the unity of Germany and a just peace treaty. I therefore vote for the following list of candidates for the Third German People's Congress," with voters having the options of voting "yes" and "no". In much of the country, the vote was not secret.
The German People's Congress were a series of congresses held in Germany. They consisted of members of the Socialist Unity Party, the SED, and other political parties and mass organizations. Delegates from all over Germany gathered for the first time on 6 December 1947. Their main demand was the establishment of a German government.
The Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the east German branches of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) merged to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) on 21 April 1946. Although nominally a merger of equals, the merged party quickly fell under Communist domination and developed along lines similar to other Communist Parties in what became the Eastern Bloc. The SED would be the ruling party of the German Democratic Republic until the end of the republic in December 1989. In the course of the merger, about 5,000 Social Democrats who opposed it were detained and sent to labour camps and jails.
Bertram Wieczorek is a German physician and former politician (CDU).
Käte Niederkirchner was a German politician and pediatrician. In 1967 she became the youngest member of the East German parliament ("Volkskammer"). Her life was impacted by having been born with a famous aunt, the Communist resistance activist Käthe Niederkirchner who was killed by Nazi paramilitaries at Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1944, and who was posthumously much celebrated by East Germany's political leadership.
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