With the founding act of the German Democratic Republic on October 7, 1949, the previously existing German People's Council transformed into the Provisional People's Chamber of the GDR. At 12:45 PM on October 7, during its 9th and final session in the Grand Hall of the German Economic Commission, the German People's Council decided to transform itself into the Provisional People's Chamber of the GDR. At 5:35 PM on the same day, the Provisional People's Chamber was constituted. One of the purposes of this constitution was to enact the Constitution of the GDR into effect.
| Faction | Seats of GDR Deputies | Seats of Deputies from Greater Berlin | Total Seats |
|---|---|---|---|
| SED | 96 | ||
| DBD | 15 | ||
| CDU | 46 | ||
| LDPD | 46 | ||
| NDPD | 17 | ||
| FDGB | 30 | ||
| DFD | 10 | ||
| FDJ | 10 | ||
| Kulturbund | 35 | ||
| Union of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime | 10 | ||
| Peasants Mutual Aid Association | 5 | ||
| SDA [1] | - | 5 | 5 |
| Cooperatives | 5 | ||
| Total | 330 |
Note: The composition of the Presidium contradicted Article 57 of the Constitution of the GDR dated October 7, 1949. According to this article, only factions with at least 40 deputies would have been allowed to send a representative to the Presidium. Specifically, this would have been the SED, LDPD, and CDU. The differentiation between NDP and DBD is also striking. While the National Democrats received a deputy position, the DBD was only represented by a member. The reason why no other mass organizations were considered except for the DFD and FDGB is not clear.
Note: A manual or directory in book form for the deputies of the Provisional People's Chamber was not available until November 2017.
Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at de:Liste der Mitglieder der Provisorischen Volkskammer; see its history for attribution.
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 Democratic Farmers' Party of Germany was an East German political party. The DBD was founded in 1948. It had 52 representatives in the Volkskammer, as part of the National Front. The DBD participated in all GDR cabinets. The founding of the DBD was an attempt by the SED to weaken the influence of CDU/LDPD in the rural community by establishing a party loyal to the SED. The leadership cadre came mainly from the ranks of the SED. In the late 1980s, the party had 117,000 members.
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.
Gerald Götting was a German politician and chairman of the East German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 1966 until 1989. He served as President of the People's Chamber (Volkskammer) from 1969 to 1976 and deputy chairman of the State Council of East Germany from 1960 to 1989.
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.
General elections were held in East Germany on 18 March 1990, and were the first and only free elections held in the state before German reunification. The Alliance for Germany, led by the new East German branch of the right-wing Christian Democratic Union (CDU), won 192 seats and emerged as the largest bloc in the 400-seat Volkskammer, having run on a platform of speedy reunification with West Germany. The East German branch of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which had been dissolved in 1946 and refounded only six months before the elections, finished second with 88 seats despite being widely expected to win. The former Socialist Unity Party of Germany, restyled as the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), finished third with 66 seats the first free election in which it participated.
Hans Rietz was an East German politician who became a top official in the country's Democratic Farmers' Party , which was one of five so-called bloc parties controlled by the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany . For many years Rietz served as a member of the National parliament ("Volkskammer") and he was also a long-standing deputy chairman of the State Council.
Katharina "Käthe" Kern became a German anti-government activist during the Hitler years. After 1945 she quickly emerged as a senior politician and party loyalist in the Soviet occupation zone. She served between 1946 and 1985 as a member of what became the powerful Party Central Committee. A long-standing leading figure in the Ministry for the Health Service), she also served, between 1949 and 1970, as head of the national "Mother and Child department".
Martha Israel was a German clerk and politician of Sorbian ethnicity. She served in the Volkskammer of East Germany from 1963 until 1967 as a member of the Socialist Unity Party and the Democratic Women's League of Germany. Prior to this, she was also a member of the Spremberg city council, and was the secretary of the local branch of the Domowina.
Rudolf Kirchner was a trade union official in the GDR, representing the FDGB at various times as the parliamentary group leader in the Volkskammer and also serving as a candidate of the Central Committee of the SED.
