Egon Krenz

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Egon Rudi Ernst Krenz (Kolberg, Pomerania, March 19, 1937) is a German communist politician and ex-convict. He governed the former German Democratic Republic. On October 18, 1989, he succeeded Erich Honecker as leader of the Socialist Unified Party of Germany (SED) and on October 24, 1989, as head of state of East Germany, but within a few weeks he was overcome by the events that preceded the collapse of the socialist state.

After German reunification in 1990, investigations were carried out into people killed while trying to cross the inter-German border. Krenz was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for the deaths of four of the people killed at the border. He was serving his prison sentence since January 13, 2000 and was released early on December 18, 2003. He is currently retired from public life.

Biography

Early years

Krenz was born on March 19, 1937 in the city of Kolberg (Pomerania), which after the Second World War became a Polish city. In 1944 his mother fled with her sister to Ribnitz-Damgarten. Her father died in World War II. Krenz finished school in Damgarten in 1953. In the same year he joined the Free German Youth (FDJ). Krenz interrupted his apprenticeship as a locksmith at VEB Dieselmotor in Rostock, [citation needed ] he studied from 1953 to 1957 at the teacher training institute in Putbus on Rügen and graduated with a teacher's diploma. In 1955 he joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED).

Political career

Advance in the youth organization and the party

In 1959, Krenz was second and then first district secretary of the FDJ in the Rügen district. Since 1960 he was the first secretary of the Rostock district leadership of the FDJ. In 1961 he was appointed secretary of the Central Council of the FDJ and was responsible for youth association work in universities, colleges and technical schools. From 1964 to 1967 Krenz studied at the CPSU party college in Moscow and graduated as social scientist.[citation required] Later, from 1967 to 1974, he was secretary of the central council of the FDJ, responsible for agitation and propaganda as well as the work of the FDJ in schools. At the same time he worked from 1971 to 1973 as president of the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organization. From 1973 or 1974 to 1983 he held the position of First Secretary of the Central Council of the FDJ.

From 1971 to 1990 Krenz was a member of the People's Chamber of the GDR, from 1971 to 1981 he was also a member of its presidium. In 1973 he was appointed member of the Central Committee (ZK) of the SED. He held the position until 1989. From 1981 to 1984 Krenz was a member of the State Council of the GDR. In 1983 he was elected member of its Politburo and secretary of the SED Central Committee for security, youth, sport, state and political issues. legal.[citation required] With his appointment as vice-president of the Council of State, Kernz became the second man behind Erich Honecker in 1984.

Peaceful revolution

Krenz visited West Germany for the first time in June 1989, when he was invited by Oskar Lafontaine, the Social Democratic Minister-President of the Saarland. German parliamentarian Brigitte Schulte, in charge of accompanying him during the visit, described Krenz as a cynical politician more concerned with his own political career than a born reformer.

After the numerous mobilizations against the regime at the end of 1989, Erich Honecker was forced to resign on October 18 and was replaced by Egon Krenz both in the general secretariat of the SED and in the head of state of the GDR. Although until then he had been waiting for the foreseeable natural death of Honecker (who was sick with cancer), he was finally convinced to come to power given the seriousness of the situation due to the numerous protests.

During his inauguration speech he promised to carry out democratic and economic reforms, but few believed him. Among his policies was a plan to make the right to travel abroad more flexible, but it got out of control. He was quickly overwhelmed by events: during his mandate the Berlin Wall began to be demolished and the state structure collapsed. from the GDR. Thousands of Germans even took to the streets to openly demand his resignation.He was unable to control the departure of hundreds of thousands of Germans to the West through Czechoslovakia, a communist country that had opened its borders with West Germany.

Faced with increasing protests, pressure on the GDR's foreign debt, and wavering support from the Soviet Union, Krenz resigned from all his positions on December 7 of that same year and was replaced by the liberal- Democrat Manfred Gerlach. He was practically isolated from the processes of change that were taking place. Furthermore, in 1990 he was expelled from the new Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) in an attempt to disassociate himself from the communist past.

Conviction for murders

Krenz in 2007

In 1997 he was prosecuted by the authorities of the FRG, accused of the death of four of the people murdered while trying to escape illegally through the Berlin Wall and of electoral fraud, although the procedure for electoral fraud was dismissed. Krenz He appealed the sentence, alleging that he could not be tried under the laws of the Federal Republic for events that occurred in the GDR, although in 1999 the verdict was ratified by the German justice system and he was definitively imprisoned. Krenz would later describe his trial as "victors' justice" and "political persecution."

However, Krenz himself assures that he feels proud of preventing bloodshed during the final crisis of the GDR.

Release and later life

On December 18, 2003, he was released after serving almost four of the six and a half years of his sentence and retired to the quiet town of Dierhagen, in Mecklenburg. Since then Krenz has been considered a spokesperson for the Ostalgie.

To this day, Krenz continues to defend the need to rebuild the German Democratic Republic. Likewise, in retrospect, Krenz considers that "Soviet troops were always friends," regardless of whether they occupied his country or not and, Furthermore, he emphasizes that the Soviets helped both in the construction and destruction of the German Democratic Republic.

Similarly, Krenz points out that the Soviet Union led by Mikhail Gorbachev "abandoned" them in the final stage of East Germany and indicates that Gorbachev's declaration of ending the Cold War represented a "humiliation" before the United States. However, Krenz maintains that the Cold War never really ended, but rather "is being fought now with different methods."

On the other hand, although the Soviet Union disintegrated, he is a supporter of Russia under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, pointing out Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin as "weak presidents."

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