Even more than 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Egon Krenz has not quieted down. In his view, there is too much to clarify, too much to straighten out. The last head of state in the GDR turns 85 this Saturday.
Egon Krenz leads a quiet life on the Baltic Sea. Since the death of his wife five years ago, the family has grown even closer, he says. “I’m really proud of my children, children-in-law, grandchildren and now even a great-grandchild.” But the former GDR head of state and party leader is not just a retired family man. He reads, he writes, he lectures. From his point of view, there is too much to be straightened out, too much to be corrected, even more than 30 years after the end of the GDR.
Egon Krenz still criticizes the way of reunification today
“I still criticize the way the association was formed,” Krenz told the German Press Agency in an interview on his 85th birthday. He speaks precisely on the phone, almost ready for printing, routinely between self-defense and attack. “The majority of us are still governed and administered from the West,” he complains. Many felt like second-class citizens, the country was divided, some media spread untruths, and there was too little respect for GDR biographies.
This probably also means his own biography. Because not only former GDR oppositionists practice sharp criticism. The SPD politician Wolfgang Thierse accused the ex-functionary of whitewashing the GDR and the communist system. The former pastor and Federal President Joachim Gauck spoke of “masters who act today as if they had represented the workers and farmers”.
Tom Sello, in the GDR era in the environmental movement and today the Berlin representative for dealing with the SED dictatorship, says in a dpa interview about Krenz: “His influence grew steadily until 1989. He is therefore responsible for numerous crimes of the SED dictatorship. He doesn’t accept that responsibility.” Krenz’s loss of importance after 1989 was “painful for him and lucky for all of us”. The former head of state is “a meaningless pensioner who enjoys the freedoms of the democratic society on the Baltic Sea coast,” says Sello.
Egon Krenz, born on March 19, 1937 in Kolberg, stood for the GDR from beginning to end. Pioneer organization “Ernst Thälmann”, Free German Youth, National People’s Army, studied in Moscow, rose to become head of the FDJ, member of the SED Central Committee since 1973, in the Politburo since 1983 and responsible for security issues there.
Only 50 days in power
For a long time he was considered the crown prince of state and party leader Erich Honecker, but it was only during the turmoil of the upheaval that Krenz rose to the top on October 18, 1989: General Secretary of the Central Committee of the SED, Chairman of the State Council and the National Defense Council. But it was too late to push through the “turnaround” proclaimed by Krenz – and to keep the SED at the helm with minor concessions. After 50 days in power, Krenz was over.
This was followed by the expulsion from the SED, which had become the PDS, and the completion of an ideological life’s work. And finally the trial before the Berlin district court because of the dead at the inner-German border. In August 1997, Krenz was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for manslaughter – a sentence that stood up through all instances. Krenz served four years.
With his release shortly before Christmas 2003, “the chapter in prison was closed,” he says today. But it is clear that this punishment continues to gnaw at him: “I still think the verdict on me is legally wrong.” The ban on retroactivity is said to have been violated, i.e. the rule that no one may be convicted after the changed law. “Historically, that won’t last.”
“The Federal Republic would not have acted as peacefully as the GDR”
In addition, the court expressly acknowledged in the judgment that the GDR state power did not intervene with firearms and tanks in autumn 1989, especially during the first large-scale demonstrations in Leipzig in October. “The GDR had the weapons, I was the supreme commander of all armed forces, but the change in the GDR and German unity came without a single shot being fired,” says Krenz, daring the bold thesis: “Just in case that the Federal Republic of Germany would have been in a similar situation to the GDR in 1989/90, I am sure that it would not have acted as peacefully as the GDR.”
The historian Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk calls it a “legend that Krenz was the peace apostle of Leipzig” in his book “Endspiel”. SED critic Sello also says: “Personally, I didn’t notice that Mr. Krenz called off SED security forces. At the demonstrations in Leipzig, those responsible locally were on their own and had to make decisions on their own.” On the other hand, as a member of the Politburo, Krenz shared responsibility “for the social conditions in the GDR and thus for hundreds of thousands of people who were politically persecuted”.
Still a whole own view of things
Krenz, on the other hand, is certain that history has not yet spoken the last word. “Sooner or later there will certainly be generations who judge the values of the GDR more positively than is the case today,” he says. He calls the GDR the “only German peacetime state” and is outraged that weapons from GDR stocks are now going to the Ukraine for defense: “In 1989 we didn’t fight for a peaceful solution to political problems so that we can see afterwards that in Europe new wars are now being waged with GDR weapons, which the Soviet Union once supplied for the defense of our country.”
It is a very unique view of things that Krenz has presented in several books in recent years. His memoirs are to be published this summer – the first of three volumes covering the years 1937 to 1973. The dimensions suggest that Krenz still has a lot planned.