Christa Luft

Christa Luft ( Hecht; born 22 February 1938) is a German economist and politician of the SED/PDS. Luft joined the SED in 1958. From 18 November 1989 to 18 March 1990, she was the Minister of Economics in the Modrow government. From 1994 to 2002 she was member of the Bundestag for the PDS.

From 1963 to 1971 Luft was registered as a Stasi informant under the code name IM Gisela.

Life Provenance and early years Christa Hecht was born into a working-class family at Krakow am See, a small market town in the flat countryside to the south of Rostock in northern central Germany. Her father worked as a master machinist. at the VEB Mathias-Thesen-Werft Wismar ship building business in Wismar. Her mother was in charge of a schools kitchen. She attended junior school in Bobitz between 1945 and 1952, and then upper school at Grevesmühlen, still in the Rostock area. Like most of her contemporaries, she joined the Free German Youth ("Freie Deutsche Jugend)" / FDJ) in 1952, She would later tell an interviewer that early on she nurtured ambitions of working in Veterinary medicine, but during her time at Halle it became clear that this was not an option: her ambition and enthusiasm switched to Economics, albeit always with a special focus on foreign trade.

Staying on at the Berlin Economics College ("Hochschule für Ökonomie Berlin" / HfÖ) Following her graduation she stayed on at the HfÖ as a research assistant, working for her doctorate which she received in 1964. Her doctoral dissertation concerned "The key influences of socialist international division of labour and foreign trade on the beneficial impact for societal labour (investigated using an East German example)" (" Die wesentlichen Einflüsse der sozialistischen internationalen Arbeitsteilung und des Außenhandels auf den Nutzeffekt gesellschaftlicher Arbeit (untersucht am Beispiel der Empfängerröhrenindustrie der DDR)"). Her supervisors were Gertrud Gräbig and Manfred Funke. Between 1964 and 1968 she stayed at the HfÖ as an academic employee, with co-responsibility for creating a new academic discipline, that of "socialist foreign trade" ("Leitung des sozialistischen Außenhandels"), under the direction of Erich Freund, the founding director back in 1954 of the "Foreign Trade Academy" ("Hochschule für Außenhandel") and co-chairman (from the East German side) of the Committee for inter-German trade. She travelled to the west with this working group in 1966 for a study visit to the Krupp heavy-industry conglomerate in Essen: they also visited Bremen for a meeting with Carl Katz, the co-chairman (from the West German side) of the Committee for inter-German trade. In 1968 Luft received her habilitation, a higher academic qualification which would have opened the way to a full-time academic career, though her own career trajectory would include a parallel political channel. Her dissertation again addressed the interface between political socialism and foreign trade ("Zur bewussten Ausnutzung der dialektischen Einheit ökonomischer und psychologischer Marktfaktoren beim Export der DDR nach dem sozialistischen Wirtschaftsgebiet sowie nach kapitalistischen Industrie- und Entwicklungsländern – Das Wesen der Verkaufspsychologie im sozialistischen Außenhandel"). Her habilitation was supervised by Gertrud Gräbig and Horst Tiedtke. Remaining at the HfÖ, in 1968 Luft received a full-time teaching contract in the newly developed academic discipline, "socialist foreign trade" ("Leitung des sozialistischen Außenhandels"). She was able to build on her contacts with comrade-academics from other socialist countries, representing The Institute at international gatherings and at conferences organised by the United Nations in Geneva and New York City. After returning the German Democratic Republic, between 1982 and 1987, she again served as dean in the Foreign Economics section at the HfÖ. With the Soviet Union investing heavily in modernising its own engineering and heavy industry sectors, the traditionally complementary economic relationship between the Soviet Union and East Germany was becoming more overtly competitive, and economic pressures were forcing the East German government to try and diversify its trading relationships. As a representative of the largest Economics teaching and research institution in the German Democratic Republic, Luft participated during this time in a succession of international congresses at which she made presentations: venues included Athens, Madrid and New Delhi. From 1985 Christa Luft was involved in setting up regular one and two term study visits for HfÖ students of Foreign Economics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business ("Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien "). She also initiated a collaboration programme with East European specialists at the Sorbonne (university) in Paris. Out of this there emerged a series of bilateral colloquia in Paris, Lyon and Berlin. In 1987 Christa Luft was appointed a corresponding member of the (East) German Academy of Sciences.

More than twenty years later Christa Luft told an interviewer that by October 1988 it had been clear that there were "only a couple of blockheads, who did not want to see what was happening, and how unrest was increasing among the general population, not simply because of the shortages, but because people were spiritually at the end of their tethers. [by the time she returned from a visit to the Soviet Union earlier that year she was convinced that one had a particular responsibility to do something] if you carried responsibility for the spiritual awakening of a new generation of students. ("In der zweiten Hälfte der 80er-Jahre gab es nur noch ein paar ganz Betonköpfige, die das nicht sehen wollten, was geschah, wie es unruhiger wurde in der Bevölkerung, und gar nicht mal wegen irgendwelcher Versorgungsprobleme, sondern weil man es geistig satt hatte.) Ich bin, also als ich aus der Sowjetunion zurückgekommen bin, war eine meiner Schlussfolgerungen, Du musst etwas tun, dort, wo Du Verantwortung trägst für geistige Öffnung der Studenten, und habe dann mit Unterstützung des Außenhandelsministers Beil und des Hochschulministers, aber besonders von Beil, es geschafft, dass zwölf, dreizehn Studenten aus jedem Studienjahr ins Ausland gehen konnten, zunächst ein halbes Jahr und dann ein ganzes Jahr."

National politics In 1989 Christa Luft entered politics at a time of national transition. Between 18 November 1989 and 18 March 1990 she served as first of the three vice-chair of the East German Ministerial Council and as Minister of Economics in the Modrow government. Less than a month later she was in Bonn taking part on the first and last joint cabinet meeting between the East and West German governments, again discussing currency exchange rates, this time between East and West Germany. (There was still little appreciation of the speed with which reunification could and would take place later that same year.) The first (and as matters turned out last) free and fair general election ever held in East Germany took place on 18 March 1990. One result of the new approach was that the Socialist Unity Party ("Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" / SED), struggling to reinvent itself for a democratic future as the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), received only 66 of the 400 seats in the national parliament ("Volkskammer"). It was the first time since the foundation of the German Democratic Republic back in October 1949 that the SED) and its proxies had not commanded a comfortable majority in the chamber. Christa Luft was one of the 66 SED/PDS members, elected for the Karl-Marx-Stadt (previously and subsequently Chemnitz) electoral district.

During her time as a national politician Christa Luft retained her links with the HfÖ, in charge of the "East European Economics" ("Osteuropawirtschaft") teaching chair till 1 October 1991, which was when the Berlin senate, a couple of days ahead of reunification, closed down the entire institution. Between 1998 and 2002 she served as chair of the PDS group in the chamber and as the party's parliamentary spokesperson on Economics and budgetary matters. She remains engaged as a commentator and author.

Memberships Christa Luft has been a member of the Learned Leibnitz Society since 1993. She is a member of the German Association for East European Studies ("Deutsche Gesellschaft für Osteuropakunde") and of the OWUS ("(Offener Wirtschaftsverband von kleinen und mittelständischen Unternehmen, Freiberuflern und Selbständigen e. V.)"). She was the first chairperson of the OWUS.

Between 2002 and 2008 Christa Luft chaired the Kuratorium (loosely, "board of trustees") of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. For the subsequent five years, till 2013, she was an elected member of the foundation's executive committee.

Stasi shadows During her time as a member of the East German parliament ("Volkskammer") at the end of 1989 Luft volunteered to undergo a check to see whether and how she might feature in the surviving Ministry for State Security (Stasi) files. Nothing incriminatory was identified. Luft herself had denied having had any contact with the security services. At this stage there was little appreciation of the size of the Stasi operation nor of the extent to which – despite desperate attempts during the final days of the communist régime to burn the evidence – detailed records of Stasi activities over the previous forty years had survived. During the early 1990s Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski disclosed to (West) German intelligence that Christa Luft had had links with the HVA The HVA was the department of the Ministry for State Security that dealt with "foreign" intelligence. In reality it had concentrated on West Germany. Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski was a senior politician and trade official with Stasi connections in East Germany. He provided a large amount of information to western intelligence after the collapse of East German's power structure/ but this turned out to be incorrect.

Luft was a member of the Bundestag between 1994 and 2002: the nature and extent of any past associations she might have had with the Stasi were naturally of interest to the parliamentary authorities. An investigation by the Parliamentary Committee for Election verification, Immunity and Procedure resulted in a careful and detailed report which was published in June 1998. It was established that between 1963 and 1971 Christa Luft had been registered under the cover name "IM Gisela" in connection with an operation undertaken by the Stasi's Main Directorate for Reconnaissance ("Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung" / HVA) section.