Eberhard Aurich

Eberhard Aurich (born 10 December 1946) is an East German former politician and high-ranking functionary of the Free German Youth (FDJ), the only legal youth movement in East Germany, which he led as First Secretary from 1983 to 1989. He was the last First Secretary before the Peaceful Revolution. Aurich has since distanced himself from East Germany.

Early life Eberhard Aurich was born on 10 December 1946 in Chemnitz, which at the time was part of the Soviet occupation zone, to a working-class family. As a child, he was active as a child in the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organization and became a member of its parent organization, the Free German Youth in 1960. He attended the Extended Secondary School Karl Marx in Karl-Marx-Stadt and completed vocational training with a high school diploma as a concrete specialist. Thereafter, he studied from 1965 to 1969 at the Pedagogical University of Zwickau, graduating as a certified teacher for German and Staatsbürgerkunde, civics education designed to indoctrinate children to support the East German political system and the SED. During his studies, in 1967, he became a member of the ruling Socialist Unity Party. initially at the Bezirk Karl-Marx-Stadt FDJ leadership, becoming a Secretary in 1971.

Aurich was elected as a full member of the SED's Central Committee in April 1981 (X. Party Congress), serving until its collective resignation in December 1989. He later described the Central Committee's work as rubber-stamping. nominally representing a constituency in northeastern Bezirk Halle.

Leadership roles On 1 December 1983, Aurich also joined the State Council, East Germany's collective head of state, in 1986. In January 1989, he and other high-ranking FDJ officials wrote a letter to Egon Krenz, Central Committee Secretary responsible for youth, critical of the SED's media policy.

During his tenure, Aurich met future German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, then deputy chair of the Jusos, twice in the context of disarmament discussions; in January 1984 alongside Egon Krenz and Herbert Häber and at a disarmament rally of the FDJ in Wittenberg in September 1987.

Aurich was awarded the Medal of Merit of the GDR and the Patriotic Order of Merit in 1981 and 1984. Aurich was deposed as the First Secretary and replaced by Bezirk Dresden FDJ branch First Secretary Frank Türkowsky, The FDJ lost almost all of its members and now only exists as a fringe group.

Aurich resigned from the Volkskammer and the moribund State Council in late January 1990. which had been created in December 1989, when the reform faction took over the SED. After initially being unemployed, Aurich started working in video production.

As of 2009, Aurich lives in Berlin and is married for the second time. He volunteers in the Allende district of Berlin for the socially disadvantaged, elderly people, and refugees.