Erich Grützner

Erich Grützner (30 July 1910 in Pirna – 21 November 2001 in Leipzig) was an East German Trades unionist and a senior official in the country's ruling SED (party).

Life Grützner was born in so-called "Saxon Switzerland", a then prosperous mining region on the German frontier with Bohemia. His father was a steel smelter. In this position he was also, from July 1955 till October 1959, also a member of the national presidium of the FDGB. He was also a member of the ruling SED (party)'s Leipzig regional leadership, a position he retained till 1989. In 1954 Grützner was "elected" to the Leipzig City Council on which he continued to sit till 1981.

Between 1956 and 1963 he undertook a correspondence degree course with the party's Karl Marx Academy, which led to a university level degree in Social Sciences. In 1959 he became Council Chairman for the Leipzig district in succession to Karl Adolphs, retaining this position for fifteen years.

The period also covered a major building programme as part of the expansion of the Karl Marx University (as it was known at the time) in Leipzig. That building programme is chiefly remembered, more than four decades later, because it involved demolishing, in 1968, the iconic Pauliner Church. A painting of Erich Grützner that dates from this period can still be found on the first floor of the main building of the university. The painting, by the artist Werner Tübke (1929–2004), was the result of a competition undertaken on the uplifting theme "The working class and Intelligence are inseparably combined in Socialism under the Leadership of the Marxist-Leninist Party" Beside the image of Grützner, those of the regional party secretary of that time, Paul Fröhlich, and of the contemporary Lord Mayor of Leipzig, Walter Kresse, are also on display.

Grützner was also active in national politics, sitting in the People's Chamber (Volkskammer) as an SED member from 1958 till 1989. In 1967 he was called to be a member of the "Commission to develop a socialist constitution for the German Democratic Republic" under the leadership of Walter Ulbricht. As well as that, between 1958 and 1963, and again between 1976 and 1989, he was a member of the Budget and Finance Committee. Grützner came to be seen as a member of Ulbricht's inner circle, which meant that when, in 1971, national leadership passed from Walter Ulbricht to Erich Honecker, Erich Grützner's political career ground to a conclusion. From 1960 till 1976 he was a member of the State Council, and there he was a member of the "Strategic Work Group". In 1974 he was replaced as Chairman of the Leipzig City Council with Rolf Opitz. His last new job came in 1974 when he was appointed Chairman of the Leipzig Regional Committee of Anti-fascist resistance fighters of the German Democratic Republic.

Erich Grützner died in Leipzig in 2001.

Awards 1955 Fritz Heckert Medal 1964 Banner of Labor 1970 Patriotic Order of Merit 1985 Order of Karl Marx