Gerhard Rohner

Gerhard Rohner (born Nieder-Heiduk 23 May 1895: died Bonn 7 March 1971) was a politician in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, which later became the German Democratic Republic. He became a leading member of the moderately right-wing CDU (party) which was not the party favored by the Soviet administrators and the new Moscow trained political establishment. After sustained violent attacks from the new country's ruling SED (party) he abandoned his political career and, in February 1952, fled the country.

Life After attending the Royal Upper School in Königsberg, Rohner undertook a commercial apprenticeship. By the time he was 26 he was managing a sales department and, from 1923, a technical office. Between 1925 and 1945 he worked as a self-employed commercial agent for the Flick conglomerate

Since 1933 Germany had been a one-party state, but following the end of the war in May 1945, with Nazi-ism defeated and Germany under foreign occupation, a return to multi-party democracy seemed to be the way ahead for many people. In July 1945 Gerhard Rohner was one of the founders of the new Christian Democratic Union (CDU party) in Dresden which, along with the entire central portion of what had been Germany, now found itself under Soviet Military Administration in what was now designated the Soviet Occupation Zone. Between 1946 and January 1950 he was a member of the CDU regional leadership in Saxony. and Head of Finance and Taxation. None of this was calculated to persuade the Soviets and their proxies in positions of power in East Germany to favour a multi-party constitution incorporating power or influence for the "bourgeois" parties. For the German People's Council (the forerunner of the East German National Legislature) convened in March 1948, adequate steps were taken to ensure an overall majority of the seats went to the SED, but the CDU nevertheless received 55 seats, and Gerhard Rohner was elected to one of these.

In October 1949, when the People's Council was reconstituted as the National Legislature / (Volkskammer), Rohner became leader of the CDU group in the chamber. In this capacity he became known for unusually forthright speeches in the chamber. For instance, he spoke against the party decision to so away with regional finance ministers. However, he came under intense pressure as the ruling party prepared for the elections in October 1950 by spelling out and extending the powers of the National Front organisation over the non-ruling parties. He was also deeply affected by the treatment being meted out to his party colleague Hugo Hickmann. In February 1952 Gerhard Rohner fled to Düsseldorf where he settled and built a new life, taking a job as a sales director for the Maxhütte steel works. (Maxhütte had been part of the Flick conglomerate since 1929.)