Gerhard Schürer

Gerhard Schürer (14 April 1921 – 22 December 2010) was a leading politician in East Germany.

Between 1963 and 1989 he was a member of the powerful Central Committee of the country's ruling SED (party). He also served, between 1965 and 1989, as chairman of the State Planning Commission of East Germany's Council of Ministers.

It is one mark of his importance that during the 1980s Schürer lived with his family at House 7 in the Wandlitz residential estate. Wandlitz was the exclusive Berlin enclave where the top party officials lived. House 7 was a large house, with space to accommodate his (at this stage) second wife and seven children. A previous occupant had been Chairman Walter Ulbricht. After reunification, and as the German Democratic Republic receded into history, there were times when he felt able to recall his experiences with greater candour and clarity than others who had known the ruling establishment from the inside.

Life

Early years Paul Gerhard Schürer was born in Auerbach, on the northeastern edge of Zwickau in Saxony. His father was a factory worker and house painter. His mother worked as a hairdresser. After leaving school, between 1936 and 1939 he undertook a training as a machinist. He also undertook flight training with the Hitler youth, learning to fly on a glider. 1939 was the year in which war broke out, and after serving his six-month period of compulsory State Labour Service, Schürer joined the Luftwaffe. the incumbent, Erich Apel, shot himself after failing to win more than lukewarm support from Walter Ulbricht in the context of a trade and finance deal he was attempting to negotiate with the Soviets. For Schürer leadership of the Planning Commission was accompanied by membership of the presidium of the Council of Ministers and, after 1966, co-chairmanship of the East German-Soviet Parity Commission for economic and technical collaboration. Within the Central Committee he was also a candidate member of the Politburo from 1973, although it was only towards the end of 1989, a few weeks before the entire government apparatus collapsed, that he finally achieved full membership of the Politburo. The report had been requested by the newly appointed Party Secretary Egon Krenz, for presentation to the Politburo. The analysis disclosed a catastrophic picture. The East German economy was over-indebted and had for years "been consuming itself" ("zehrt seit Jahren von der Substanz"). A far reaching economic reform programme was proposed, but in the view of the authors that would not be enough to avert looming national insolvency. The only remaining hope was massive additional loans from the German Federal Republic ("West Germany"). For Gerhard Schürer, on both sides of the Inner German border, it permanently raised the public profile of a man who, when appointed as head of the State Planning Commission back in 1965, might reasonably have hoped to end his career in circumstances of comfortable obscurity.

Régime change On 7 November 1989 the government resigned. In January 1990 Gerhard Schürer was excluded from the ruling SED (party), which by this time was in the process of reinventing itself for a democratic future as the Party of Democratic Socialism ( Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus / PDS). Accused of "Criminal abuse of trust" ("verbrecherischen Vertrauensmißbrauchs") he was arrested on 22 January 1990 and sent to spend the next three months in prison. 1971 Patriotic Order of Merit in gold 1981 Order of Karl Marx