Hartmut Sieckmann

Hartmut Sieckmann (born 19 August 1943, in Bautzen) is a German engineer and regional politician (FDP).

In 2013, now aged 70, after many years during which he had stepped back from public life, he returned to local politics as a local minister in his Thuringia home region.

Life

Early years

Hartmut Sieckmann was born in Saxony the southern part of what was when central Germany. His father was a lawyer. Before his second birthday the war had ended and the region had become part of the Soviet occupation zone of Germany. During the next few years some of the vestiges of Nazi Germany were swept away and the Soviet occupation zone was politically transformed under Soviet sponsorship. In October 1949 it was re-founded as a new separate Germany, the German Democratic Republic, once more a one-party state, still sustained by the Soviets, and with political institutions closely modeled on those of the Soviet Union itself. Sieckmann attended school in Weimar, still in the German Democratic Republic, but well to the west of the frontier town in the south of Saxony where he had been born. He left school without, at this stage, completing his Abitur, the school completion exam which, in Germany, academically focused and ambitious children are encouraged to pass at this stage. However, between 1960 and 1963 he undertook an apprenticeship as a tool maker. In addition between 1961 and 1963 he attended evening classes at college in Weimar at the end of which he passed his Abitur. He was then able to move on and study mechanical engineering at the Dresden Technical Academy, emerging with a degree in 1969. which entitled them to 9 seats in the new assembly. Hartmut Sieckmann's name was at the top of the party's candidate list and he was accordingly elected a member of the Landtag, remaining a member till 1994.

On 8 November 1990 Sieckmann was appointed to the Duchač cabinet as the regional minister for Rural Planning and the Environment. He retained his job when Josef Duchac was succeeded as Thuringia's Minister-president by Bernhard Vogel in February 1992. He resigned from the regional government in November 1994, however, following a collapse of the FDP vote in the Regional elections that year.