Herbert Täschner

Herbert Täschner (7 July 1916 – 10 May 1984) was a politician in the German Democratic Republic who later in his career became a publisher. Between 1950 and 1954 he served as General Secretary of the country's Liberal Democratic Party.

Life

Early years Täschner was born in Dresden, in the southern part of what was then central Germany, during the middle of the war. His father was an administrative worker. He attended school locally. His secondary school was a , intended to prepare pupils for careers in commerce and administration. On leaving school Täschner took administrative internships in Dresden, Pirna and Heidenau. becoming a leading party activist in the party's so-called "Friedrich Naumann" group - effectively the party local leadership team - in Dresden. (rebranded in 1950 as the National Front).

Rising to the top of the Liberal Democratic Party During the later half of the 1940s the SED had worked hard to ensure its own electoral success, but it had not succeeded in winning every election. For 1950 new arrangements were set in place involving a "single list" electoral system. Voters were presented with a single list of candidates and were able to vote for or against the list. Voting against the list required a voter to use a separate ballot box under the surveillance of the election officials. The new system electoral system was a success: between 1950 and 1986 the SED always received more than 99% of the votes cast in general election. The so-called bloc parties were not wholly disenfranchised, however since along with certain mass movements they received a fixed quota of seats in the national legislature . Those objecting to the "single list" electoral system included politicians who had already vociferously objected to the "Bloc party" system, among them Günter Stempel who was the General Secretary of the Liberal Democratic party (LDPD). He warmly thanked his colleagues in Saxony regarding their work together and commended his successor as regional Democratic Secretary, a man called Döring. In the view of a younger party colleague , the position gave him almost unlimited control over the party apparatus, which he used ruthlessly, with powerful backing from the Soviet authorities, to purge the party of all its "reactionary elements". His most high-profile victim was his colleague, the leading Liberal Democrat Karl Hamann.

The early 1950s were a period of heightened political nervousness in the German Democratic Republic with a series of high-profile show trials and, in 1953, the uncompromising suppression of an insurrection. Within the Liberal Democratic party Täschner was the most prominent member of a four-man leadership collective, of which the other three were Johannes Dieckmann, and Hans Loch. His successor as party General Secretary was Manfred Gerlach, still aged only 28, who took a less confrontational approach to the role, though there was little he could do to change the undemocratic character of the party.

After the nemesis Täschner was fortunate in that his fall from grace came only after the death of Stalin, following which politics in Central Europe became a little less brutal.