Kurt Tiedke

Kurt Hermann Tiedke (30 May 1924 – 15 April 2015) was a German politician and party functionary of the Socialist Unity Party (SED).

A teacher at the SED's "Karl Marx" Party Academy in the 1950s, he was the longtime head of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the SED before briefly serving as First Secretary of the Bezirk Magdeburg SED, also becoming a member of the National Defense Council of the GDR.

He returned to the party academy in 1983 as principal upon the retirement of Hanna Wolf. Until his ouster during the Peaceful Revolution, Tiedke steadfastly held onto the SED's hardline stance.

Life and career Early career Tiedke was born as the son of a carpenter and, like the majority of boys, was a member of the Hitler Youth, reaching the rank of Oberrottenführer. He subsequently began an apprenticeship as surveyor in Tiegenhof. At the age of 18, he was conscripted into the Reich Labor Service and later into the Wehrmacht.

While in Soviet captivity, he attended an anti-fascist school and, after returning to Germany in 1948, he became head of the separated Propaganda Department.

Pisnik officially retired for health reasons, but in reality was removed on the instigation of SED General Secretary Erich Honecker and his economic czar Günter Mittag for his repeated criticism of central economic management, especially supply shortages in and undue planning expectations for his Bezirk. Tiedke did not have much of a connection to the Bezirk, but was regarded as loyal.

Tiedke was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver in 1964, in gold in 1974 and the Order of Karl Marx in 1984.

Though Tiedke represented a generational shift at the leadership of the PHS, he did not introduce ideological changes, adhering strictly to the Marxist–Leninist doctrine. Tiedke did introduce university-style seminars, which he pretended to have invented, calling it the triumph of "modern socialist pedagogy".

On 14 November 1989, he was removed from the position of principal.

He was expelled from the SED's successor party, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), in March 1990, after which he operated in the milieu of the German Communist Party (DKP) and its press.

Death Tiedke died in 2015 at the age of 90.

His two sons held positions in journalism during and after the GDR period.