Werner Felfe

Werner Felfe (4 January 1928 – 7 September 1988) was an East German politician and high-ranking party functionary of the Socialist Unity Party (SED).

Felfe served as the longtime First Secretary of the SED in Bezirk Halle, center of the East Germany's large and important chemical industry, and was a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED. In the 1980s, he was the powerful SED Agriculture Secretary, instituting various reforms to the GDR's collectivized agricultural sector.

Until his surprising death in September 1988, he was thought of as a potential successor to Erich Honecker.

Life and career Early career Felfe, the son of a machine worker from the Bischofswerda district, undertook a commercial apprenticeship as an industrial clerk and subsequently worked as a commercial employee.

Felfe became a full-time SED party functionary later in 1946, initially as clerk of the Kamenz district SED, eventually being promoted to department head and later secretary. In 1950, he was made instructor of the Saxony SED and in 1950, he joined the SED's nomenklatura as First Secretary of the SED in the district of Flöha, a heavily industrialized district in the Ore Mountains.

In 1953, he was delegated to the SED's "Karl Marx" Party Academy in Berlin for a one-year course. He thereafter made Second Secretary of the FDJ, who joined the Council of Ministers as First Deputy Chairman.

From 1971, he was once again a member of the Volkskammer, then the rural southeast of Bezirk Neubrandenburg.

Since 1973, he was additionally a candidate member and since 1976 (IX. Party Congress) a full member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED, the de facto highest leadership body in East Germany, Bezirk Halle being an important centre for the chemical industry. He joined the National Defense Council the same year.

Felfe was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in 1974 and the Order of Karl Marx in 1978. the GDR's collective head of state. The agriculture portfolio was considered a difficult one.

As Central Committee Secretariat Secretary responsible for the Central Committee Agriculture Department, he was the most powerful agricultural policymaker in the country and continued the course correction of his predecessor, eliminating the devastating separation between animal and plant production, reducing bureaucracy and saving resources. Felfe enjoyed high popularity during his tenure.

In this capacity, he also traveled to socialist countries and, in 1985 and 1987, to West Germany, where he met with Chancellor's Office Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, Minister of Agriculture Ignaz Kiechle and his predecessor Josef Ertl. He overall became known as a reformer.

Support for the Perestroika After publicly warning in 1984 about the "growing revanchist forces" in West Germany, an article was published on 8 August 1988, in the West German news magazine Der Spiegel, speculating about potential successors to Erich Honecker.

The article suggested the autumn of 1989 as the time for the change, presuming that the 40th anniversary of the founding of the GDR would be an appropriate date. Alongside eventual successor Egon Krenz, Siegfried Lorenz, and Günter Schabowski, Felfe was mentioned as a potential candidate for Honecker's succession in the article. Felfe was (approximately) quoted in the article as saying, "The political perestroika must not stop at the GDR."

This put Felfe into a difficult situation, the SED and Honecker in particular being known as hardliners.

Death

Just under a month after the article was published, Felfe surprisingly died at the age of 60 due to acute heart failure, according to official reports in East Berlin, according to another source while hunting near Strasburg (Uckermark). His death was attributed to stress from excessive work as well as hypertension and heart disease.