Wolfgang Mitzinger

Wolfgang Mitzinger (born 18 February 1932) is a former German civil servant and politician of the Socialist Unity Party (SED).

An electrician by trade, Mitzinger notably served as Energy Minister of the raw material deprived GDR in the 1980s.

Life and career Early career Mitzinger, the son of a worker, completed training as an electrician in Espenhain from 1946 to 1949 and subsequently worked there as an industrial electrician. After attending the Mining Engineering School in Zwickau for three years, he became an electrical engineer and chief energy specialist in Geiseltal.

A member of the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED), Mitzinger became an employee of the State Planning Commission in 1960. From 1962 to 1964, he served as Deputy Head of the Coal Industry Department in the People's Economic Council, and then until 1968 as General Director of the VVB Power Plants Cottbus. In 1967/1968, he was also a member of the Bezirk Cottbus legislature and a full member of the Bezirk SED leadership. Ministry for Coal and Energy as State Secretary in 1972.

December 1978 was predominantly wet and mild in the GDR, the opencast mines there were soft, so that lignite mining in that month was only 75% of the plan. Mitzinger was solely responsible in the ministry on December 29. While the temperature was still almost 10 °C, he received weather warnings and explosive reports from the Meteorological Service. However, instead of the appropriate highest level of operation III, which would have required an immediate call-up of an operational staff, he initially only declared level II, because it was impossible to imagine such an onset of winter and he had been accused of acting overly cautiously in the past.

Mitzinger was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in Bronze in 1970 Mitzinger's letters were left unanswered, but his criticisms were picked up by conservative outlets including Tichys Einblick, the Berliner Zeitung and the Junge Freiheit, to whom he gave an interview.

Mitzinger was however ridiculed by other outlets for his involvement in the SED's dictatorship, the taz accusing him of romanticizing the GDR.