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Horst Sindermann | |||||||||||||
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 Sindermann in 1976 | |||||||||||||
| President of the Volkskammer | |||||||||||||
| In office 29 October 1976 – 13 November 1989 | |||||||||||||
| Deputy |
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| Preceded by | Gerald Götting | ||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Günther Maleuda | ||||||||||||
| Chairman of the Council of Ministers | |||||||||||||
| In office 3 October 1973 – 29 October 1976 | |||||||||||||
| First Deputy | |||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Willi Stoph | ||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Willi Stoph | ||||||||||||
| First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers | |||||||||||||
| In office 14 May 1971 – 3 October 1973 Serving with Alfred Neumann | |||||||||||||
| Chairman | |||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Position established | ||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Günter Mittag | ||||||||||||
| First Secretary of theSocialist Unity Party inBezirk Halle | |||||||||||||
| In office 21 January 1963 – 19 June 1971 | |||||||||||||
| Second Secretary |
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| Preceded by | Bernard Koenen | ||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Werner Felfe | ||||||||||||
| Head of the Department for Agitation and Propaganda of theCentral Committee | |||||||||||||
| In office 7 April 1954 – 21 January 1963 | |||||||||||||
| Secretary | |||||||||||||
| Deputy | |||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Peter Pries | ||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Rudolf Singer(Agitation) Kurt Tiedke(Propaganda) | ||||||||||||
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| Personal details | |||||||||||||
| Born | (1915-09-05)5 September 1915 | ||||||||||||
| Died | 20 April 1990(1990-04-20) (aged 74) | ||||||||||||
| Political party | Socialist Unity Party (1946–1990) | ||||||||||||
| Other political affiliations | Communist Party of Germany(1945–1946) | ||||||||||||
| Relatives | Kurt Sindermann [de] (brother) | ||||||||||||
| Occupation |
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Central institution membership
Other offices held
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Horst Sindermann (German pronunciation:[ˈhɔʁstˈzɪndɐman]; 5 September 1915 – 20 April 1990) was an East German politician. He becameChairman of the Council of Ministers in 1973, but in 1976 he becamePresident of the Volkskammer, the only member of theSocialist Unity Party of Germany to hold the post.
Sindermann was born in a traditional family inDresden as the son of theSaxonSocial Democratic politician Karl Sindermann. His older brother,Kurt Sindermann, also entered politics as a member of theCommunist Party and sat on the Saxon state parliament from 1929 to 1933.
Horst Sindermann joined the Communist Youth Federation (KJVD) in 1929 and in 1932 became a local functionary in Dresden. The group was banned by theNazi regime and in June 1933, Sindermann was arrested and condemned to eight months of imprisonment for illegal political activities. In September 1934, he became political director of the KJVD's Dresden branch. In March 1935, he again was arrested for attempted high treason, tortured and put insolitary confinement for six years atWaldheim jail. In 1941, he was transferred to "protective custody" to several concentration camps, first atSachsenhausen, then atMauthausen inUpper Austria, and finally atEbensee, until being freed by the arriving U.S. army in 1945.
After the war, Sindermann returned to Saxony and joined the KPD. After 1946 he was a member of theSocialist Unity Party (SED), created in April 1946 from theforced merger of Communists and Social Democrats in theSoviet Occupation Zone.
Sindermann worked as a newspaper editor of theSächsische Volkszeitung at Dresden and theVolksstimme at Chemnitz from 1945 to 1947. He became First party secretary in theLandkreis of Chemnitz and Leipzig. He ran afoul of party co-chairmanOtto Grotewohl, whom he criticised for being married to a formerNazi functionary, and in June 1949 was censured by the party's controlling commission and was demoted to theFreiheit paper in Halle, where he then became editor-in-chief from 1950 to 1953.
Sindermann was director of agitation and propaganda in theCentral Committee from 1954 to 1963. In 1958, he became a candidate and in 1963 a member of the Central Committee. In the same year, he also was appointed first party secretary in the district of Halle (until 1971) and was first elected into theVolkskammer. In 1967, he was admitted to thePolitburo.
In 1971, he became Deputy chairman of theCouncil of Ministers—i. e., deputy prime minister of East Germany. Two years later, he became its chairman, or prime minister, when the previous occupant,Willi Stoph, succeeded the deceasedWalter Ulbricht as Chairman of theState Council.
His rise was cut short in October 1976, as party leaderErich Honecker deemed his economic views too liberal. Stoph returned to the premiership, while Sindermann was demoted to the posts of President of the Volkskammer and deputy chairman of the State Council. He was the only Communist to preside over the Volkskammer; the SED had previously reserved the Volkshammer presidency for a top member of ablock party to keep up the political fiction that East Germany was governed by a broad-based coalition. Although he nominally held the third-highest state office in East Germany (behind Prime Minister Stoph and State Council chairman Honecker), he was left with little political influence.
As a representative of the Socialist Unity Party, Horst Sindermann spoke during the commemorations of the liberation of theSachsenhausen concentration camp at the National Memorial of the GDR.[1]
Sindermann remained in these positions until thepeaceful revolution, during which he resigned from all offices in November 1989. In a desperate attempt to change its image, theParty of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the renamed SED, expelled him in December.
In January 1990 he was arrested but eventually released on health concerns, without charges being filed. He died in April the same year inEast Berlin.
His stepson was the actor Peter Sindermann. His grandson is the handball player and fashion designer Eric Sindermann.
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