Bernhard Quandt | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Quandt in 1958 | |||||||||||||||
| First Secretary of theSocialist Unity Party inBezirk Schwerin | |||||||||||||||
| In office 1 August 1952 – 28 January 1974 | |||||||||||||||
| Second Secretary |
| ||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Karl Mewis(as First Secretary of theSED inMecklenburg) | ||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Heinz Ziegner | ||||||||||||||
| Minister-President of Mecklenburg | |||||||||||||||
| In office 24 August 1951 – 23 July 1952 | |||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Kurt Bürger | ||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Position abolished | ||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||
| Personal details | |||||||||||||||
| Born | (1903-04-14)14 April 1903 Rostock,Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin,German Empire(nowMecklenburg-Vorpommern,Germany) | ||||||||||||||
| Died | 2 August 1999(1999-08-02) (aged 96) Schwerin,Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,Germany | ||||||||||||||
| Political party | Party of Democratic Socialism (1989–1999) | ||||||||||||||
| Other political affiliations | Socialist Unity Party (1946–1989) Communist Party of Germany (1923–1946) Social Democratic Party (1920–1923) | ||||||||||||||
| Alma mater | |||||||||||||||
| Occupation |
| ||||||||||||||
| Awards | |||||||||||||||
Central institution membership
Other offices held
| |||||||||||||||
Bernhard Quandt (14 April 1903 – 2 August 1999) was a German politician and party functionary of theSocialist Unity Party (SED).
Quandt became politically active in the waning years of theWeimar Republic for theCommunist Party of Germany (KPD), spending several years in theSachsenhausen andDachau concentration camps duringNazi rule.
He moved to theSoviet occupation zone after the war, where he became a SED functionary. He served as the lastMinister-President of Mecklenburg before its dissolution and thereafter as the longtime First Secretary of theBezirk Schwerin SED before being forced into retirement in 1974.
Quandt was born to a single mother; his father was a soldier in theImperial German Army who died in a riding accident inParchim four months before Quandt’s birth.[1][2]
The family—his mother had since married a carpenter—lived inRostock andWismar. At six, he attended elementary school there. In 1912, the family moved toGielow, where his mother ran a small farm. He began training as aniron turner in 1917 and worked as ajourneyman.[1]
In 1920, he joined theSocial Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and worked in Hamburg from 1922, switching to theCommunist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1923.[1]
He became politically active, serving in 1927 as a municipal representative of Gielow and local leader of his party inWaren/Stavenhagen. He also briefly served as a member of the Landtag of theFree State of Mecklenburg-Schwerin on the eve of the Nazis' rise to power in 1932/1933. He held various jobs.[1]
After the Nazis came to power in 1933, he was repeatedly detained and eventually interned from October 1939, first in theSachsenhausen and from March 1940 in theDachau concentration camp, where he was freed by French troops.[1]
After the war, he became the First Secretary of the KPD in Güstrow and was appointed district administrator ofGüstrow district by theSoviet Military Administration.[1][3] In 1946, he became Second Secretary, also responsible for organization, of theMecklenburg KPD, andafter their forced merger with the SPD, of the Mecklenburg SED.[1][4]
From February 1948, he served as Minister of Agriculture of Mecklenburg in the cabinets ofWilhelm Höcker andKurt Bürger,[1][3] succeeding Otto Möller, who left for a teaching position at theUniversity of Rostock.
When Bürger died after only 8 days in office, Quandt was additionally madeMinister-President of Mecklenburg in late August 1951, serving for just under one year beforeMecklenburg's dissolution.[1][3]
Following thedissolution of states in the GDR in 1952, Quandt became the First Secretary of the SED inBezirk Schwerin,[1][3][5][6] the second most populous of the three Bezirke created from Mecklenburg. Quandt additionally became a full member of theCentral Committee of the SED in June (V. Party Congress), serving until its collective resignation in December 1989,[1][3][6][7] and of theVolkskammerin December,[1][3] nominally representing a constituency in the northwest of his Bezirk.[8]
In October 1973, Quandt was also elected to theState Council, the GDR's collectivehead of state, succeeding the deceasedWalter Ulbricht.[1][3]
During his time as First Secretary, Quandt successfully opposed theSED Politburo's decisions to construct multi-story prefabricated housing developments in rural areas, as he believed they would "ruin" the traditional village landscape.[2] He was a supporter of land reform and the new farmer program.[3][6][9]
Quandt was awarded thePatriotic Order of Merit in silver in 1955, the honor clasp to this order in 1969, theBanner of Labor in 1965, theOrder of Karl Marx in 1973 and 1988 and theStar of Peoples' Friendship in 1978.[1]
In January 1974, on the instigation of party leadership,[7] Quandt was forced into retirement.[1][7] On 28 January 1974,Heinz Ziegner, his Second Secretary, was appointed as the new First Secretary.[5][7]
Quandt was allowed to remain in the Central Committee, Volkskammer and State Council, but was transferred to a politically irrelevant position at theCommittee of Antifascist Resistance Fighters, a SED-controlled mass organization, chairing their Bezirk Schwerin Committee from 1974 to 1989.[1][9]
At the last session of the Central Committee on 3 December 1989, he tearfully[6][10] called for the reintroduction of the death penalty and the summary execution of all those (the "criminal gang of the old Politburo") who had brought disgrace (referring to the loss of power due to the revolutionary events in autumn 1989) upon the party (SED). "We abolished the death penalty in the State Council. I am in favor of reintroducing it and summarily executing everyone who brought such disgrace upon our party!"[6][7][10]
In 1990, he was elected to the Council of Elders of the now-renamedSED-PDS.[1][6]
Quandt died in 1999 at the age of 96, as the last former Minister-President of a GDR state.[7]
Media related toBernhard Quandt at Wikimedia Commons
| German Democratic Republic (1945–1990) State of Mecklenburg |
| .svg) |
|---|---|---|
| Federal Republic of Germany (since 1990) | ||
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
