Hans Albrecht | |||||||||||||
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 Albrecht in 1989 | |||||||||||||
| First Secretary of theSocialist Unity Party inBezirk Suhl | |||||||||||||
| In office 15 August 1968 – 2 November 1989 | |||||||||||||
| Second Secretary |
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| Preceded by | Otto Funke | ||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Peter Pechauf | ||||||||||||
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| Personal details | |||||||||||||
| Born | Hans Albrecht (1919-11-22)22 November 1919 Bochum,Province of Westphalia,Free State of Prussia,Weimar Republic(nowNorth Rhine-Westphalia,Germany) | ||||||||||||
| Died | 27 March 2008(2008-03-27) (aged 88) Berlin,Germany | ||||||||||||
| Political party | Socialist Unity Party (1946–1989) | ||||||||||||
| Other political affiliations | Social Democratic Party (1945–1946) | ||||||||||||
| Alma mater | |||||||||||||
| Occupation |
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| Awards |
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Central institution membership
Other offices held
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Hans Albrecht (22 November 1919 – 27 March 2008) was a German politician and high-ranking party functionary of theSocialist Unity Party (SED).
In theGerman Democratic Republic, he served as the longtime First Secretary of the SED inBezirk Suhl and was a member of theCentral Committee of the SED and theNational Defence Council.
In theBerlin Wall shooting trials, he was sentenced to five years and one month in prison formanslaughter.
Albrecht came from a working-class family in theRuhr area. A few months after completing histraining as alocksmith, he was drafted into theLuftwaffe of theWehrmacht for the duration ofWorld War II.[1]
After the war, Albrecht settled inSaxony, worked as a heating engineer, and joined theSPD (Social Democratic Party) in his hometown ofBennewitz.[1] He became a member of theSED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) in 1946 following theforced merger of the SPD and KPD (Communist Party of Germany).[1][2]
From 1946 he was a staff member, later until 1949 secretary of the district leadership of the new SED in Grimma.[1]
In 1950 he attended the"Karl Marx" Party Academy. Subsequently, his stations from 1951 wereFrankfurt (Oder),Eberswalde, andStalinstadt, where he became First Secretary of the SED district leadership, and from 1954 also worked in theBezirk Frankfurt (Oder) SED leadership. In the same year, he was elected as a candidate member of theCentral Committee of the SED. He held this status until January 1963 (VI. Party Congress), after which he became a full member.[1]
Since 1958 chairman of theBezirk Economic Council and member of the Bezirk legislature, he became chairman of the Council of Bezirk Frankfurt (Oder) in 1960,[1] formally making him head of government of the Bezirk. However, he wasde facto subservient to the local SED leadership.
From 1963 he completed a two-year study at the Industrial Institute of theFreiberg University of Mining and Technology, which he completed a with a degree inindustrial engineering (Dipl.-Ing. oec.). After completing his studies inFreiberg, he became the first deputy chairman of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection of the GDR,[1] succeedingGünter Sieber, who became Minister for Trade and Supply.[1][3]
In August 1968, he succeeded Otto Funke as First Secretary of theBezirk Suhl SED leadership, a position he held for 21 years until 1989.[1][4][5] Bezirk Suhl had the smallest population and was the most geographically isolatedBezirk of the GDR.
He additionally became member of theVolkskammer in1971 and a member of the presidium of the German-Arab Society of the GDR.[1] In 1972, he was elected to theNational Defense Council of the GDR,[1] likely due to the long western border of Bezirk Suhl withWest Germany.
Albrecht's leadership was viewed negatively. His leadership style was authoritarian,[6] occasionally described as dictatorial,[7] and he was viewed as a hardliner.
In 1988, he unsuccessfully tried to pressure Bad Salzungen SED First Secretary Hans-Dieter Fritschler to rescind his statements in the bookDer Erste (English:The first one).[8][9][10] The book provided an unfalsified account of Fritschler's work as a local SED functionary and detailed the GDR's problems, including dysfunction stemming from the Bezirk Suhl SED leadership.[8][9][11]
Albrecht was awarded thePatriotic Order of Merit in Gold in 1974, and theKarl Marx Order in 1979.[1]
During theWende, on 2 November 1989, the Bezirk Suhl SED removed him from the position of First Secretary and installed reformer Peter Pechauf as his successor.[1][4][12][13] He was removed by his party from theVolkskammer two weeks later, on 16 November 1989.[14]
At its last session on 3 December 1989, the Central Committee expelled Albrecht from the Central Committee and from the SED shortly before its collective resignation.[1][15]
Albrecht passed away in 2008 at the age of 88.[1]
After theWende, Albrecht was arrested forabuse of power andembezzlement.[1][16] In October 1992, he was sentenced by the Meiningen Regional Court to 22 months in prison for incitement to embezzlement.[17][18] He did not have to serve the sentence because he had already served more than half of the time inpre-trial detention.[18]
After theGerman reunification, he was indicted in May 1991 as part of the Berlin Wall shooting trials with another arrest warrant. As part of the trials against former members of theNational Defense Council of the GDR, he was charged with "complicity inmanslaughter" (political responsibility for thefatal shootings at the Berlin Wall) before theBerlin Regional Court.[1][19]
On 16 September 1993, he was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for incitement to manslaughter. The verdict was changed in the appeal by theFederal Court of Justice on 26 July 1994, to manslaughter as an indirect perpetrator and the sentence was increased to five years and one month.[19][20] Since Albrecht's defense raised constitutional complaints, he initially remained free.[1]
On 12 November 1996, theFederal Constitutional Court dismissed the constitutional complaints of Albrecht and others.[1][19][20][21] The killing of refugees was the most serious injustice that precluded the justification of those responsible by GDR laws.[19][20] Albrecht served his sentence in a Berlin prison.[1]