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BERLIN — Hans Modrow, a Communist reformer who was one of many final political leaders of East Germany, died on Saturday in a hospital in Berlin. He was 95.
His occasion, the far-left Die Linke, confirmed his dying, from a stroke.
Inside East Germany’s inflexible Communist Occasion, Mr. Modrow was extensively seen as a reformer within the mildew of the Soviet chief Mikhail S. Gorbachev — he was typically referred to as the German Gorbachev, in truth — who eschewed the massive homes, fancy automobiles and different perks that many occasion leaders took without any consideration.
Although he was a member of the occasion’s central committee for greater than twenty years and a member of the East German Parliament, the Volkskammer, for greater than three, Mr. Modrow didn’t attain the highest echelons of energy till simply earlier than the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.
On Nov. 8 of that 12 months — only a day earlier than the wall started coming down — Mr. Modrow was made a member of the Politburo, the very best political physique within the German Democratic Republic, as East Germany was identified. He was appointed prime minister on Nov. 18, and in that position oversaw the final Communist cupboard below the management of Egon Krenz, East Germany’s final occasion common secretary.
As prime minister, Mr. Modrow invited opposition members — together with environmentalists, feminists, free socialists and social democrats — to affix the federal government, believing he might preserve East Germany from dissolving and uniting with West Germany if it adopted reforms, like free elections and state transparency.
However when he realized that the nation was destined to merge with the West, he helped usher within the transition through the Communists’ closing 5 months in energy. He proposed {that a} unified Germany stay impartial militarily, a plan that West German leaders rejected.
“When it was important to safe the peaceable transition from the G.D.R. dictatorship to a free nation, he took on the duty,” Christine Lieberknecht, a former conservative state governor from the East, wrote within the German tabloid Bild. “That is his lasting political achievement,” she added.
Earlier than he was named prime minister, Mr. Modrow had spent greater than a decade as Communist Occasion chief in Dresden, away from the political lifetime of the capital, East Berlin.
Whereas he was credited with establishing a proper dialogue with a gaggle of dissidents within the metropolis, he was additionally liable for the cruel police response to a mass demonstration in October 1989 on the Dresden railroad station, the place antigovernment protesters gathered to fulfill trains bearing East German refugees on their solution to West Germany. About 1,320 folks have been arrested.
Mr. Modrow misplaced his publish as prime minister in Could 1990 within the first, and final, free elections of the Volkskammer. The physique was dissolved with the unification of the nation that October. Afterward, he was among the many first former East German politicians to affix the reunited Parliament, serving till 1994. He additionally served within the European Union Parliament in Brussels from 1999 to 2004.
“It was vital to him to push for the pursuits of East Germans,” mentioned his son-in-law Torsten Hochmuth.
After reunification, Mr. Modrow was tried on costs of falsifying election data in Dresden and giving false testimony in regards to the police response to the prepare station protests. Convicted on each counts, he was given a suspended sentence of 10 months.
Hans Modrow was born on Jan. 27, 1928, in Jasenitz, then a German village in Pomerania and now a part of the city Police in Poland. He was the third of 4 kids of Franz and Agnes (Krause) Modrow. His father was a baker who misplaced his enterprise when Hans was younger and was an early member of Hitler’s Nazi occasion.
As a youth, Hans apprenticed as a machinist and joined a volunteer hearth brigade within the closing years of World Warfare II, he advised his daughter Irina Modrow. Within the battle’s closing months, Hans, at 17, was ordered to affix the Volksturm, a last-ditch defensive effort comprising very younger and really previous recruits.
After Germany’s defeat, as a prisoner of battle, he was taken to the Soviet Union, the place he embraced Communism after attending a coaching institute for future Communist cadres. On his return to Germany, he grew to become energetic in Communist Occasion politics, beginning with its youth wing and dealing his means up the occasion’s ranks till he was despatched to Dresden in 1973.
Not like different Communist leaders, Mr. Modrow lived what he preached. For many years his dwelling was a modest condo in a prefabricated Communist-era constructing in Dresden.
“He was a part of the common home neighborhood — from the surface no one might actually inform that he was the comrade Modrow,” Mr. Hochmuth mentioned. “He was actually only a working class boy.”
Mr. Modrow was married to Annemarie Straubing for 53 years. She died in 2003. His daughter Irina Modrow died in 2017. He’s survived by his associate, Gabriele Lindner; one other daughter, Tamara Singer; three grandsons; and plenty of great-grandchildren.
In retirement Mr. Modrow was energetic within the occasion that succeeded the Communists, now referred to as Die Linke. After Russia invaded Ukraine final 12 months, he described the battle there as an “inside civil battle” involving “fascist components in western Ukraine” — and was extensively criticized for it.
In addition to his political legacy, he was instrumental in founding the soccer group 1. FC Union Berlin in 1966; it now ranks as the most effective in Germany.
Mr. Modrow, who talked of his political profession in interviews through the years, was as soon as requested about life in East Germany.
“It was neither paradise nor hell,” he mentioned.
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