The GDR State Planning Commission chief who warned of bankruptcy but could not save the system
When I warned Honecker against this policy in the Politburo I was brushed aside as a 'saboteur'.
Gerhard Schürer was the economic official who chaired the GDR State Planning Commission from 1965 to 1989. He warned that Honecker's 'unity of economic and social policy' was tilting the country toward insolvency by favouring consumption over investment, but was denounced as a 'saboteur' in the Politburo and remained a candidate member for 18 years. Summoned by Egon Krenz, on 30 October 1989 he presented the 'Analysis of the Economic Condition of the GDR' revealing 49 billion Valutamark in Western debt and impending insolvency, and proposed looser border controls in exchange for West German loans: a document that laid bare the regime's desperation. After reunification he was jailed for 18 days on charges of 'breach of trust,' released without trial, and later published his memoir Gewagt und verloren (Dared and Lost).
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1936–1939Trained as a machinist
- 1939–1945Luftwaffe service, flight instructor
- 1948Joined the SED
- 1955–1958Studied at the CPSU Party Academy, Moscow
- 1960–1962Head of Planning, Finance and Technical Dept, SED CC
- 1962–1965Deputy Chairman, State Planning Commission; promoted to Chairman 1965
- 1965–1989Chairman, State Planning Commission & Presidium of the Council of Ministers
- 1973–1989Candidate member, SED Politburo; full member Nov 1989
Related historical events
The 1988 Schürer–Mittag controversy: the written demand and its 'review'
By the 1980s Schürer, who had led the State Planning Commission since 1965, had concluded that Honecker's "unity of economic and social policy" was an unbearable burden. From the early 1970s that line pushed social measures such as new kindergarten places, paid maternity leave, rent subsidies, higher minimum wages and pensions, shorter hours for working mothers and a large-scale housing programme, and paid for them with rapid wear on the production apparatus, ecological plunder, mounting domestic and foreign debt and a low rate of accumulation, especially in the productive sector. By the 1980s state bankruptcy loomed as a real threat.
In spring 1988, as the SED apparatus took up the national economic and state budget plan for the following year, something unusual happened. On 26 April Schürer, a Politburo candidate and chairman of the State Planning Commission, attached to the draft plan a letter addressed to Honecker personally. Citing balance-sheet gaps and foreign debt to the non-socialist economic area running into tens of billions, he demanded a change of course in economic policy. The Stasi was well informed about the drafting of the 1989 economic plan and about Schürer's demands.
Honecker passed Schürer's letter to the Politburo member responsible for the economy, SED Central Committee economics secretary Günter Mittag, "for examination". Mittag's "finding" was devastating. The Politburo members responsible for economic questions agreed to Mittag's paper in advance, and Honecker then introduced it into the Politburo as a matter for the leadership. In the discussion Mittag brushed Schürer's paper aside with the argument that it called into question the decisions of earlier party congresses, and thus the unity of economic and social policy. Schürer was given the chance to present his criticism to Politburo members; Mittag then rejected it and blamed the State Planning Commission for every problem, and Honecker sided with him. That settled the matter. The real economic situation did not match the party's "infallible" decisions, but Mittag, following party raison, ignored reality and laid the blame for the unbalanced plan on the Planning Commission. Change was impossible because of ossified leadership structures and structural incapacity for reform: even making corrections would have amounted to admitting mistakes and shaken the leadership's claim to infallibility and power. Schürer's written demand was thus defeated.