East Germany

Socialist-bloc leader 1876–1960 ○ Natural causes

From the Spartacus League to GDR head of state, the sole founding member who lived the full arc of German communism

On the night of 15 January 1919, Pieck was arrested alongside Luxemburg and Liebknecht and taken to the Eden Hotel. He became the sole survivor — the last to witness his comrades alive.

A coachman's son turned carpenter, he joined the SPD in 1895 and was radicalized under Rosa Luxemburg's influence. Court-martialed for anti-war agitation, he co-founded the Spartacus League and the KPD. Arrested with Luxemburg and Liebknecht in January 1919, he alone survived. He served on the ECCI (1921) and its Presidium (1931), then led the KPD in Moscow exile as Comintern secretary. Returning after the war, he drove the SPD-KPD merger that created the SED and became the first President of the GDR in 1949, holding that office until his death.

Socialist-bloc leader 1893–1973 ○ Natural causes

German communist leader who built the GDR and erected the Berlin Wall

At a press conference on 15 June 1961 he declared, 'Nobody intends to build a wall' — two months later, on 13 August, his orders launched the Berlin Wall.

A Leipzig cabinetmaker, he joined the SPD in 1912 and co-founded the Spartacus League and the KPD. Under Nazi rule he fled to Moscow and served the Comintern. Returning with the Red Army in 1945, he drove the 1946 merger that created the Socialist Unity Party (SED). As First Secretary from 1950 he built the GDR, ordering the Berlin Wall in 1961 and launching the New Economic System in 1963, which gave East Germany the Eastern Bloc's highest living standard. Brezhnev forced his resignation in 1971.

Heads of government 1894–1964 ○ Natural death

The Social Democrat who led a divided state into being

In April 1946, he was elected co-chairman of the newly founded Socialist Unity Party alongside Wilhelm Pieck.

Otto Grotewohl was a Weimar-era Social Democratic politician who voted against Hitler’s Enabling Act and later led the postwar SPD in the Soviet occupation zone. Initially cautious, he helped drive the merger with the Communist Party under Soviet occupation authorities, becoming the SED’s co-chairman in 1946. The merger created the political foundation of East Germany, but it also followed the suppression of free choice within the SPD. As the GDR’s first head of government from 1949, Grotewohl helped build the new state while operating within the limits imposed by Soviet power.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1907–2000 ○ Natural causes

East Germany's 'Master of Fear': the Stasi chief who ruled state security for 32 years

“All this blithering over to execute or not to execute, for the death penalty or against — all rot, Comrades. Execute! And, when necessary, without a court judgment.” — to senior Stasi officers, 1982

A communist militant from Berlin's Wedding district, Mielke fled to the USSR after the 1931 killing of two Berlin policemen and was trained by the NKVD. After the Spanish Civil War he returned in 1945 to help build the GDR's state security apparatus, leading the Stasi from 1957 to 1989 and expanding it into a 90,000-strong surveillance network. The Stasi controlled all of East German society while training armed groups across the Third World and Western Europe, extending socialist-bloc security architecture. He fell with the regime in 1989 and was convicted after reunification for the 1931 murders.

Central planning agencies 1921–2010 ○ Died

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).

State security agencies 1923–2006 ○ Natural death

A long-serving architect of Cold War intelligence

At the August 1984 RYaN meeting, he stressed the need to establish the “actual situation” rather than mistake indicators for a Western nuclear attack.

Markus Wolf was a communist official and intelligence chief who, after fleeing Nazi persecution to the Soviet Union, led the foreign intelligence service of East Germany. From 1952 to 1986 he directed the Stasi’s Main Directorate for Reconnaissance, organizing espionage and active measures aimed at West German political, military, and economic institutions. When Soviet leaders expanded Operation RYaN amid fears of a pre-emptive nuclear attack in the early 1980s, Wolf maintained cooperation while exposing a tension between alarmist indicators and the need to establish the actual situation. After German reunification he passed through exile and trial, and used memoirs and public interventions to address responsibility for state security work and the possibility of reforming socialism.

Socialist-bloc leader 1929–2015 ○ Convicted for border deaths; pardoned

The East German Politburo spokesman whose mistake brought down the Berlin Wall

Asked 'When does it take effect?' at the press conference, he shuffled through his papers and replied: 'As far as I know… immediately, without delay.'

The GDR's leading propagandist, he rose from editor-in-chief of Neues Deutschland to SED Politburo member and First Secretary of East Berlin. On 9 November 1989, asked at a press conference when new travel regulations would take effect, he answered 'immediately, without delay,' triggering the rush that breached the Berlin Wall that night. He later called his mistake 'the final nail in the coffin' of the regime; after reunification he was convicted for the border deaths, but his public acceptance of moral guilt earned him a reduced sentence.

Socialist-bloc leader 1937– ○ Imprisoned, released 2003

The last communist leader of East Germany, who succeeded Honecker, opened the Wall, and fell in 50 days

On 9 November 1989, Krenz read the travel regulation draft to the Central Committee, handed the note to Schabowski saying "Here, explain this to the journalists," and hours later the Berlin Wall was open.

Designated as Erich Honecker's successor, Egon Krenz was the last communist leader of East Germany, becoming SED General Secretary after Honecker was ousted in October 1989. Just three weeks into his tenure, he approved the draft travel regulations, read them to the Central Committee on 9 November, and handed the note to Günter Schabowski for announcement at a press conference; that night the Berlin Wall was opened. He promised reforms but never gained public trust, and resigned all his posts by early December. After reunification, he was convicted of manslaughter for the border deaths and served nearly four years of a six-and-a-half-year sentence.

Socialist-bloc reform leader 1943– ○ Dismissed after reunification

From border controller to the officer who ordered the Wall opened

“That’s why I gave my people the order: Open the barrier!”

Harald Jäger was a border-control officer who served the East German Ministry for State Security, enforcing the state’s travel controls and intelligence work. On 9 November 1989, without clear direction from his superiors, he faced a growing crowd and the danger of violence at Bornholmer Straße. He belonged to the machinery of control, yet that night he ordered the barrier opened, allowing thousands of East German citizens into West Berlin. He later acknowledged both the GDR’s inner contradictions and the freedom brought by the Wall’s fall.