Gerhard Schürer

Gerhard Schürer (14 April 1921 – 22 December 2010) was a leading politician in East Germany.

After leaving school, between 1936 and 1939 he undertook a training as a machinist.

He also undertook flight training with the Hitler youth, learning to fly on a glider.

1939 was the year in which war broke out, and after serving his six-month period of compulsory State Labour Service, Schürer joined the Luftwaffe.

He was badly injured in 1942 and assessed as unfit for frontline service ("frontuntauglich").

Between 1942 and 1945 he worked as a flying instructor, posted at various stages to Pilsen and Dresden-Klotzsche.

War ended in May 1945 and a large chunk of what had been central Germany, including both Saxony and the area surrounding Berlin, found itself administered as the Soviet occupation zone.

In the immediate aftermath of war Schürer worked in the agriculture sector.

Between June and October 1945 he was employed as a steel fitter at the Elbe Valley Iron Works in Dresden.

During 1946 he took various factory and driving jobs.

In 1946 he obtained work as a truck driver and then obtained a skilled job at a truck plant in Dresden.

Between January and November 1947 Schürer attended the Industrial Management Academy at Mittweida.

He now moved into regional government, working with the Main Economic Planning Department for Saxony between 1947 and 1951, becoming head of the department.

He became a member of the recently formed Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands / SED) in 1948.

The SED had been formed a couple of years earlier in a top-down process which had not gone uncontested, and by 1948 it was on the way to becoming the ruling party in a new form of one-party dictatorship.

During 1948 Schürer was a student at the SED's local "Ernst Thälmann" party academy ("Kreisparteischule") in Seefrieden.

Shortly after this, in October 1949, the Soviet occupation zone was relaunched as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

Between March and December 1951 he also served in his first national role, as leader of the Regional Planning Group (later departmental leader) with the State Planning Commission.

Evidence that he had been identified for rapid promotion came in 1952 which he spent as a student at the regional party academy.

Between 1953 and 1955 Schürer was employed in the Finance and Planning department of the powerful Party Central Committee.

Between 1955 and 1958 he spent much of his time in Moscow where he attended the Communist Party Academy, emerging with a degree.

Between 1958 and 1960 he was deputy departmental leader of the Department of Party Central Committee's Planning, Finance and Technical Department, taking over from Fritz Müller as head of the department in 1960.

Schürer combined this responsibility with membership of the Politburo's Economics Commission.

Further promotion followed in 1962 when he became deputy head of the State Planning Commission.

Between 1963 and 1989 he was a member of the powerful Central Committee of the country's ruling SED (party).

Nevertheless, it was membership of the Party Central Committee, between 1963 and 1989, which placed Gerhard Schürer at the heart of the East German power structure.

He also served, between 1965 and 1989, as chairman of the State Planning Commission of East Germany's Council of Ministers.

He took over leadership of the Planning Commission just three years later in 1965, when, according to Schürer, the incumbent, Erich Apel, shot himself after failing to win more than lukewarm support from Walter Ulbricht in the context of a trade and finance deal he was attempting to negotiate with the Soviets.

For Schürer leadership of the Planning Commission was accompanied by membership of the presidium of the Council of Ministers and, after 1966, co-chairmanship of the East German-Soviet Parity Commission for economic and technical collaboration.

The Leninist precepts of East German constitution set out the "leading role" of the party in unambiguous terms, although the stark reality of the party's leading role was blurred to the extent that Party Central Committee members often combined their party roles with membership of the National parliament or ministerial office.

Within the Central Committee he was also a candidate member of the Politburo from 1973, although it was only towards the end of 1989, a few weeks before the entire government apparatus collapsed, that he finally achieved full membership of the Politburo.

There are suggestions that during the final years of the German Democratic Republic, Gerhard Schürer frequently found himself thwarted by the powerful economic secretary to the Party Central Committee, Günter Mittag.

It is one mark of his importance that during the 1980s Schürer lived with his family at House 7 in the Wandlitz residential estate.

Wandlitz was the exclusive Berlin enclave where the top party officials lived.

House 7 was a large house, with space to accommodate his (at this stage) second wife and seven children.

A previous occupant had been Chairman Walter Ulbricht.

After reunification, and as the German Democratic Republic receded into history, there were times when he felt able to recall his experiences with greater candour and clarity than others who had known the ruling establishment from the inside.

Paul Gerhard Schürer was born in Auerbach, on the northeastern edge of Zwickau in Saxony.

His father was a factory worker and house painter.

His mother worked as a hairdresser.