Berlin (Reuters-bln). Nearly a quarter of a century they have been silent: Now former East German business leaders give first insight into her life and her work. They were called Directors. Today they would be comparable to managers of large corporations. Because they deduced huge companies called Combines, with thousands of employees. But while life histories of Western entrepreneurs will find a wide readership, the East German business leaders are forgotten. Katrin Rohnstock, owner of Berlin Biography company Rohnstock biographies wants to change that.
Tell them in monthly salons now invites former GDR economy chiefs to report retrospectively. Together with the association for life history and remembering the Berlin economic historian Jörg Roessler she wants to hold it in their memoirs.
VW engines from Chemnitz
In Berlin on Thursday says the former director general of foreign trade operations CSO industrial import, Herbert Roloff. The now 76-year-old has to say interesting. For example, as did the two German states despite ideological opposition made economically occasionally common cause. Sun negotiated with Roloff among other things that the former VEB IFA Combine Karl-Marx-Stadt should build car engines for the West German Volkswagen Group and for the East German car brand Trabant and Wartburg.
"We have worked together all the documentation that was needed for the production," says Roloff. In addition, his company had acted as contractor, "because GDR businesses were not allowed close no direct contracts with foreign countries." Total number of years preparing for the East-West Car project were needed. 1988 completed the initial VW engines in Karl-Marx-Stadt, now Chemnitz, from tape.
After Roloff will this year still others once influential East German managers have their say: Among them, the former head of the state-owned foundry plant Gisag Leipzig, Lothar Poppe, the former manager of the heavy machinery Combine Sket Magdeburg, Eckhard network man, and the former chief the energy company Gas Schwarze Pumpe, Herbert Richter.
"The party was always sitting at the table"
Rohnstock for the GDR economy "as exciting as a thriller" and as a "great experiment that worked on the principle of trial and error, try again". None of the SOEs have resembled the others. And those who knew best how the economics of the defunct GDR really looked in detail, "were the directors-general," said the entrepreneur-Wende sure.
Among them there were very different characters, "the shirt-sleeved crisis manager to the subtle analyst," says Rohnstock. She is convinced that the Director-General "were more creative space than you think." "Retain knowledge and experience to snatch from oblivion" which, her current goal is narrative salons.
Therefore needs Rohnstock tact. To bring the GDR managers to tell about their lives, lengthy persuasion was necessary. Because most of them have retired or resigned, because against the one-sided opinion about the GDR economy was a "failure, lack and command economy" to get difficult, the biographer says in support.
Rohnstock know you can also hit counter criticism when the former East German economy now offers an elite stage. "For us it but to look about like the common good oriented economy worked, and we are trying to unravel the ideology of the" she explains.
Yet it is clear that economic and political power in the GDR regime were hard to separate from each other. "Of course, the party was still sitting at the table," said the Rohnstock. But the ex-directors-general reported today on the links to open governance.
Tell Rohnstocks salons however, are not accessible to everyone. Those who are interested must register first. Audience will then be invited personally. This exclusivity the tellers to a shelter are provided.
Most of all, the biography-entrepreneur would bring a scientific research institute as a partner on the side. But so far, historians, economists or political scientists would have little interest in the professional biographies of the former GDR bosses. It is clear, however, who wants to learn something from the insider knowledge of the former East German managers working fast. Most of them are now 75 to 90 years old
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