On August 1, 40 years ago, at 12:55 pm, the man who had shaped the GDR like no other - Walter Ulbricht died. In the silence of the Schorfheide, in the guest house of the government on Döllnsee, the 80-year-old succumbed to rapid physical decline after his political foster-son Erich Honecker dethroned him in a deceitful, intriguing way and pushed him onto the political siding a good two years earlier.

In East Berlin, the capital of the GDR, an almost anarchic confusion prevailed on this August day. The X. World Festival of Youth and Students had halftime. They were supposed to overshadow the legendary hippie festival of Woodstock in 1969, according to the ideas of the SED leader and former FDJ chairman Honecker. Completely contrary to the usual order, boisterous and high-spirited youths populated the streets, squares, and parks; they discussed, danced, sang, or recovered from the night. Nobody intervened, everything was so wanted.

For a few more days, the state authorities had to make a good face for the beautiful game of half a million young GDR citizens and about 25,000 foreign guests. In order to keep everything in order, however, a few thousand observers from the state security, police and FDJ-order groups had disguised themselves as people dressed in colorful clothes.

Ulbrichts last "wish"

The news of the death of Ulbricht, who after his overthrow had remained as party leader in the meaningless office of State Council Chairman, arrived in the early afternoon. His death threatened to affect the large, fun-oriented staging of the supposedly cosmopolitan workers and peasants state.

To limit the grief, Honecker announced in the afternoon that it was Ulbricht's "wish that the festival, which had begun so grandly and impressively, would be successfully completed, if the worst came for him, so that the anti-imperialist Solidify solidarity and friendship and make peace safer ". In the House of the State Council, a convent corner was set up, where foreign guests could bow to Ulbricht's portrait.

As a reporter for the GDR intelligence service ADN, I asked some young people at the television tower in the afternoon whether they knew that Walter Ulbricht was dead. They reacted as if I made an immoral offer. One of the teenagers ran to an older man wearing blue shirts and whispered something in his ear. In a straight direction this came to me: "What do you tell our friends?" When he looked at me like a bad rumor-maker, I pointed to the seat of the State Council, on which the flag had now been set to half-mast. He then boots to another man in the blue shirt who was even older to ask if Ulbricht had died for the youth.

Followed mourning

After the World Festival had ceased without any restrictions of jubilation and excitement and the guests had left, the ordered mourning began on 7 August - with a state ceremony "on the occasion of the death of comrade Walter Ulbricht, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED, chairman of the State Council of GDR". Oddly enough, the newly created honorary post "Chairman of the SED", which he had received after his fall as a consolation prize, was not even mentioned. In any case, it was a farce, because Honecker never had the intention to involve Ulbricht in his decisions.

The memorial ceremony took place in the banqueting hall of the State Council building, and the SED Secretary General personally gave the commemoration speech. Once again, Honecker ruthlessly punished the man who had released him as a punishment for his intrigue in mid-1970 from the SED leadership and wanted to send it to the party school. For his part, Honecker had previously attempted to bring together a majority in the Politburo against Ulbricht and to obtain permission from Moscow leader Leonid Brezhnev for a change of the SED leadership.

Honecker had hurried after his release in the Soviet Embassy to inform Brezhnev. The Kremlin boss then instructed Ulbricht to revise the decision without delay. It was his political end.

Reform attempts undesirable

The time of Ulbricht's total obedience to Moscow, with which he had brought about the compulsory unification of the SPD and the KPD, the defeat on 17 June, and the construction of the wall ordered by Moscow, was over in the early sixties.

Ulbricht had followed attentively the economic miracle in the Federal Republic and well understood that it would not be sufficient to block the GDR from the western world and to prevent the escape of qualified experts, in order to bring the GDR economy on forefront. But the meetings between the East and West German heads of government Willi Stoph and Willy Brandt 1970 in Erfurt and Kassel found little agreement in Moscow.

The same applies to the speeches and reports in which Ulbricht denounced the serious shortcomings of the rigid system of centralized economic planning, and advocated more market opening and individual responsibility of the companies. West German economists already saw an economic miracle GDR on the horizon. However, that would have cost the hardliners in the SED leadership power and influence and was unacceptable in all the benefits it offered. They painted the example of Dubcek's reforms in Czechoslovakia as a specter on the wall. The disempowerment of Ulbricht meant at the same time a departure from his strategy of economic renewal.

As if it had never existed

Several times I had observed Ulbricht at public appearances - and how the old man was presented by his former "crown prince" Honecker. His last speech, which he had given an anniversary in the Soviet Embassy, ​​hardly contained a coherent sentence. In a few months without power Ulbricht, whom I had experienced in 1970 as a passionate and knowledgeable free speaker, had become a pitiful old man.

In his 133-line memorial speech on Ulbricht's coffin, Honecker did not mention his economic policy, which had received worldwide recognition in many areas. On the contrary, Honecker ended his speech on the tracks of the eighth Party Congress - it was Honecker's "coronation ceremony" - to further advance the cause of socialism. Insiders understood: It would not be Ulbricht's tried and tested reformist paths, but the old, Stalinist ones.

In the late afternoon, the casket was transferred to the crematorium Berlin-Baumschulenweg by a staff of the National People's Army on a gun carriage. Soldiers had set up along the road, here and there had been ordered a few workers from farms to the track. One last time, one half-heartedly honored the man without whom the GDR was unthinkable.

The newspapers in the GDR always printed what was acceptable to the SED leadership - in the following years this was hardly a word about Ulbricht. The former GDR founder fell to the official oblivion. Companies and academies with his name were renamed, stamps taken out of circulation, and he himself erased from history and textbooks as if he had never existed. But summit of shabbiness was already reached in his last days of life: Since the Berlin Walter Ulbricht Stadium, in which the delegations from all over the world invaded the World Festival, had been renamed the Stadium of World Youth.

On 17 September Ulbricht's urn was buried in the Rondelle of the Socialist Memorial in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde with the graves of Pieck and Grotewohl and other socialist leaders. This was no longer granted to his successor. The late years of the Ulbricht era are now regarded as the most successful in the history of the GDR.