The pants are flapping, the jacket dangling oversized from the shoulders. As the old gentleman steps behind the desk, he briefly straightens his heavy glasses. Then he raises his voice, a little higher, even more croaking than before: "Dear comrades," says Hans Modrow, glancing into the hall.

What he sees: many empty chairs. The report of the Council of Elders belongs to the compulsory program at left-wing party congresses such as the Latin American music group or the Frauenplenum. When the time comes, many comrades rush to the sausage stand.

This is how it will be in Leipzig in June. Modrow scolds party leader Bernd Riexinger, NATO, Donald Trump. Tired applause. "Thank you, Hans," someone says in the end.

Months in power

This is what Hans Modrow's fight for socialism looks like: The 90-year-old is head of the elders' council of a nine-percent party. A meeting a month, a party speech in the year. Somehow he still belongs to Germany's left.

But somehow it also looks like something from another world.

There was a time when Modrow listened to everyone. He was then the most powerful man in the GDR - if only for a few months.

DPA

Modrow in Leipzig

In November, the People's Chamber elected him prime minister. A few days earlier, the wall had fallen, Modrow was to organize the transition, into a new, more open society. In April 1990 replaced him Lothar de Maizière. Modrow remained the last head of government of the SED.

Marx and Engels on the shelf

A few square meters on the fifth floor of the Karl Liebknecht House, the party headquarters of the Left in Berlin - this is now Modrow's workplace. Two tables, no computer, but a telephone with spiral cable. On the shelf the Marx-Engels-Werke.

Three times a week, Modrow comes here. He has always been considered modest. Unlike other GDR bosses, he renounced a neat villa - even when he was head of the SED district leadership in Dresden.

Today, Modrow lives in three rooms on the Karl-Marx-Allee, the former splendor boulevard in East Berlin. "Former Stalin Avenue," he emphasizes.

Modrow has a paper block in front of him. As he speaks, he scribbles on it energetically. It is now about the end of the GDR.

In the West, Modrow was regarded as a bearer of hope, as a reformer. Although he has a classic socialist career behind him: FDJ, cadre schools in Berlin and Moscow, promotion in the SED, People's Chamber, member of the Central Committee.

MIRROR ONLINE

Modrow in his office in the Karl Liebknecht house

Meanwhile, Modrow knows that Mikhail Gorbachev considered him early on as a substitute for Erich Honecker. Probably the reason why he put the Stasi on him.

In fact, Modrow tried in the turnaround for reforms. He chatted with Chancellor Helmut Kohl. He brought members of the round table into the government. He wanted a slow rapprochement at eye level. "I was taken by surprise by the development," he says today. But he did not want to prevent the unit.

A liberal, in a sense?

"Wrong in both states"

"I did not always just want to babble," says Modrow. "Over time, that became more difficult in the GDR." He quarrels with his role, for example, that he has not defended the freedom of art more decisively. That's the one Modrow.

The other Modrow was convicted of reelection for election manipulation. In 1989, he had the Dresden train station blocked by force against demonstrators, as the trains with GDR refugees from Prague headed west.

It is now about the worst excesses in the East. Modrow draws two strokes across the block with his pen, as if to cut it. "There was injustice in both states," he says. "In the GDR and in the FRG." Finally, communists were also imprisoned in the West.

But the wall dead, the Stasi-persecuted, the SED dictatorship, the lack of freedom of travel? "In certain phases you have to put that on a par," says Modrow. In general, GDR citizens should have been allowed to travel, for example in the deaths of relatives. "Humane reasons," says Modrow.

Modrow paints a circle.

What role can someone like him play in the party?

The old in the party

Modrow digs a red book from a cupboard. "The wisdom of the party," it says. A treatise on the council of elders. The committee is to advise the Executive Board. It was important after the turn to know, "that the ancients are not gone," he says.

REUTERS

Modrow with Helmut Kohl in December 1989

The elders were SED people who made sure that the party did not break completely. They took care that the anger of the mass concentrated on the Stasi. Modrow is said to have issued the slogan internally in December 1989: "We need a guilty party to save the party."

In the end, the SED went up in the PDS. Modrow became a member of parliament, later he sat in the European Parliament.

One must have respect, say one on the left, Modrow had de-escalated in the turn. Above all, the followers of Sahra Wagenknecht appreciate it when he criticizes the party leaders, with which it is divided. Others do not want to have anything to do with SED grandeurs like him. The honorary chairman is no longer Modrow.

Modrow wants to show that he is still involved. He has sued against the Federal Republic. BND and constitutional protection had watched him for decades. Modrow requires file inspection.

In the fall he travels to Beijing, to Seoul, to Pyongyang. In divided Korea one is interested in his opinion - "with a different view than the fast German unification", he says.

Why is he still doing this? It is now about the basics. "War is still an option in politics," says Modrow. "That motivates me."