One of the last major surviving government figures from the former East Germany, Oskar Fischer, has died. He was the GDR's last foreign minister, holding the role for 15 years.
Oskar Fischer, East Germany’s foreign minister in the years leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, has died at the age of 97.
During his time 15 years in office at the head of the foreign ministry, Fischer was a loyal advocate of Soviet policies, warning against attempts to overthrow Communist rule in neighboring Poland.
However, he also warned that the jockeying for power between the United States and the Soviet Union placed East Germany — given its geographic position — in a very vulnerable position.
Fischer was the first member of the East Germany Cabinet to visit Pope John Paul II at the Vatican. He also visited several other Western European states including Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands.
Sites central to the East German dictatorship became memorials and museums after the fall of the Berlin Wall. They show the scope of imprisonment and injustice, and remind us of those who tried to fight back.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Wolfgang Kumm
Checkpoint Charlie
Probably the best known Cold War border crossing was located in the center of Berlin. In 1945 this was where the American and Russian sectors met. The crossing remained after the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, and then served for foreigners to cross between East and West Berlin. Today a private museum depicts the city's division and escape stories - those that succeeded and those that failed.
Image: Lars Wendt
Buchenwald Soviet Special Camp 2
The repression of political opponents began in 1945 with the establishment of special camps, like the one in Buchenwald near Weimar. Here the Soviet secret police imprisoned nearly 30,000 people, often arbitrarily, in a former Nazi concentration camp. The remains of the camp today has exhibits documenting the conditions and stories of theses inmates as well as a memorial near the mass graves.
Image: Peter Hansen, Gedenkstätte Buchenwald
The Ministry for State Security
When East Germany was founded in 1949, the new government took charge of all prisoners. From 1950 the Ministry for State Security, known as the Stasi, was responsible for political prisoners. It had its headquarters in Berlin's Normannenstrasse until 1989. Today it is a museum that includes the preserved office of Erich Mielke, the last Minister of State Security.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Postplatz Square in Dresden
On the June 17, 1953 there was a widespread uprising against the repressive East German government and the country's economic conditions. There was also strike action and protests in Dresden. This tank track on Postplatz square marks the brutal suppression of the uprising with Soviet tanks.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Arno Burgi
Stasi remand center in Berlin Hohenschönhausen
The suppression of the 1953 uprising was followed by a wave of arrests. The Stasi, who had not seen the protests coming, responded with force. For political prisoners, the central remand center in Berlin's Hohenschönhausen district was often the first stop. Since 1994, it has been home to the biggest research and memorial site in the former East Germany.
Image: AP
Former Stasi prison Bautzen II
Bautzen II was the most feared of all Stasi secret police prisons in East Germany. Along with the remand center in Hohenschönhausen these "Stasi slammers" have become the embodiment for state repression. Visitors get an impression of prison conditions from inmate's biographies as well as sound and film recordings of the jail.
Image: Gedenkstätte Bautzen
Juvenile detention center Jugendwerkhof Torgau
In 1964, the East German Ministry for Education under Margot Honecker created the juvenile detention center in Torgau. Behind five-meter walls, military style rule was imposed and offences severely punished. This memorial site today confronts what was the most brutal of all disciplinary institutions for juveniles in East Germany.
Image: DIZ Torgau
Emergency Reception Center Sandbostel
Beginning in 1952, parts of the former Stalag prisoner of war camp near Bremen were used as an emergency reception center for refugees from communist East Germany. Sandbostel became a camp for male East Germans under the age of 24 who had succeeded in escaping to the West. As many as 800 refugees were housed here at any given time.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Ingo Wagner
The Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall became an international symbol of separation and servitude. After its fall in 1989 the original wall all but vanished from the city. The Berlin Wall Memorial, created to commemorate those killed trying to escape, contains one of the last pieces. This is where the official anniversary commemoration will take place on November 9.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Wolfgang Kumm
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Early life
He trained as a tailor and served with the German Wehrmacht during World War II, at the end of which he was a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union.
Upon his return to what had become Communist-ruled East Germany — or the German Democratic Republic — Fischer became an official of both the Federation of Democratic Youth and the World Federation of Democratic Youth.
Germany – still not all one
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Political career
He was chosen to serve as East Germany’s ambassador to Bulgariafor four years and, after a period of study in Moscow, he was deputy minister for foreign affairs from 1965 to 1975.
Fischer took over the lead role at the ministry in 1975, after previous holder of the post, Otto Winzer, was removed due to ill health.
He received the most valuable order of merit of the GDR, the Karl Marx Medal, in 1983.
He also held the position even after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in the administration of the last Communist premier of East Germany, Hans Modrow.
Fischer relinquished the role in 1990, as center-left Social Democrat (SPD) politician Markus Meckel took on the role on behalf of a united Germany.
East Germany: They came to stay
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Post-reunification
He withdrew into public life for a decade, but did write a book about the limitations placed on East Germany in terms of foreign policy.
In 2000, Fischer served on an advisory committee for the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the successor party to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany which had ruled East Germany until the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Two years later, as then-Social Democrat Chancellor Gerhard Schröder campaigned for a second term, Fischer took part in an election appeal on behalf of the PDS before largely withdrawing from public life once again.
