People's Anxiety Towards Communists - third instalment of Egon Krenz's Autobiography
Egon Krenz, the most powerful man in East Germany at the age of 52, recounts the collapse of the SED state in 39 brief chapters in his memoirs titled "Loss and Expectation. Memories", published in 2025.
In his memoirs, Krenz maintains that dissidents, such as painter Barbel Bohley and writers like Christa Wolf, wanted to preserve an independent East Germany after the collapse of socialism. However, he does not provide a detailed analysis of the failures of the SED state. The author only allows himself the sentence "As a collective, we have failed" as criticism.
Krenz was educated at the Party School of the CPSU in Moscow in 1964/67, where he was taught that a socialist revolution would displace West German capitalism. He wanted to reform the party and societal system but maintain the socialist foundations, but this was too late as the people wanted the freedoms that democracy offers.
Despite hundreds of deaths at the Berlin Wall and refugees being shot at the inner-German border, Krenz makes incredible claims, such as "The non-violence was part of the humanistic heritage of the DDR."
Krenz rejected the proposal to break the "power monopoly of our party" and called it "political suicide." He advised SED functionaries to strengthen "political-ideological work" against the wishes of DDR refugees who wanted to leave.
Krenz proposed a "thorough public debate" for the year 1990, when the XII. SED party congress was scheduled. However, his attempts to maintain the power positions of the SED nomenclature while satisfying the reform wishes of the rebellious population were unsuccessful.
The third volume of a high-ranking SED functionary's memoirs is criticized for justifying the crimes of the ruling party since 1949 instead of providing enlightenment about the failure of socialism. The memoirs consist of 344 pages and cost 26.00 euros.
The name of the author and East German writer who published the call "Für unser Land" on November 26, 1989, is not explicitly given in the search results. However, the political figure Egon Krenz is associated with the call "Für unser Land" at that time, although the authorship as a writer is not confirmed.
The SED successor party PDS, from which Krenz has since been excluded, only got 2.4% in the federal election on December 2, 1990. Krenz believes that the revolution that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was the work of the "counter-revolution."
In conclusion, Egon Krenz's memoirs offer a unique perspective on the collapse of the SED state, but they are criticized for justifying the crimes of the ruling party and not providing enough insight into the failure of socialism.
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