Hans Albrecht (politician)

Hans Albrecht (22 November 1919 – 27 March 2008) was a German politician and high-ranking party functionary of the Socialist Unity Party (SED).

In the German Democratic Republic, he served as the longtime First Secretary of the SED in Bezirk Suhl and was a member of the Central Committee of the SED and the National Defence Council.

In the Berlin Wall shooting trials, he was sentenced to five years and one month in prison for manslaughter.

Life and career
Albrecht came from a working-class family in the Ruhr area. A few months after completing his training as a locksmith, he was drafted into the Luftwaffe of the Wehrmacht for the duration of World War II.

After the war, Albrecht settled in Saxony, worked as a heating engineer, and joined the SPD (Social Democratic Party) in his hometown of Bennewitz. He became a member of the SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) in 1946 following the forced merger of the SPD and KPD (Communist Party of Germany).

Early career
From 1946 he was a staff member, later until 1949 secretary of the district leadership of the new SED in Grimma.

Bezirk Frankfurt (Oder) career
In 1950 he attended the "Karl Marx" Party Academy. Subsequently, his stations from 1951 were Frankfurt (Oder), Eberswalde, and Stalinstadt, where he became First Secretary of the SED district leadership, and from 1954 also worked in the Bezirk Frankfurt (Oder) SED leadership. In the same year, he was elected as a candidate member of the Central Committee of the SED. He held this status until January 1963 (VI. Party Congress), after which he became a full member.

Since 1958 chairman of the Bezirk Economic Council and member of the Bezirk legislature, he became chairman of the Council of Bezirk Frankfurt (Oder) in 1960, formally making him head of government of the Bezirk. However, he was de facto subservient to the local SED leadership.

Deputy Minister
From 1963 he completed a two-year study at the Industrial Institute of the Freiberg University of Mining and Technology, which he completed a with a degree in industrial engineering (Dipl.-Ing. oec.). After completing his studies in Freiberg, he became the first deputy chairman of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspection of the GDR, succeeding Günter Sieber, who became Minister for Trade and Supply.

Bezirk Suhl SED First Secretary
In August 1968, he succeeded Otto Funke as First Secretary of the Bezirk Suhl SED leadership, a position he held for 21 years until 1989. Bezirk Suhl had the smallest population and was the most geographically isolated Bezirk of the GDR.

He additionally became member of the Volkskammer in 1971 and a member of the presidium of the German-Arab Society of the GDR. In 1972, he was elected to the National Defense Council of the GDR, likely due to the long western border of Bezirk Suhl with West Germany.

Albrecht's leadership was viewed negatively. His leadership style was authoritarian, occasionally described as dictatorial, and he was viewed as a hardliner.

In 1988, he unsuccessfully tried to pressure Bad Salzungen SED First Secretary Hans-Dieter Fritschler to rescind his statements in the book Der Erste (The first one). The book provided an unfalsified account of Fritschler's work as a local SED functionary and detailed the GDR's problems, including dysfunction stemming from the Bezirk Suhl SED leadership.

Albrecht was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold in 1974, and the Karl Marx Order in 1979.

Peaceful Revolution
During the Wende, on 2 November 1989, the Bezirk Suhl SED removed him from the position of First Secretary and installed reformer Peter Pechauf as his successor. He was removed by his party from the Volkskammer two weeks later, on 16 November 1989.

At its last session on 3 December 1989, the Central Committee expelled Albrecht from the Central Committee and from the SED shortly before its collective resignation.

Reunified Germany
Albrecht passed away in 2008 at the age of 88.

Conviction for abuse of office and embezzlement
After the Wende, Albrecht was arrested for abuse of power and embezzlement. In October 1992, he was sentenced by the Meiningen Regional Court to 22 months in prison for incitement to embezzlement. He did not have to serve the sentence because he had already served more than half of the time in pre-trial detention.

Conviction for manslaughter
After the German reunification, he was indicted in May 1991 as part of the Berlin Wall shooting trials with another arrest warrant. As part of the trials against former members of the National Defense Council of the GDR, he was charged with "complicity in manslaughter" (political responsibility for the fatal shootings at the Berlin Wall) before the Berlin Regional Court.

On 16 September 1993, he was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for incitement to manslaughter. The verdict was changed in the appeal by the Federal Court of Justice on 26 July 1994, to manslaughter as an indirect perpetrator and the sentence was increased to five years and one month. Since Albrecht's defense raised constitutional complaints, he initially remained free.

On 12 November 1996, the Federal Constitutional Court dismissed the constitutional complaints of Albrecht and others. The killing of refugees was the most serious injustice that precluded the justification of those responsible by GDR laws. Albrecht served his sentence in a Berlin prison.