Werner Titel

Werner Titel (2 May 1931 – 25 December 1971) was a German politician and party functionary of the Democratic Farmers' Party of Germany (DBD).

In the German Democratic Republic, he emerged as an early expert on environmental policy, eventually leading him to be appointed the GDR's first Environmental Minister.

However, Titel suddenly died under unexplained circumstances shortly afterwards at the age of 40, after the Stasi discovered that Titel had concealed his father's crimes against humanity as SS officer.

Early career
The son of a laborer, he attended elementary and secondary school. After being forcibly resettled in the Soviet occupation zone, Titel completed an agricultural apprenticeship from 1946 to 1950 and attended the agricultural school in Zossen.

In 1949, he became a member of the FDGB (Free German Trade Union Federation) and the FDJ (Free German Youth). Until 1950, he worked as a farm laborer and until 1951 as an agricultural research technician in Frankfurt (Oder).

In 1950, he joined the Democratic Farmers' Party of Germany (DBD), an East German bloc party founded on the instigation of and beholden to the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED), served as a functionary in the Brandenburg state association of the DBD from 1951 to 1953, and was a member of the Central Council of the FDJ from 1953 to 1955. As an unofficial collaborator (IM) codenamed "Lehmann," he reported to the Stasi about the Farmers' Party.

Bloc party politician
From 1956 to 1961, he completed a distance learning program at the Institute for Agricultural Economics in Bernburg (Saale), which he completed a with a degree in agricultural economics (Dipl. agr. oec.). In 1965, he earned a doctorate in economics (Dr. rer. oec.) from the Humboldt University of Berlin on the topic of agricultural problems in Comecon and the EEC.

In May 1963, at the VII. Party Congress of the DBD, he was elected to the presidium of the DBD party executive committee. From 1963 to 1966, he was chairman of the Bezirk Frankfurt (Oder) DBD, a member of the Bezirk agricultural council, a Bezirk assembly representative and from 1966 to 1967, a member of the Bezirk government.

From 1966 to 1967, he served as secretary of the DBD party executive committee.

Minister
In July 1967, he was made Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of East Germany, responsible for agriculture and water management, succeeding his party colleague Paul Scholz. He additionally became member of the Volkskammer that year, nominally representing a constituency in the northeast of Bezirk Frankfurt (Oder).

Between October 1967 and September 1968, he led a working group of 21 researchers who presented a 118-page scientific analysis on environmental hazards in the GDR as part of the "Forecast on the Planned Development of Socialist National Culture." The GDR subsequently groomed him as an expert in environmental policy.

Titel was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit.

Death
When he was about to be appointed the first Environmental Minister of the GDR in 1971, the Stasi discovered during the appointment process that Titel had concealed in his personnel records that his father had been sentenced to death in 1948 as a former SS officer for crimes against humanity.

When the Stasi then urged the leadership of the DBD to take personnel actions against Titel, he suddenly died under unexplained circumstances at the age of 40.

According to historian Tobias Huff, who published an environmental history of the GDR in 2015, Titel died of a rare heart disease.

He was buried in the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery in Berlin. Hans Reichelt succeeded him both as Minister for Environmental Protection and Water Management and as the DBD's Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers.