Funded by the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship (2009–2013)
The project is completed
The subject of the project are the departments of the Central Committee of the SED and the institutes subordinated to these in their role as intermediate organisations of rule and control. Points of focus are the question of cultural and social-psychological parameters of party rule as well as a prosopographic analysis of the Central Committee staff. The undertaking analyses the political practice of the Central Committee apparatus between the founding of the party and the dissolution of the central apparatus in the winter of 1989/90. Here it will be a question of identifying how the transformation of the central party bureaucracy from a quasi-revolutionary to a ‘normal organisation’ took place and which consequences this shift had for the political system of East Germany. The undertaking is based on an extensive evaluation of the available SED sources in the Federal Archives-SAPMO, on records of the BStU and on eyewitness interviews, and it will be concluded with the publication of a monography.