Political Career in The GDR
Krenz joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in 1955. Throughout his career, Krenz held a number of posts in the SED and the communist government. He was leader of the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation from 1971 to 1974, and became a member of the central committee of the communist party in 1973. He was also a member of the People's Chamber (the GDR's legislature) from 1971 to 1990, and a member of its presidium from 1971 to 1981. Between 1974 and 1983, he was leader of the communist youth movement, the Free German Youth. From 1981 to 1984 he was a member of the Council of State.
In 1983 he joined the Politburo and became a secretary of the central committee. He rose to supreme prominence when he became Honecker's deputy on the Council of State in 1984. Around the same time, he replaced Paul Verner as the unofficial number-two man in the SED leadership, thus making him the second-most powerful man in the country. Although he was the youngest member of the Politburo (and indeed, one of only two people elevated to full membership in that body from 1976 to 1984), speculation abounded that Honecker had tapped him as his heir apparent.
Krenz visited West Germany for the first time in June 1989, when he was invited by Oskar Lafontaine, who was then Minister-President of Saarland for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Reportedly, the West German social democrats were not impressed. Brigitte Schulte, the parliamentary floor leader for the SPD, who accompanied him during his visit, described Krenz as "utterly unsympathetic". Krenz spoke knowledgeably of choice foods, fine wines, and the privileges of power. "He struck me as the consummate apparatchik, a true child of the system, surrounded by the oiliest advisers, the sort of people who would do anything. I was totally shocked", Schulte would later tell reporters. Her impression was not that of a would-be reformer, but of a tough, cynical politician, interested first and foremost in his own career.
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