Departments of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany

The approximately 40 departments of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) were the center of the policymaking in East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

The departments were assigned to around ten Central Committee Secretaries. Each department was headed by a department head and his deputy. Each department was in turn divided into sectors with sector heads, (political) employees and instructors. While the departments had around 1,000 employees in 1970, by 1987 there were already 2,000 employees.

Only the Central Committee Secretaries had the authority to issue legally binding orders to the respective Ministry, but in practice, the department and sector heads made the decisions.

During the Peaceful Revolution, the Presidium of the Party Executive of the SED-PDS dissolved the departments of the Central Committee of the SED, effective 31 December 1989.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.