Preprint: Egon Krenz: “Loss and Expectation: Memories”
With the third volume of his memoirs, Egon Krenz concludes his autobiography. An advance print.
With the third volume of his memoirs, Egon Krenz concludes his autobiography. In it, he examines the autumn of 1989, when he became head of state and party, his expulsion from office and his home, the loss of his land, and finally the legal battles, including his imprisonment. He was twelve when the republic was founded 75 years ago. He not only experienced it, but actively shaped it. When it collapsed 35 years ago, he lost more than just his job. He reflects on this very complicated time, even for other East Germans. The following is an advance excerpt from the non-fiction book, which deals with China.
On Monday, May 26, 2025, Egon Krenz will present his autobiography in conversation with Holger Friedrich, publisher of the Berliner Zeitung, at the Babylon cinema in Berlin. Tickets are available here . A livestream of the event will be available on the Berliner Zeitung website .
Günter Schabowski was among the Politburo members who had sneaked off on vacation despite the crisis. He had traveled to China on a government plane. In June, violent clashes had broken out in Tiananmen Square, shaking not only the People's Republic. In the West, these events were seized upon as a cue. Without knowledge of the background and context of these clashes, anti-Chinese propaganda fell on fertile ground.
Schabowski, however, hadn't flown to Beijing to find out more about it. However, during his vacation, he had also spoken with Jiang Zemin, recently appointed General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. Jiang had previously been the party's first deputy in Shanghai and thus virtually the equal of the party leader of the GDR capital, i.e., Schabowski. Perhaps that's why they knew each other. In a lightning telegram on July 14, Schabowski informed Honecker of this meeting. One sentence, in particular, stuck in my memory. "According to the assessment of the Chinese comrades, the events of June 1989 in Tiananmen Square would not have happened," said Schabowski, "if the party leadership had been united and had a clear assessment." Was that meant to be self-critical?
I couldn't understand it any other way.
However, Schabowski's trip and his comments were not without consequences. First, he suggested to the Politburo that I should lead the delegation traveling to Beijing for the 40th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. Second, the topic prompted a letter from the Permanent Mission in Berlin to the Federal Chancellery in Bonn . With explicit reference to my Saarbrücken talks in mid-June, this confidential government briefing portrayed me as a hardliner and agitator. "His unmitigated defense of the massacres in Beijing during his visit to Saarbrücken demonstrates his determination, if necessary, to use all means of state power."
This claim was not only fabricated and tendentious, but false. However, it leaked into the media, gained widespread acceptance, and would even lead to court proceedings years later. In fact, in Saarbrücken, in response to relevant questions from journalists, I had declared that in assessing events, it was better to "adhere to official reports" and not to reports "based on rumors, falsifications, and conjecture." The statements of the Chinese party and state leadership "clearly and unequivocally state that the peaceful student demonstrations were intended to be exploited for a counter-revolutionary overthrow in the People's Republic of China," I had explained at the two-day conference, which Colonel General Fritz Streletz had also attended in uniform. […] Wolfgang Herger, other comrades in the leadership who remained in Berlin, and I were aware of the situation—but as the party leadership, we were unable to act. And undoubtedly, not everyone was pulling in the same direction. Most members of the Politburo and the government were still on summer recess, and the number one man was not on the bridge. And even if everyone had been present, there could have been no talk of unity in the Politburo. Above all, the central and key figure, who ultimately made all decisions personally, was in poor health and apparently failed to grasp the seriousness of the situation.
“Don’t panic!” Honecker said on the phoneHerger and I prepared the assessments we received. When Honecker returned from vacation, it was imperative that the Politburo discuss them thoroughly and critically. I told Erich Honecker this on the phone.
He replied: "Don't panic!" The strong focus on the Secretary General was already inhibiting in normal times. But now this structural problem proved to be existential for the country. Men were making history, after all. One way or another. I was practically despairing: What else would have to happen for the leadership to wake up and act truly collectively and unanimously?
I was sure: I wasn't panicking. […]
My last trip to the People's Republic of China – for now – took place in the summer of 2019, before the pandemic . The publishing house of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had invited me to the presentation of my book. "China, as I see it" was published by edition ost in the spring of 2018, so now the Chinese edition was available. The translation was done by my friend Jianzheng Wang. Until 2013, he had worked as a military attaché at the embassy in Berlin. The publisher presented my book at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse. I couldn't believe it was a coincidence: I had been accommodated in that very government guesthouse thirty years ago. I conveyed the GDR's congratulations on the 40th anniversary of the People's Republic. At that time, I had also met with the state leader Deng Xiaoping, the "Paramount Leader," and with Jiang Zemin, the first man in the party. The Secretary General welcomed me to his office with a quote from Goethe's "Faust" in German: "This is the ultimate conclusion of wisdom: / Only he deserves freedom like life, / Who must conquer it daily."
Among the more than 100 guests at the book launch were several ministerial figures, representatives of the party leadership, diplomats, and academics. Quite a grand reception for a retired politician from Germany, I thought. Four prominent speakers, each in their own way, praised my book; one called it a "valuable gift from a proven European socialist for the 70th anniversary of the People's Republic of China." There were clearly words hidden in this assessment that caught the attention of more than just me and my companion, Siegfried Lorenz. Evidently, China's view of East Germany and its past had undergone some new emphases. Mei Zhaorong, Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany from 1988 to 1997 and a profound expert on Germany, commented on the book's content: "[...] The disappearance of the Soviet model of socialism, according to Krenz, does not mean the downfall of world socialism. China's successes are giving new impetus to the idea of socialism; the whole world is now turning its attention to China."
China's major media outlets had sent their representatives. They wanted to know what I saw as the reasons for China's successful policies and what place I assigned to the People's Republic in the world. I had been asked this on every trip. The Chinese were interested in how their country was perceived from the outside. Not to be praised, but to learn what they were doing right and what they might be doing wrong, so they could correct it. They are unfamiliar with the national and cultural arrogance we experience in Europe: that contradicts the Chinese character.
Not just out of kindness, but because I was convinced, I spoke into their microphones: "I'm impressed by the calm and matter-of-factness with which the Chinese leadership, under Xi Jinping, is acting. The message I'm hearing here is: China will not be provoked. It wants dialogue instead of confrontation. It threatens no country. It will never strive for hegemony and expansion, but will always defend its legitimate interests. And that's a good thing!"
The journalists also asked about personal matters. What moved me, what I had already seen in China. I then told them about an encounter I had had the previous year in Shanghai. I had met veterans of the People's Liberation Army there at a choir rehearsal: dignified old men, elderly women [...]. They came together regularly to sing together, they told me. And then they would break into "Ode to Joy" -Schiller's text in Chinese to Beethoven's music, the European anthem. That had touched me deeply. How small the Earth was, and how close people could be. But how simple-minded and stupid those were who ignored this and opted for confrontation for economic and ideological reasons.
[…] We met professors – some of them already emeritus – who had studied in the GDR in the 1950s and who fondly remembered that time. Professor Wang Xijing, once a fellow student in Beijing of Rolf Berthold, the recently deceased last ambassador of the GDR to the People's Republic of China, recounted their time together at the university in Beijing. They shared a small boarding school room back then.
"We were desperately poor, but we had ideals," Wang said. "We left the Cultural Revolution, famine, and Great Leap Forward behind us, went through ups and downs together, and now we have the China of the new era. It's like a different world." Quite true. [...]
The mainstream here would like China to become like the West. They don't accept that the Chinese nation self-consciously rejects becoming like the West. […]
When I boarded the plane with Siegfried Lorenz after three weeks in China and found my seat, someone looked me over and over again. I assumed it was a businessman from the West who didn't dare speak to me. It wasn't until we got off the plane in Berlin that he dared to. "What's Egon Krenz doing in China?" Aha, third person, a West German. So my suspicions were confirmed. "Visiting friends," I replied. "Oh yes," he said ironically, "I had already forgotten that the Chinese Communist Party was once the sister party of your SED." He paused and delivered his punchline: "But your sister party is more successful than yours was." I didn't contradict him. Where he was right, he was right.
But was that a reason not to be happy about it? Do you have feedback? Write to us! [email protected]
Berliner-zeitung
