After the death of the former Soviet head of state, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last GDR prime minister, Lothar de Maizière, paid tribute to his contribution to the peaceful revolution. “He was an encouragement for us East Germans,” said the former CDU politician on Wednesday at the request of the German Press Agency in Berlin. “Without him there would not have been the demonstrations that ultimately brought about the end of the GDR.” With Gorbachev he also lost a friend, so de Maizière. “It fills me with gratitude that our relationship has become a true friendship.”
The last GDR foreign minister, Markus Meckel, told the broadcaster “MDR Aktuell” about Gorbachev: “He made the end of the Cold War possible and that’s what he keeps!” For him it was overwhelming to suddenly have had a different language with Gorbachev in 1985 – “after this functionary talk by Brezhnev and these speeches that these SED guys all gave.” The former civil rights activist also pointed out Gorbachev’s errors. He believed he could get the Soviet Union. He didn’t realize that the people of the Soviet Union saw it as a prison.
Gorbachev died in Moscow on Tuesday evening at the age of 91.
