Eastern Commissioner calls on the East German Federal President to make it visible

The Federal Government's Eastern Commissioner, Elisabeth Kaiser, has spoken out in favor of an East German Federal President in order to make East Germans more visible at the top of the country. “I think the time is ripe for an East German head of state again,” said the SPD politician to the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung. “Why shouldn’t the next Federal President be a smart woman from East Germany?” Most recently, the East German and former GDR civil rights activist Joachim Gauck was Federal President from 2012 to 2017.

In principle, there should be more East German top personnel in federal politics, demanded Kaiser. When the leaders of the Federal Republic came together on German Unity Day, "it is once again noticeable that none of them are currently from East Germany," she complained. "The impression can quickly arise that the East Germans play no role in the leadership of our country and are just sitting at the table."

The Eastern Commissioner recalled that a lot had been achieved since reunification. "Today, East Germany is an economic innovation region, an important science location and the bridge to Eastern Europe." Many East Germans have earned a modest fortune.

Nevertheless, there are still large differences in income and wealth between East and West. East Germans are still not sufficiently represented in leadership positions. “We have to overcome these differences in order to actually complete unity,” warned Kaiser.

“German unity is a process”

The Bundestag's SED victims' representative, Evelyn Zupke, also encouraged further progress towards reunification between East and West. "German unity is not a finish line that we will cross at some point - but a process," she told the editorial network Germany (RND). Zupke emphasized that it wasn't about conformity either: "Unity doesn't mean that we have to be identical at some point. We have different family histories, life paths and experiences. And that is an enrichment!”

According to Zupke, the nationwide hardship fund now also supports victims of the SED dictatorship living in the West who are in financial distress. Since November 9, 2025, around one million euros has been distributed to around 300 affected people. “For me, the nationwide hardship fund is a bit of German unity in action!”

Those who were imprisoned in the GDR for political reasons for more than 90 days are entitled to the monthly benefit. Between 1945 and 1989 there were around 250,000 political prisoners in prisons and youth work centers, as well as other victim groups such as those who were forcibly deported and people who were systematically psychologically destroyed by the state institutions.

Minister of State for Culture Weimer warns against glorifying the GDR

In view of the systematic oppression in the GDR, Minister of State for Culture Wolfram Weimer (independent) also warned against a subsequent glorification of the SED dictatorship. Right- and left-wing extremist circles tried to "trivialize or ideologically reinterpret the injustice and lack of freedom of the GDR," Weimer will say, according to a previously published speech manuscript, on Friday at a ceremony in the Point Alpha memorial between Hesse and Thuringia.

"The glorification of the SED dictatorship has now become an open historical revisionism in order to harm democracy," it says. Only a critical awareness of history can protect Germany from anti-democratic populism and totalitarian ideologies, warns Weimer, according to the manuscript. Especially at a time when authoritarianism is on the rise, “we have to remember what dictatorships do to people.” These are always “despotic, violent, inhumane.”