Erich Apel: Touches to a Historical Portrait

Searching for an optimal model of economic development was one of the central issues of the GDR's development. The economic rivalry with the FRG, which remained the most important factor in the existence of “the first state of workers and peasants on German soil”, made this issue particularly acute. In the 1960s, the GDR leadership made a large-scale attempt to implement a course of reforms aimed at intensifying the planned economy through partial decentralization of certain economic processes and limited use of market elements. The “New Economic System of Planning and Management” proclaimed in 1963 at the 6th Congress of the SED is firmly associated with the name of the party's first secretary, Walter Ulbricht, but would not have been possible without his nomination of a group of practicing economists and technocratic intellectuals to leadership positions. Central among them was Erich Hans Apel, who became head of the GDR State Planning Committee in January 1963 and is considered one of the developers of the concept of the “New Economic System”. This article sketches a historical portrait of Erich Apel during the period of the direct implementation of the reforms on the basis of materials from domestic archives.