He moved to the Soviet occupation zone after the war, where he became a SED functionary. He served as the last Minister-President of Mecklenburg before its dissolution and thereafter as the longtime First Secretary of the Bezirk Schwerin SED before being forced into retirement in 1974.
Early life
Quandt was born to a single mother; his father was a soldier in the Imperial German Army who died in a riding accident in Parchim four months before Quandt’s birth.[1][2]
The family—his mother had since married a carpenter—lived in Rostock and Wismar. At six, he attended elementary school there. In 1912, the family moved to Gielow, where his mother ran a small farm. He began training as an iron turner in 1917 and worked as a journeyman.[1]
He became politically active, serving in 1927 as a municipal representative of Gielow and local leader of his party in Waren/Stavenhagen. He also briefly served as a member of the Landtag of the Free State of Mecklenburg-Schwerin on the eve of the Nazis' rise to power in 1932/1933. He held various jobs.[1]
After the Nazis came to power in 1933, he was repeatedly detained and eventually interned from October 1939, first in the Sachsenhausen and from March 1940 in the Dachau concentration camp, where he was freed by French troops.[1]
From February 1948, he served as Minister of Agriculture of Mecklenburg in the cabinets of Wilhelm Höcker and Kurt Bürger,[1][3] succeeding Otto Möller, who left for a teaching position at the University of Rostock.
During his time as First Secretary, Quandt successfully opposed the SED Politburo's decisions to construct multi-story prefabricated housing developments in rural areas, as he believed they would "ruin" the traditional village landscape.[2] He was a supporter of land reform and the new farmer program.[3][6][9]
In January 1974, on the instigation of party leadership,[7] Quandt was forced into retirement.[1][7] On 28 January 1974, Heinz Ziegner, his Second Secretary, was appointed as the new First Secretary.[5][7]
Quandt was allowed to remain in the Central Committee, Volkskammer and State Council, but was transferred to a politically irrelevant position at the Committee of Antifascist Resistance Fighters, a SED-controlled mass organization, chairing their Bezirk Schwerin Committee from 1974 to 1989.[1][9]
Peaceful Revolution
At the last session of the Central Committee on 3 December 1989, he tearfully[6][10] called for the reintroduction of the death penalty and the summary execution of all those (the "criminal gang of the old Politburo") who had brought disgrace (referring to the loss of power due to the revolutionary events in autumn 1989) upon the party (SED). "We abolished the death penalty in the State Council. I am in favor of reintroducing it and summarily executing everyone who brought such disgrace upon our party!"[6][7][10]
In 1990, he was elected to the Council of Elders of the now-renamed SED-PDS.[1][6]
Quandt died in 1999 at the age of 96, as the last former Minister-President of a GDR state.[7]
12Pelen, Lars (2001). Buchsteiner, Ilona; Palme, Ulrike (eds.). Mecklenburger in der deutschen Geschichte des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (in German). Rostock: Ingo Koch Verlag. pp.331–348. ISBN978-3-935319-22-5.
12Fischer, Gerhard (2005). Landwirte im Widerstand: 1933 - 1945 (in German). Rostock: Gesellschaft der Freunde und Förderer der Agrar- und Umweltwiss. Fak. der Univ. Rostock. p.67. ISBN978-3-86009-288-0.
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