Hans-Joachim Heusinger

The son of a worker, he completed training as an electrician from 1939 to 1942 after attending elementary school and was a soldier in the Wehrmacht until 1945.^[1]

From 1945 to 1951, he worked as an electrician and cable fitter.^[1]

Heusinger joined the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany (LDPD), an East German bloc party beholden to the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED), in 1947.^[1][2][3][4]

Heusinger initially became active in local politics. From 1951 to 1952, he was a member of the council of the Leipzig-Mitte district. From 1952 to 1957, he was a secretary of the Bezirk Leipzig LDPD. From 1953 to 1959, he was a deputy of the Bezirk Leipzig and Bezirk Cottbus district assemblies and a member of the Bezirk government.^[1]

From 1955 to 1960, he pursued distance learning at the German Academy for Political Science and Law (DASR) “Walter Ulbricht” in Potsdam, de facto a Marxist-Leninist cadre factory of the SED,^[5] earning a degree in law (Dipl.-Jur.). From 1957 to 1959, Heusinger subsequently served as chairman of the Bezirk Cottbus LDPD and as director of the Cottbus Chamber of Industry and Commerce. Since 1957, he additionally was a member of the central board of the LDPD and its political committee.^[1][2][3][4]

From 1959 to 1973, he was a secretary of the LDPD central board.^[1][3][4]

From 1958 to 1961, he was also a candidate for succession and from 1961, succeeding the deceased Hans Loch, to 1990 a member of the Volkskammer,^[1][2] nominally representing a constituency in southern Bezirk Potsdam.^[6] Heusinger initially was a member of the legal committee, and from 1963 to 1973 a member of the committee for industry, construction, and transport.^[1][2]

In October 1972, he was made Minister of Justice of the GDR,^{[1][2][3][4][7]} succeeding his party colleague Kurt Wünsche,^[1][8][9] who was fired for being critical of SED leader Erich Honecker's push for a complete nationalization of the GDR's remaining small businesses.^[10]

He additionally became Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers,^[1][3][4] though he did not have an office in the Council of Ministers' building,^[3] the bloc party's deputy chairman titles being symbolic. From 1972 to 1980, he also was deputy chairman of the LDPD.^[1][2][3][4]

The head of the main department responsible for legislation during Heusinger's tenure was Justice Councilor Gustav-Adolf Lübchen.

Heusinger was awarded the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver in 1967, in gold in 1975 and the honor clasp to this order in 1985.^[1][4]

During the Wende, Heusinger was one of only a few Ministers kept by the new transitional government of Hans Modrow, though he did lose the deputy chairman title.^{[1][3][11][12]} However, Heusinger's previous loyalty to the SED proved to be a problem, prompting Modrow to fire him in January 1990.^{[1][3][4][10][13]} His successor was Wünsche, who continued to head the Justice Ministry even in the GDR's last government, the only freely elected one.^[8]

The LDP, its new name after being renamed in February 1990, joined forces with the other liberal parties in the GDR to form the Association of Free Democrats (BFD).^[14] Heusinger left the BFD in April 1990.^[1][2][4]

After German reunification, Heusinger became active in the Society for Legal and Humanitarian Assistance (German: Gesellschaft zur Rechtlichen und Humanitären Unterstützung) (GRH),^[1][2] a historical negationist lobbying group for former GDR functionaries accused of political repression.^[2] In August 2007, Heusinger gave a speech at an event of the German Communist Party (DKP).^[1]

Heusinger died in 2019 at the age of 94.^[15]