Winzer was born in Berlin in 1902.[1] He was a son of worker. Otto Winzer learned the typesetter craft.[1]
In 1919, he became a member of the Communist Party of Germany.[1] Then he became the head of Communist Youth publication. He was involved in underground activities against Adolf Hitler's regime from 1933 to 1935.[1] In 1935, Winzer went to the Soviet Union, and he stayed there until the end of World War II. During World War II, he used the code name Lorenz.[1] He returned from exile in the Soviet Union as part of the Ulbricht Group, charged with setting up the Soviet Military Administration in Germany after World War II in April 1945.[2]
Winzer joined the Socialist Unity Party, the East German communist party, in 1946, and he became a member of its central committee in 1946.[3] He was named the deputy editor of the party's official paper Neues Deutschland in 1949.[4] Winzer was Secretary of State from 1949 to 1956 and First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1956 to 1965.[3] He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1965 to 1975. He was removed from his post due to ill health[5] and died at age 72 on 3 March 1975.[6]
