Tino-Antoni Schwierzina

Tino Antoni Schwierzina (30 May 1927, Königshütte (now Chorzów, Poland) – 29 December 2003, Berlin) was an East German lawyer who became a politician. Between May 1990 and January 1991 he served as the first and last freely elected mayor[1] of East Berlin.[2] His term of office was dominated by the fusion of the two halves of Berlin[1] which had been politically (and increasingly also, till 1989, physically) divided since before 1949.[3] By some criteria Tino Schwierzina was also the last mayor of East Berlin ahead of reunification.

Tino Schwierzina
West meets East. West Berlin Mayor Walter Momper with soon-to-be East Berlin mayor Tino Schwierzina (6 May 1990)
Lord Mayor of East Berlin
In office 30 May 1990 – 11 January 1991
Preceded by	Christian Hartenhauer
Succeeded by	Thomas Krüger (Acting)
Personal details
Born	Tino-Antoni Schwierzina 30 May 1927 Königshütte, Upper Silesia, Germany
Died	29 December 2003 Berlin, Germany
Political party	SDP SPD
Spouse(s)	Brigitte
Children	Ivo
Occupation	Lawyer, politician

Life

Early years

Tino-Antoni Schwierzina was born in Königshütte in Upper Silesia.[3]His father was a doctor.[3] His grandmother had come from Italy which explained his unusual (in Germany) name.[4] From 1933 he attended a school in Magdeburg. In 1944 he was conscripted into the Wehrmacht, and detained by US army as a prisoner of war from 1945 till 1948.[2]

Schwierzina passed his final school exams in 1948 and went on to study Law at Berlin's Humboldt University, specialising in Commercial Law, till 1952.[3] He also became a Trades unionist, being a member of the Food and Catering Union (IG Nahrung u. Genuß) between 1948 and 1990.[2] More briefly, between 1950 and 1952, he was a member of the Free German Youth (FDJ / Freie Deutsche Jugend) organisation, which was in effect the youth wing of the young country's recently formed ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED / Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands).[2]

(In)famous friends

In 1950/51 he worked for the "German Committee for Peace Activists" ("Deutsche Komitee der Kämpfer für den Frieden")[5] and for the "German Peace Committee" ("Deutsche Friedenskomitee"). One of his fellow peace activists at this time was Günter Guillaume: the two became friends and on 12 May 1951 Schwierzina attended Guillaume's wedding as a witness.[5] Nearly four decades later Tino Schwierzina's participation in the wedding of one of Germany's most high-profile spy-couples would be highlighted in the western press.[5] By 1990 Schwierzina was nevertheless able to point out that he had no contact with the Guillaumes for a very long time[6] adding that back then you did not normally recite your "résumé" [to friends].[5][7]

The lawyer

From 1952 Tino Schwierzina was employed as a commercial lawyer, working for various East German enterprises on matters involving foreign trade, notably for the food and drinks sector, and including the VEB Bärensiegel operation.[3] In 1963 he was awarded a six-month suspended prison sentence for assisting people to escape from the country („Beihilfe zur Republikflucht“): this was a serious matter in a country that had emerged from the war with a desperate shortage of working age men, which had only been exacerbated by large-scale emigration to the west, especially prior to the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961. In 1969 Schwierzina gave up full-time work on health grounds, but he continued to work as a lawyer on a part-time basis till 1989.[2]

Politics

Although the German Democratic Republic had been founded only in October 1949, by that time the basis for a return to one-party government had already been created Soviet administration in April 1946, with the contentious merger of the old Communist Party with the Moderate-left SPD. After 1946 former SPD members who had gone along with the merger found themselves excluded from the merged SED (party) which very quickly came to be seen as the old Communist Party with a new name. Meanwhile, the SPD continued to function in West Germany, where it headed up the governing coalition from 1969 till 1982. Back in East Germany the monolithic government structure began to lose authority and self-belief towards the end of the 1980s as its economic underpinnings became ever more suspect and the government-to-government relationship with the Soviet Union became less predictable.[8] During 1989 a Social Democratic Party (SDP) was revived in the German Democratic Republic. Tino Schwierzina, whose career horizons had doubtless been hampered by his failure to join the country's ruling SED (party), now joined the SDP in November 1989,[1] becoming a member of the party's regional leadership team in February 1990.[2]

City mayor

The breach by protesters of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the absence of a violent military response from the Soviet military opened the way for a return to democratic government and, after that, German reunification. In May 1990 a municipal election was held in East Berlin. Tino Schwierzina's name was at the top of the SDP candidate list. In the event the SDP topped the poll,[1] with 34.1% of the vote against 30.1% for the PDS. (The PDS was a "new" party resulting from a hasty make-over of what had previously been East Germany's ruling SED party.) As the lead candidate from the leading party, Schwierzina had the first chance to stand for the job of mayor. He was elected by an overwhelming majority of Berlin's senate members,[3] making it clear - unusually for an elected city mayor - that his primary objective was to negotiate his way out of office [9] by creating, with his western counterpart, a reunited Berlin city administration.[1] His term would run from 30 May 1990 to 11 January 1991.[2] He was succeeded, albeit briefly, by his deputy, Thomas Krüger who from 11 January 1991 till 24 January 1991 served as "acting mayor" of East Berlin until the role was superseded and Eberhard Diepgen took office as the mayor of "all Berlin", appointed following the December 1990 city elections.[10] Diepgen's appointment was delayed by a couple of weeks of coalition negotiation since no party had won an overall majority but the centre-right CDU party had won the largest number of seats.[10]

Between January 1991 and October 1995 Schwierzina sat as a member of the Berlin regional legislature where he was elected an assembly vice-president and also as Chairman of the Petitions Committee.[1]

Schwierzina went into retirement in 1996. By that time he had already suffered, in 1994, a serious heart-attack. Brigitte Schwierzina, his wife, is a doctor who reportedly instructed him, if reading the morning papers, to remain calm now that he was no longer required to feel responsible for matters reported.[11] After he died, at the end of 2003, several of the more heartfelt tributes paid tribute also to Brigitte Schwierzina's skill and care in looking after him during his final years.[1]

Awards and honours

In 1996 he was given by the Berlin Senate the annually awarded "Stadtältester von Berlin" title, an honour celebrating his contribution to the city.

Since 2 June 2014 a street in Berlin-Heinersdorf has been named after Schwierzina.[12]

References

1. Klaus Wowereit (funeral speech quoted on SPD-Berlin biographical webpage on T-A S) (12 January 2004). "Gedenkrede des Regierenden Bürgermeisters Klaus Wowereit bei der Trauerfeier für Tino Schwierzina". Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) - Landesverband Berlin , Berlin. Archived from the original on 3 November 2014. Retrieved 17 February 2015.
2. Helmut Müller-Enbergs. "Schwierzina, Tino-Antoni *30.5.1927, † 29.12.2003 Oberbürgermeister von Berlin". Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur: Biographische Datenbanken. Retrieved 17 February 2015.
3. Sprecherin des Senats & Informationsamterin Daniela Augenstein. "Tino Schwierzina: frei gewählter Oberbürgermeister Ost-Berlins vom 30.5.1990 bis 11.1.1991". Senatskanzlei Berlin. Retrieved 17 February 2015.
4. Kerstin Schneider (interviewer); Tino-Antoni Schwierzina (interviewee) (16 October 2001). "Tino Schwierzina: Der Wirtschaftsjurist war der letzte Oberbürgermeister von Ost-Berlin. Er überwachte den Abriss der Mauer in der Stadt und gehörte zu den Gründungsmitgliedern der SPD in der DDR". Meine Großmutter. Die war Italienerin. Und jetzt macht jeder aus diesem Namen, was er will. Einige nennen mich »Anton«, die Berliner rufen mich »Tino«, und der Bundespräsident sagt »Toni« zu mir. Stern.de, Hamburg. Retrieved 17 February 2015.
5. "Tino-Antoni Schwierzina, 63,". Der Spiegel (online). 4 June 1990. Retrieved 18 February 2015.
6. "[Sie waren .... "völlig aus den Augen verloren" (lost to sight)]"
7. "Damals war es nicht üblich, seinen Lebenslauf zu erzählen."
8. Zhong Zhong Chen (June 2014). "Defying Moscow, engaging Beijing: The German Democratic Republic's relations with the People's Republic of China, 1980–1989" (PDF). A thesis submitted to the Department of International History of the London School of Economics for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, London. London School of Economics (LSE Theses Online). Retrieved 7 February 2015.
9. Thomas Krüger (who served as deputy to Schwiezina during the latter's months as mayor) (31 December 2003). "Der Rosengärtner im Roten Rathaus: Tino Schwierzina, der erste frei gewählte Ost-Berliner Oberbürgermeister, ist am Montag gestorben. Sein ehemaliger Stellvertreter Thomas Krüger würdigt ihn". Der Tagesspiegel. Retrieved 18 February 2015.
10. Sprecherin des Senats & Informationsamterin Daniela Augenstein. "Eberhard Diepgen Regierender Bürgermeister vom 9.2.1984 bis 16.3.1989 und vom 24.1.1991 bis 16.6.2001". Senatskanzlei Berlin. Retrieved 18 February 2015.
11. Kerstin Schneider (interviewer); Tino-Antoni Schwierzina (interviewee) (16 October 2001). "Tino Schwierzina: Der Wirtschaftsjurist war der letzte Oberbürgermeister von Ost-Berlin..." Meine Frau, die Ärztin ist,... wenn ich morgens Zeitung lese, sage ich mir immer: Bleib ruhig, das hast du nicht zu verantworten... Stern.de, Hamburg. Retrieved 18 February 2015.
12. Sprecherin des Senats & Informationsamterin Daniela Augenstein (16 May 2014). "Berliner Straße in Heinersdorf wird in "Tino-Schwierzina-Straße" umbenannt16.05.2014". Pressemitteilung. Senatskanzlei Berlin. Archived from the original on July 14, 2014. Retrieved 20 February 2015.CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)