Homepage > Chronicle

Chronicle 1965

Reverse timeline
  • January 
  • March 
  • April 
  • June 
  • July 
  • September 
  • October 
  • November 

  • December

     

    • 3 December

      1965

      The chairman of the GDR State Planning Commission and deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers, Dr. Erich Apel, commits suicide in his office on 3 December. According to contemporary Western sources, Apel had opposed signing a new trade agreement between the GDR and the Soviet Union, saying this would negatively affect the GDR’s economic possibilities on the global market. Apel's successor is Gerhard Schürer.

    • 15-18 December

      1965

      The 11th conference of the SED Central Committee decides on a reform of the GDR's economic system (NÖSPL - Neues ökonomisches System der Planung und Leitung [New Economic System of Planning and Management]). At the same time, dissident cultural figures in the GDR such as Heiner Müller, Stefan Heym and Wolf Biermann are denounced for emphasising the errors, deficits and weaknesses of the system "to awaken doubts about the political system of the GDR and to spread the ideology of scepticism." more

    • 20 December

      1965

      An interview with Robert Havemann in the Hamburg news magazine "Der Spiegel" leads to his dismissal from the Academy of Sciences.

    • 26 December

      1965

      While trying to break through the border at the Heinrich Heine Strasse crossing point in a car, the 27-year-old Heinz Schöneberger is killed by shots fired by GDR border guards; three people accompanying him are arrested.
      RIAS report on the murder of Heinz Schöneberger on Heinrich Heine Strasse (interview with eyewitnesses, statement by Ernst Lemmer, the special envoy of the West German Chancellor in Berlin), 27 December 1965 (in German) (Source: Archiv Deutschlandradio, Broadcast: Die Zeit im Funk, Reporter: Helmut Fleischer, Gerd Meyer, Gerd Hente)
      Heinz Schöneberger, born on June 7, 1938, shot dead December 26, 1965 on the Heinrich-Heine-Strasse border crossing
Top of page