This commission played a significant role in enforcing conformity and eliminating perceived opposition within the party ranks during its existence.
Charges included "Social Democratic tendencies", "Titoism", "Trotskyism", previous involvement in the KPDO,[1] or simply having been a "Western emigrant" or having had any form of contact with the US diplomat Noel Field.
During the Wende in late 1989, the SED renamed itself to SED-PDS and declared the "irrevocable break with Stalinism as a system" at an extraordinary party conference.
[3][4] The ZPKK, which had collectively resigned on 3 December 1989,[5] was abolished and replaced by a Central Arbitration Commission (German: Zentrale Schiedskommission).
[4] The Central Arbitration Commission, chaired by Günther Wieland, a former prosecutor in the GDR's Public Prosecutor General's Office,[4][6] continued the work of the late ZPKK, rehabilitating ZPKK victims and expelling SED elites, notably expelling all longtime full and candidate members of the SED Politburo on 20 und 21 January 1990 except for Werner Eberlein and Siegfried Lorenz.
[2] The full and candidate members of the ZPKK were appointed throughout its existence by the elected PV and later the Central Committee of the SED.
[10] The chairman of the ZPKK was a powerful figure in party politics, and usually was a full member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED.
[1][14] It also had the authority to posthumously rehabilitate individuals, examples being Felix Halle, executed during Stalin's purges in 1937, and Robert Havemann, expelled from the Academy of Sciences of the GDR in 1966.