Dietmar Keller (born 17 March 1942) was an East German politician (SED/PDS) who served as Minister for Culture [de] in the Modrow government.

The work for it involved, in his own words, the study of "problems of the development of economic democracy between 1945 and 1952 in the Soviet occupation zone [till October 1949] and the German Democratic Republic [thereafter].

[3] In November 1970 he took over as Secretary for Sciences, Humanities and Arts ("Sekretär für Wissenschaft und Kultur") with the party sectional leadership team ("SED-Kreisleitung") at the Karl Marx University.

[3] Identified as a post-graduate student of significant promise, during 1982/83 he accepted the opportunity to study for a year at the Academy for Social Sciences run in Moscow by the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party.

Personal priorities included making the colleges more autonomous in their decision processes, and trying to ensure that admission criteria were based less on social provenance and more on talent.

[4] Between 1988 and 1989 Keller served as Secretary of state (high level official) at the Culture Ministry, with special responsibility for museums and national anniversaries.

Replaced at the Culture Ministry by Herbert Schirmer [de], Keller was elected to the East German national parliament ("Volkskammer"), representing the Leipzig electoral district.

[1] A couple of months later General Election was held in which Dietmar Keller was re-elected, now as a "list member" for the Brandenburg electoral district.

He was elected to the important Bundestag enquiry commission, "Evaluation of the History and Consequences of the East German dictatorship ("Aufarbeitung von Geschichte und Folgen der SED-Diktatur")" which began its work in March 1992.

[1] His seat on the commission was contested, and fellow members of the PDS Bundestag group elected him in preferences to Uwe-Jens Heuer [de].

Dietmar Keller, as Gysi's reforming (and intellectually formidable) political ally, had also found himself attacked with increasing savagery by party comrades over the past couple of years, especially after a critical interview that he gave to Der Spiegel in April 2000.