He succeeded Erich Honecker as the General Secretary of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) but was forced to resign only weeks later when the Berlin Wall fell.

The SED gave up its monopoly of power some weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Krenz was forced to resign shortly afterward.

[6] His family resettled in Damgarten in 1945 during the mass repatriations and expulsions of Germans from Poland at the end of World War II.

[7] Trained as a teacher and working as a journalist early in his career, Krenz joined the Free German Youth (FDJ) in 1953, as a teenager and the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in 1955.

He studied at a prestigious Communist Party staff school in Moscow for three years, became a nomenklatura member and obtained a social science degree by 1967.

Although he was the youngest member of the Politburo (and indeed, one of only two people elevated to full membership in that body from 1976 to 1984), speculation abounded that Honecker had tapped him as his heir apparent.

Krenz had been approached several months earlier about ousting Honecker, but was reluctant to move against a man he called "my foster father and political teacher".

[11] Also on the same day he took office, Krenz received a top secret report from planning chief Gerhard Schürer that showed the depths of East Germany's economic crisis.

It showed that East Germany did not have enough money to make payments on the massive foreign loans that propped up the economy, and it was now DM123 billion in debt.

Krenz was forced to send Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski to beg West Germany for a short-term loan to make interest payments.

While publicly discussing such reforms as loosening travel restrictions,[14] he also personally ordered the rejection of the dissident group New Forum's application to become an approved organisation.

[15] Ahead of the large Alexanderplatz demonstration on 4 November, he ordered the Stasi to prevent any unauthorised attempt to cross the border by "bodily violence".

In an attempt to stem the tide, Krenz authorised the reopening of the border with Czechoslovakia, which had been sealed to prevent East Germans from fleeing to West Germany.

[19] At a Politburo meeting on 7 November, it was decided to enact the section of the draft travel regulations addressing permanent emigration immediately.

However, no one briefed the Politburo's de facto spokesman, East Berlin party boss Günter Schabowski, that the regulations were going to come into effect the following afternoon.

In a bid to rehabilitate itself ahead of East Germany's first free election, the successor organisation to the SED, the Party of Democratic Socialism, expelled Krenz and several other former leaders of the Communist regime in 1990.

In 1997, Krenz was sentenced to six-and-a-half years' imprisonment for Cold War crimes, specifically manslaughter of four Germans attempting to escape East Germany over the Berlin Wall.

He appealed, arguing that the legal framework of the newly reunited German state did not apply to events that had taken place in the former East Germany.

[27] Krenz's application to the European Court of Human Rights on alleged misuse of East German criminal laws reached the Grand Chamber, but was rejected in 2001.

[5] Unlike other high-ranking former members of the SED, such as Günter Schabowski and Günther Kleiber, Krenz still defends the former East Germany and maintains he has not changed his political views.