After attending elementary school, he completed training as a metal aircraft builder from 1941 to 1944 at a branch of the Arado Flugzeugwerke in Brandenburg/Neuendorf.

[1] After the end of World War II, parts and machines of the Arado factories that were not destroyed by air raids were transported to the Soviet Union as reparations, and the company was liquidated.

[1] From 1954 to 1957, he studied at the CPSU Higher Party School "W. I. Lenin" in Moscow and graduated with a diploma in social sciences (Dipl.-Ges.-Wiss.).

[1] During the supply crisis and the clearly visible problems in the GDR in the early 1980s, he was quoted by the West German magazine Der Spiegel:[5] There is no reason to doubt the good and correct policy of the party if we call for the frugal use of everything available to us, even if we have to make certain changes in the assortment, even for everyday goods, and cannot always fulfill every wish at all times in supply matters.In June 1989, he gained attention when, as a member of the Volkskammer, he confirmed the SED leadership's approval of the Tiananmen Massacre by the Chinese People's Liberation Army on 3 and 4 June 1989, and referred to the protesting students as "anti-constitutional elements.

[1] During the Wende, on 12 November 1989, the Bezirk Rostock SED removed him from the position of First Secretary and installed reformer Ulrich Peck as his successor.

[1][15] After being charged with abuse of office and corruption in August 1990, he was sentenced on 16 February 1993, by the Rostock Regional Court to 15 months in prison for breach of trust, as he had taken 80,000 East German marks from a fund for people's representatives for the expansion of his house.