[2] Horst Heinte was born into a working-class family in Halle, a substantial city in the northern half of what then counted as central Germany.
Halle was now administered as part of the Soviet occupation zone, applying a reconfigured set of internal and external frontiers agreed between the winning powers a few months earlier.
In addition to these so-called Bloc parties, certain approved Mass Organisations also received quotas of seats in the Volkskammer.
One of the Mass Organisations represented in the Volkskammer was the Trades Union Congress (FDGB / Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund).
[1] As a member of the chamber he also served as deputy chairman of the assembly's Committee for Industry, Construction and Transport.
The breach of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, together with the realisation that Soviet troops in East Germany had no instructions violently to suppress the rising tide of popular protests against the regime, opened the way for a series of events that would lead to the demise, as a standalone one-party dictatorship, of the German Democratic Republic and, in October 1990, to German reunification.
During these final months of 1989 Horst Heintze was one many comrades relieved of all party and trades union functions.