Sorgenicht served as the longtime head of the powerful State and Legal Affairs Department at the Central Committee of the SED and was notorious for the ruthlessness with which he pursued opponents of the political system of the GDR.

In captivity he joined the National Committee for a Free Germany and attended an Antifa school before being deployed as an agitator at the front.

In October 1952 Sorgenicht was the head of the main department for the coordination and control office for the work of the local organs of state power.

Together with Karl Polak, he initiated the fight against the remaining "revisionists" in the judiciary of the GDR in early 1958, namely those jurists who adhered to bourgeois or social democratic positions.

Once approved by the Politburo, Sorgenicht's proposals became binding for the courts, as in the trials against Gerhard Benkowitz, Heinz-Georg Ebeling and Paul Köppe, Sylvester Murau, Gottfried Strympe, Werner Flach, Karl Laurenz, and Elli Barczatis.

After the death sentences were handed down against Karl Laurenz and Elli Barczatis, he recommended President Wilhelm Pieck to reject their pardon request.

[6][11] In December 1961, Sorgenicht proposed imposing the death penalty on a farmer who had resisted the forced completion of collectivization in the spring of 1960.

[13] On 22 and 23 October 1989, together with Stasi head Erich Mielke, Security Affairs department head Wolfgang Herger, and Interior Minister Friedrich Dickel, he drafted a submission for the Politburo on "Measures to prevent further formation and to push back anti-socialist movements," one of the last attempts by the "old guard" within the SED to end the demonstrations for freedom "by all means."