The other political parties ran under the joint slate of the National Front, controlled by the SED, for elections to the Volkskammer, the East German parliament.
The other parties were: The purpose of the National Front was to give the impression that the GDR was a democracy governed by a broad-based coalition.
Designated as an organ of the People's Chamber, the Council of State (Staatsrat der DDR) was largely a creation of Walter Ulbricht during his tenure as first secretary of the SED.
However, although it was no longer the de facto supreme executive organ, Erich Honecker's assumption of the chairmanship of the Council of State in October 1976 represented a renewal of its importance.
The day-to-day functions of the council were carried on by a staff consisting in 1987 of twenty offices and departments, all of which were headed by SED members.
In the mid-1980s, the functions performed by the Council of State included representing the country abroad and ratifying and terminating international treaties; supporting local assemblies in the implementation of their economic and budgetary plans; administering electoral laws that govern the selection of local assemblies on the community, city, county, and district levels; discharging responsibilities for the maintenance of the country's defense with the assistance of the National Defense Council; and administering the activities of the Supreme Court and the Office of the Prosecutor General to ensure their actions were congruent with the Constitution and the civil law.
The Council of Ministers (Ministerrat der DDR) was the government of East Germany and the highest organ of the state apparatus.
Its position in the system of government and its functions and tasks were specified in the Constitution as amended in 1974 as well as in the "Law on the Council of Ministers of the German Democratic Republic" of October 1972.
The other five positions held by deputy chairman on the Presidium of the Council of Ministers were occupied by members of the Central Committee of the SED.
In practice, the converse was true; the People's Chamber was obliged to approve those actions that were undertaken by the council and then routinely submitted to the legislature.
Similarly, the People's Chamber was given the formal responsibility of selecting the membership of the council; in practice such personnel decisions were made by the Politbüro.
The Council of Ministers was responsible for providing the People's Chamber with the major legal drafts and decisions that subsequently were to be promulgated by the parliament.
Specific functional responsibilities of the Council of Ministers included directing and planning the national economy; solving problems growing out of membership in the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon—see Appendix B); coordinating and implementing social policy decisions that have been agreed upon with the support and concurrence of the Free German Trade Union Federation (Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund—FDGB); instructing and controlling subordinate levels of government, i.e., the councils at district, county, and community levels that implemented the laws and decisions of the central government; improving the functioning of the system of "democratic centralism" within the state apparatus; and carrying out the basic foreign policy principles of the socialist state.
[2] Like all other aspects of the government administration of East Germany, the party was the ultimate decision maker in the operation of the legal system.
The Constitution, however, provided for the right of citizens to a voice in the judicial process and the selection of judges, directly or through their elected representatives.
Basic guarantees for justice were said to derive from the "socialist society, the political power of the working people, and their state and legal system."
The regime officially considered law and justice the tools for building a communist society and declared it the duty of all judicial and legal officers to serve this end.
At the top of East Germany's legal system was the Ministry of Justice, the Supreme Court, and the Office of the Prosecutor General.
In 1987 the heads of these offices were, respectively, Hans-Joachim Heusinger (LDPD), Heinrich Toeplitz (CDU), and Josef Streit (SED).
The Office of the Prosecutor General was also responsible for supervising "strict adherence to socialist legality and protecting citizens from violations of the law."