Horst Gramlich

Horst Gramlich was born on 31 March 1938 in Antonufka, then in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and today in Ukraine. He grew up in Potsdam, where he trained as a bank clerk. He went on to a technical college for economics and then studied economics at the Hochschule für Ökonomie in Berlin, graduating with a diploma in finance. He earned his doctorate at the same institution in 1972.

Gramlich came to work in Potsdam in the 1960s. From 1969 he was a research associate and lecturer in economic planning at the Academy for State and Legal Sciences of the GDR in Potsdam-Babelsberg.

During the peaceful revolution in the autumn of 1989 he joined the newly founded Social Democratic Party in the GDR (SDP), which renamed itself SPD in January 1990 and merged with the West German SPD that September. He played a leading part in organising Potsdam's first free local elections in May 1990, after which he became the city's first Oberbürgermeister since the end of the GDR. He led a coalition of the SPD, the CDU and parts of the citizens' movements, and his administration had to rebuild municipal self-government and a functioning city administration at a time of rising unemployment, housing shortages, obstacles to investment and property speculation.

In 1993 he pushed through the decision to build a modern gas-fired power station and end coal-fired generation in the city. The choice laid the basis for the later municipal utilities group but brought fierce protests, with lignite miners from Lusatia demonstrating outside the town hall for weeks. He championed Potsdam's successful bid for the 2001 Federal Garden Show on the former military training ground of the Bornstedter Feld, a project that also brought a new public park and a redesigned Lustgarten. His administration designated the historic city centre, including the Dutch Quarter, and Babelsberg as redevelopment areas. The city celebrated its 1000th anniversary in 1993, and the year before Gramlich named the actress Hildegard Knef ambassador of the jubilee. He was also sharply criticised, particularly from the cultural scene, for the demolition of the unfinished theatre building on the Alter Markt, and the planning of the Potsdam Center at the main station began under him.

In the local elections of 5 December 1993 he trailed the PDS candidate Rolf Kutzmutz in the first round, by 29.3 to 45.3 per cent, but won the run-off two weeks later with 54.7 per cent. In his second term he relied on a de facto cooperation of the SPD and PDS. Criticism grew over the Baufilz affair surrounding his SPD building councillor Detlef Kaminski, and at the end of 1997 a citizens' alliance announced a recall campaign, joined in 1998 by the CDU, the Greens and others. In a referendum on 17 May 1998 he was removed from office with 87.5 per cent of the vote. He was succeeded by Matthias Platzeck, then Brandenburg's environment minister.

Gramlich left the SPD after his removal from office. He always rejected the claim that he had covered up the Baufilz affair. In his last interview with the Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten he said that he bore no grudge against the people of Potsdam, then or later, and that he had only been angry with those who organised the campaign against him. He continued to live in Potsdam.

Horst Gramlich died in Potsdam on Monday 26 October 2026, aged 88. His death was announced by the city of Potsdam the following day. No cause of death was made public. Mayor Noosha Aubel said that with Gramlich, Potsdam had lost a personality who took on responsibility in the turbulent years after German reunification and shaped the city's development with foresight, and that his commitment deserved lasting respect. His successor Jann Jakobs said Gramlich had not only endured a difficult period of reconstruction full of conflict but had shaped it, laying the foundations for Potsdam's successful development.

Gramlich is remembered as the mayor who rebuilt Potsdam's local government after the end of the GDR. The city credits him with the switch to gas-fired power that underpinned its municipal utilities, the Federal Garden Show of 2001 that transformed the Bornstedter Feld, and the redevelopment areas in the historic centre and Babelsberg that guided the renewal of the city. His career also ended in one of the most decisive mayoral recall votes in post-reunification Germany.