State Council of the German Democratic Republic

The State Council of the German Democratic Republic (German: Staatsrat der DDR) was the collective head of state of the German Democratic Republic, most commonly referred to as East Germany, from 1960 to 1990. Origins When the German Democratic Republic was founded in October 1949, its constitution in its formal structure outwardly impersonated a federalist parliamentary democracy in order to falsely portray the GDR as the legitimate continuation of the prewar Weimar Republic in opposition to the democratic Federal Republic. One of the "bourgeois" features of the constitution (in Article 66) was the office of President, which was filled by Wilhelm Pieck, formerly the leader of the eastern branch of the Communist Party of Germany and now one of the two chairmen of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). However, from the start, the East German government was completely controlled by the SED, and over time its actual power structure grew closer to the model of the Stalinist USSR. When Pieck died on 7 September 1960, the SED opted against electing a successor, instead opting for a Soviet-style collective head of state. The constitution was amended on 12 September 1960 by the Law concerning the formation of the State Council, which created a collective body in place of the presidency. The same constitutional amendment also acknowledged the role of the recently formed National Defense Council (Nationaler Verteidigungsrat) in GDR defense policy. The State Council remained virtually unchanged in the 1968 constitution, but its official role was later downplayed in the 1974 constitutional amendments. Election