Horst Bittner

Horst Bittner (14 June 1927 – 16 April 2013) was an East German politician (SED) and diplomat. Between 1965 and 1974 he served as the East German ambassador to the Soviet Union in succession to Rudolf Dölling. Horst Bittner was born into a working-class family in Taucha, an industrial town on the northeast side of Leipzig. On leaving school he trained and then worked as a printer. He grew up during the Second World War which ended formally in May 1945. By that time the region had been taken over by the American army. However, the division of postwar Germany had already been pre-agreed by the victorious war leaders and in July 1945 the Americans withdrew: the region became part of the Soviet administered occupation zone. Bittner immediately involved himself in the "Anti-fascist Youth" movement in his home region. In 1946 he joined the newly formed Socialist Unity Party ("Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" / SED). He enrolled at the Workers' and Farmers' faculty in Leipzig, later switching to the city's university where he studied, and in 1949 obtained his degree, in social sciences. Between 1949 and 1957 he worked at the Ministry for Foreign and Inter-German Trade after the Soviet occupation zone was relaunched, in October 1949, as the German Democratic Republic. Within the ministry, after a few years he took charge of the "Soviet Union department". In 1954 he was the director leading the East German Industrial Exhibition in Moscow. He entered the diplomatic service in 1957 and served, till 1963, as commercial attaché and deputy head of the East German trade mission in Moscow. Between 1964 and 1965 he held the appointment of Deputy Minister for Foreign and Inter-German Trade. In 1964 he was appointed East German ambassador in Moscow. It was considered normal in East Germany for the country's most important ambassadorial posts to be held not by long standing career diplomats but by men who had built their careers and contacts inside the country's political establishment.