Werner Bruschke was an East German politician and member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany

Socialist Unity Party of Germany

The Socialist Unity Party of Germany was the governing party of the German Democratic Republic from its formation on 7 October 1949 until the elections of March 1990. The SED was a communist political party with a Marxist-Leninist ideology...

. He was Minister-President

Minister-President

A minister-president is the head of government in a number of European countries or subnational governments, in which a parliamentary or semi-presidential system of government prevails, who presides over the council of ministers...

 of Saxony-Anhalt

Saxony-Anhalt

Saxony-Anhalt is a landlocked state of Germany. Its capital is Magdeburg and it is surrounded by the German states of Lower Saxony, Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia.Saxony-Anhalt covers an area of...

 (GDR) from August 13, 1949 until the state was abolished on July 23, 1952.

From 1933 he worked as tobacco goods dealer and later an insurance agent. Due to his illegal political activity, he was accused in 1939 of treason (Landesverrat and Hochverrat) and from 1942 to 1945 was a political prisoner in the concentration camps Sachsenhausen

Sachsenhausen concentration camp

Sachsenhausen or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in May, 1945. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used as an NKVD...

 and Dachau.

From May 11, 1992 to his death in 1995, he was the oldest former Minister-President of a German state, preceded in this by Bruno Diekmann

Bruno Diekmann

Bruno Diekmann was a German politician from Kiel and Minister-President of Schleswig-Holstein ....

.