Overview
- Gutzeit died in a Berlin hospital on Tuesday, Sept. 15, and his death was confirmed by longtime colleague Stephan Hilsberg and the Berlin office for the Stasi files.
- He was an evangelical theologian who proposed the initiative for a new social‑democratic party on Aug. 26, 1989 and helped found the Sozialdemokratische Partei in der DDR on Oct. 7, 1989.
- Gutzeit served as an SDP deputy in the first freely elected Volkskammer in 1990 and was briefly a member of the Bundestag during the reunification period from October to December 1990.
- From 1993 until 2017 he was Berlin’s Landesbeauftragter für die Stasi‑Unterlagen, overseeing the opening, administration, and public access to Stasi records that were central to confronting the SED dictatorship.
- Federal President Frank‑Walter Steinmeier and Berlin officials praised Gutzeit for his role in the peaceful opposition and in shaping post‑GDR reckoning, and no public funeral details have been released so far.