Convicted German Labor Leader Dies

Harry Tisch, a communist labor leader who became the first East German Politburo member put on trial after the Berlin Wall’s fall, died of cancer at his Berlin home Sunday. He was 68.

Tisch led the 9-million-member East German labor federation for 14 years. He was arrested for corruption in December 1989 and convicted of spending $54,000 in union funds on private uses, including family vacations.

He was sentenced to 18 months in prison in June 1991.

Tisch, a construction worker, joined the Communist Party in 1945 and spent his career in the East German labor bureaucracy, rising to the inner circle in 1975.