EGON BAHR, the West German statesman and creator of the Ostpolitik policy of improving relations with the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) has died at the age of 93.

Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Sigmar Gabriel announced yesterday that Mr Bahr died overnight.

Journalist Mr Bahr helped guide negotiations towards reunification under the government of chancellor Willy Brandt.

A friend of the GDR’s last prime minister Hans Modrow, Mr Bahr was horrified at how the country was dismantled.

Following elections in March 1990 he decried the tactics of the Christian Democratic Union, which had brought in activists from the West.

“In small towns in Thuringia and Saxony many known members of the SPD and PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism) received threatening letters and were even physically assaulted,” he said.

“That was pure psychological terror in a Goebbels mould. I wish to reiterate that this political dirt was imported from the Federal Republic (West Germany).”