Solveig Leo was born in the Sudetenland in 1943 and resettled in Pößneck, Thuringia, after the end of the Second World War in 1945. Leo completed an agricultural apprenticeship at the Ludwigshof state-owned farm (VEG) in 1958 and then studied at the technical college for agriculture in Weimar.
At the age of 24 (1968), Leo became chairwoman of the “Clara Zetkin Agricultural Production Cooperative” (LPG) in Banzkow, Mecklenburg. From 1985 to 1990, she was chairwoman of the Lewitz Agricultural Industry Association, which coordinated the work of 12 LPGs and 3 VEGs with a total of 31,000 hectares of agricultural land, 62,000 cattle, and 36,000 pigs.
After 1990, Leo worked as a consultant for organic farming, among other things. From 1992 to 2009, she was also mayor of Banzkow.
Solveig Leo explains how women drove the cooperative movement in agriculture
Solveig Leo on agro-industrial-cooperations (AIV)
Solveig Leo describes how LPG’s drove social development in the East German countryside
Solveig Leo on pay, plans, and democracy in the East German agricultural cooperatives
Solveig Leo on ecology and large-scale agriculture in socialist East Germany
Solveig Leo on establishing a wind orchestra in the socialist countryside in East Germany
Solveig Leo on problems with prices and material in the GDR’s socialist agriculture
Solveig Leo on the confidence of DDR-farmers in socialist cooperatives
Solveig Leo on the division of animal and plant production in socialist East Germany
Solveig Leo on her election as LPG chairwomen
Solveig Leo on the end of the DDR
Solveig Leo on the restoration of capitalism in East Germany
Solveig Leo on inter-company cooperation in the DDR
