The approximately 40 departments of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) were the center of the policymaking in East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

The departments and institutions whose heads held department head rank were assigned to the ten Central Committee Secretaries as well as the General Secretary directly. Each department was headed by a department head and most had one or more deputy department heads. Each department was in turn divided into sectors with sector heads, political as well as technical employees and instructors. There were around 900 political employees and 1,100 technical employees, a category that included administrative clerks, secretaries and support staff and even the physicians at the Central Committee's polyclinic. While the Central Committee apparatus in total had around 1,000 employees in 1970, by 1987 that number had grown to 2,000 employees.

Only the Central Committee Secretaries had the authority to issue legally binding orders to the respective Ministry, but in practice, the department and sector heads made the decisions.

During the Peaceful Revolution, the Presidium of the Party Executive of the SED-PDS dissolved the departments of the Central Committee of the SED, effective 31 December 1989.

Policy departments Agriculture

The Agriculture Department () set agricultural policy. It controlled the Ministry for Agriculture, Forestry and Food, which in turn oversaw the country's agricultural production cooperatives (LPGs), the Academy of Agricultural Sciences of the GDR in Berlin and the mass organizations Peasants Mutual Aid Association (VdgB) and Association of Gardeners, Settlers, and Animal Breeders (VKSK), all of which were led by SED cadres. It was one of the most powerful departments, as the SED made substantial changes to East Germany's agricultural sector, namely expropriating landowners, the forced collectivization and the separation of animal and plant production. By the mid-1950s, the department already employed 45 political and 7 technical staff.

The Agriculture Department was already set up in August 1945 in the Central Committee of the KPD and existed almost continuously with the exception of 1950 to 1951, when it was a sector of the Economic Policy Department.

+Heads of the Agriculture DepartmentDepartment HeadTenureRudolf Reuter1946–1949Ernst Hansch1950integrated into Economic Policy DepartmentreestablishedWalter Krebaum1951Albert Schäfer1951–1953Fritz Hecht1953–1954Franz Mellenthin1954–1958Wolfgang Parske1958–1959Karl Götz1959Bruno Kiesler1959–1981Bruno Lietz1981–1982Helmut Semmelmann1982–1989

Deputy department heads include Karl-Heinz Bartsch (1960–1962), Erich Rübensam (1960–1965), Heinz Besser, Wolfgang Mühlstädt, Christoph Ostmann and Heinz Drescher.

Agitation

The Agitation Department () ("agitation" in communist terminology having a similar meaning to "propaganda" colloquially, namely "mass influence") was mainly tasked with aligning East German press with the political line of the SED.

Most large newspapers were under direct ownership of the party as Zentralorgan of the Central Committee (the Neues Deutschland) or the Bezirk party leaderships (for example the Lausitzer Rundschau was the Bezirk Cottbus SED's newspaper), or were published by SED-dominated mass organizations (the most notable ones being the Free German Youth's Junge Welt and the FDGB's Tribüne) but the Agitation Department also oversaw the Association of Journalists of the GDR, the Deutscher Fernsehfunk, the Rundfunk der DDR, and the Allgemeiner Deutscher Nachrichtendienst (ADN), the later often directly publishing Central Committee statements.

The Neues Deutschland was, however, directly subordinate to the General Secretary since 1971, holding department rank itself.

The most important way the Agitation Department controlled and censored the press was with the so-called "argumentation sessions" () (Argus), held every Thursday morning in the Central Committee building, where 60 to 80 press representatives were instructed in detail on how to report. These "Donnerstag-Argus" were first introduced by department head Hans Modrow, editors-in-chief previously getting instructions via telegram. The bloc parties' newspapers (i. e. the Der Morgen was the newspaper of the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany) were controlled indirectly through the Council of Ministers' Press Office, a representative of which was a permanent Argus guest.

Another important avenue of the Agitation Department's control over East German press was that it assigned graduates of the journalism section at the Karl Marx University, the only university course for training as a journalist in the GDR, to the different newspapers.

By the 1980s, the SED's control over East German press had increased to a point where Erich Honecker and Agitation Secretary Joachim Herrmann regularly edited East German press in minute detail, rewording headlines and rearranging pictures in Neues Deutschland, writing anonymous opinion columns and rearranging news segments in Aktuelle Kamera, the flagship television newscast. The most famous example of this is came on the brink of the Peaceful Revolution, when Honecker personally added "One should therefore not shed a tear for them" to an ADN opinion column on the wave of refugees in the summer of 1989.

The department consisted of the sectors print media, radio and television, and mass agitation by 1968. An additional sector responsible for foreign journalists was established later. The print media sector was the largest with ten political employees, whereas the radio and television sector only had four. That being said, the department mainly exerted its indirectly through choosing ideologically reliable cadres for the media apparatus, and less through direct control of their work, which would not have been possible on the scale of East German media.

By early 1989, the department had grown to eight sectors with a total of 39 political employees. The department consisted of the sectors print media, radio and television, "work with foreign correspondents in the GDR" and general agitation. In addition, the editorial team of "Was und wie", the department's monthly periodical, the library and the newspaper archive were organized as sectors, though they were not involved in media control. The same applies to the "B-sector", which was led by National People's Army Oberst Kurt Langnese and tasked with preparing mobilization.

The Agitation Department was originally created in 1946 as Press, Broadcasting and Information Department, renamed Advertising, Press and Radio Department the next year. In March 1949, the department was split into the Mass Agitation (later Agitation) Department and the Press and Radio Department. These departments were merged and separated several times throughout the early 1950s, ultimately forming the Agitation, Press and Radio Department in 1955. It was merged with the Propaganda Department in 1957, but reverted to being a separate Agitation Department in 1961.

Apart from the Agitation Department, there also was an Agitation Commission at the Politburo, whose membership included Agitation Department officials, major editors-in-chief and five full-time Commission employees with the rank of a deputy Central Committee department head, each responsible for broad topics such as West Germany, the economy or agriculture. The actual significance of the Agitation Commission, as a pure advisory body, was low. While originally meeting every Wednesday, it was eventually supplanted by the Argus.

+Heads of the Agitation DepartmentDepartment HeadTenureBruno KöhlerHeinz Brandes1946–1947Otto WinzerHeinz Pohlmeier1947–1949Robert Korb1949–1951Erich Glückauf1951Loni Günther1951–1953Peter Prieß1953–1955Horst Sindermann1955–1963Rudi Singer1963–1966Werner Lamberz1966–1971Hans Modrow1971–1973Heinz Geggel1973–1989

Deputy department heads include future State Broadcasting Committee chairman Reginald Grimmer (1955–1962), Frank-Joachim Herrmann (1963–1968), and Eberhard Fensch (1968–1989), both as deputy heads responsible for the Rundfunk der DDR and the Deutscher Fernsehfunk, Werner Felfe (1965–1966), Günter Fischer (at least from 1967 to 1978), Hans-Joachim Kobert (), responsible for the foreign journalists, Herbert Malcherek (at least from 1966 to 1981), future ADN general director Günter Pötschke (1974–1977), Klaus Raddatz (1977–1984), thereafter deputy chairman of the State Broadcasting Committee, and Dieter Langguth (1984–1989), all three as successive deputy heads responsible for the print media sector, Volkmar Stanke (at least from 1980 to 1981), and Erwin Müller ().

Otto Reinhold (1956–1961) and, briefly in 1961, Kurt Tiedke were deputy heads of the Agitation and Propaganda Department, Tiedke becoming head of the demerged Propaganda Department later that year.

Peaceful Revolution After Egon Krenz came to power during the Peaceful Revolution, Günter Schabowski, the new Central Committee Secretary responsible for Agitation, instituted a new media policy, ending the party's control over the media. The last Argus was held on 26 October 1989, and the Agitation Department was set to be dissolved in favor of an Information Policy Office (), but this did not come to pass before the Central Committee's collective resignation in December 1989. The former department's responsibilities thereafter went to Lothar Bisky, in his function as head of the Press and Media Commission of the SED-PDS's party executive committee.

In late January 1990, many former high-ranking Agitation Department officials, including department head Geggel and deputy department head Fensch, were expelled from the Association of Journalists of the GDR as the people responsible for "abuse of the media".

Cadre Affairs The Department for Cadre Affairs () was responsible for the selection, development and training of the roughly 92,000 nomenklatura cadres. This included all SED cadres from the First Secretaries in the districts upwards, including other department heads, as well as the chairmen of the bloc parties, university and institute heads, the head of ADN and so on. It effectively acted as a main department as other departments still had to receive approval for the cadre choices in their area of responsibility from the Department for Cadre Affairs.

This made it one of the most powerful departments, though the department's personnel choices hinged on a security check by the Stasi, which could reject appointments based on something as simple as having family in the West. The department additionally was responsible for selecting who gets the GDR's awards, which were not awarded based on merit but on seniority and fulfilling quotas. In the early years, an important focus additionally was the review of the political activities of SED members in the period before 1945.

The department's work was strongly shaped by longtime department head Fritz Müller, known as "Kadermüller" among employees of the Central Committee, a former Nazi of austere and servile demeanor. Müller's influence was strengthened by the fact that, since April 1979, he additionally was the First Secretary of the Central Committee party organization.

In addition to the department, there was a Cadre Commission of the Central Committee Secretariat from June 1952 to 1989, which was responsible for the deployment and dismissal of political employees in the party apparatus and their delegation to educational institutions of the SED.

The Department for Cadre Affairs was originally created in 1946 as Personnel Policy Department. It was briefly part of the newly created LOPMO Department as cadre registry sector from January 1953 to early 1957, when it was reinstated as an independent department.