The Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the Stasi, an abbreviation of Staatssicherheit, was the state security service of East Germany from 1950 to 1990.
Werner Teske was an East German Hauptmann (Captain) of the Ministry for State Security (Stasi). Teske was a senior intelligence officer in the Stasi's economic espionage division when he was accused of plotting to defect to West Germany with sensitive information and embezzled money. In the one-day trial, Teske was found guilty of espionage and desertion. He was sentenced to death and subsequently executed in June 1981.
Karl-Heinz Kurras was a West German police inspector, known primarily for fatally shooting unarmed student Benno Ohnesorg in the back of the head during a demonstration on 2 June 1967, outside Deutsche Oper against the state visit of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. Kurras was acquitted of any wrongdoing in a series of controversial trials, due to which he became a prominent hate figure of the left-wing German student movement of the 1960s as well as the German New Left. They suspected that Kurras was under protection from many right-wing figures in the West German police and justice system and who were resentful towards the left-wing students. The incident is considered pivotal for the rise of left-wing terrorism in West Germany during the 1970s, culminating with the Movement 2 June and the Red Army Faction.
Karl Ritter was a German diplomat during the Third Reich and was convicted as a war criminal in the Ministries Trial. A member of the Nazi Party, he was ambassador to Brazil for two years, Special Envoy to the Munich Agreement, and a senior official in the Foreign Office during World War II.
Ilse Frieda Gertrud Stöbe was a German journalist and anti-Nazi resistance fighter. She was born and died in Berlin.
Helmut Müller-Enbergs is a German political scientist who has written extensively on the Stasi and related aspects of the German Democratic Republic's history.
Karl Wilhelm Fricke is a German political journalist and author. He has produced several of the standard works on resistance and state repression in the German Democratic Republic (1949–1990). In 1955, he became one of several hundred kidnap victims of the East German Ministry for State Security, captured in West Berlin and taken to the east where for nearly five years he was held in state detention.
Heinz Fiedler was a major general in East Germany's Ministry for State Security (Stasi). Between 1970 and 1990 he was in charge of the organisation's Department VI which gave him responsibility for border security and tourist traffic. In December 1993 he hanged himself.
Barbara Thalheim is a Berlin-based German singer and songwriter. She celebrated the fortieth anniversary of her first stage appearance in 2013.
Johan Herman Laatsman de Bailleul was a Dutch diplomat with a distinguished Resistance record during the Second World War. For his contributions to the Allied cause, particularly as a member of the Dutch-Paris Escape Line, Laatsman was named a Ridder van Orde de Oranje-Nassau, a Commandeur de la Legion d’Honneur, merite international pour courage et devouément, and awarded the US Medal of Freedom with Silver Palm. The citation for the Medal of Freedom mentions that he embarked on a “self-imposed mission with outstanding success” and enabled the escape of at least 112 Allied aviators.
Manfred Döring is a former Major general (Generalmajor) with the East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi). He also served, between 1987 and 1990, as a commander of the elite motorised rifles regiment, the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards.
Helene "Elli" Barczatis was a typist-secretary who worked between April 1950 and January 1953 as the head secretary of the East German prime minister, Otto Grotewohl. Convicted of espionage, she and her lover Karl Laurenz were guillotined on 23 November 1955.
Karl Laurenz was trained as a lawyer, but worked, for much of his life, as a German journalist and specialist translator. He was executed as a western spy on the guillotine in Dresden, Saxony, Germany. Approximately ten minutes later, Laurenz's lover, Elli Barczatis, was also executed.
Sibylle Boden-Gerstner was a German costume designer, artist and fashion writer. In 1956 she founded the East German arts and fashion magazine which bore her name, Sibylle, working with the publication as its editor in chief till 1961.
Heinz Heinrich Schmidt was a German journalist and editor. During the twelve Nazi years he was involved in active resistance, spending approximately three years in prison and a further seven years as a political refugee in London.
Heinz Kahlau was a German writer.
Sonja Gerstner was an East German artist and writer. She died young, after which publication by her mother of a book containing some of her poems, diary entries and other writings covering treatment she had received for her psychotic illness brought her to the attention of a wide audience.
Christa Luft is a German economist and politician of the SED/PDS. Luft joined the SED in 1958. From 18 November 1989 to 18 March 1990, she was the Minister of Economics in the Modrow government. From 1994 to 2002 she was member of the Bundestag for the PDS.
Heinz Gronau was a communist resistance activist during the Hitler years. He was transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp in 1938. At the concentration camp he became a leading figure in the "International Buchenwald Military Organisation" . He survived the war and in 1946 joined the (semi-militarised) police service in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany. A succession of promotions followed. In 1966 he was promoted to the rank of Major general in the East German Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment. During the final years of his career he combined his overtly military posting with command of the National Department I at the Ministry for State Security ("Stasi"). The department was a specialist intelligence section of the ministry, tasked with attending to the intelligence needs of the ministry's armed units.
Hans Oliva-Hagen was a journalist, writer, and screenwriter in the German Democratic Republic who wrote under the pseudonyms Hans Oliva and John Ryder. His most important works include his collaboration on the scripts for the DEFA film Carbide and Sorrel (1963) and the five-part GDR television film Conscience in Riot (1961). An anti-fascist militant and Holocaust survivor of Jewish heritage, Oliva-Hagen was active in the German resistance to Nazism.
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