Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski

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Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski (1988)

Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski (born Alexander Golodkowski ; born July 3, 1932 in Berlin-Treptow ; † June 21, 2015 in Rottach-Egern ) was a German politician ( SED ), colonel in the Ministry for State Security (MfS) and economic functionary of the GDR . He was head of the secret area for commercial coordination in the Ministry of Foreign Trade , which was controlled by the working group area commercial coordination (AG BKK) of the MfS. The commercial coordination department was responsible for (unofficial) trade with capitalist foreign countries . He gained notoriety in retrospect for negotiating a loan in the amount of one billion DM , which a West German bank consortium granted the GDR in 1983 and which saved the GDR from bankruptcy . Schalck-Golodkowski's negotiating partner on the West German side was the Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss (CSU).

Life

Youth and education

Alexander Golodkowski's father, Peter Golodkowski, was a stateless person with Russian roots whose father was a senior Russian tax officer in Gomel . Peter Golodkowski was an officer in the Tsarist army before he fled the Bolsheviks . He later headed the Wehrmacht's Russian interpreting school in Berlin-Moabit. His son Alexander was adopted by the Schalck couple in 1940.

Schalck-Golodkowski began an apprenticeship as a baker and then completed an apprenticeship as a precision mechanic from 1948 to 1950 . In 1951 he joined the Free German Youth (FDJ). From 1952, Schalck-Golodkowski worked as a clerk in a foreign trade company; After a short time he moved to the Ministry for Foreign Trade and Internal German Trade of the GDR, where within a year he was promoted to main advisor in the machine tools department. After graduating from the Workers and Farmers Faculty of the Humboldt University in Berlin , Schalck-Golodkowski studied economics from 1954 to 1957 at the University of Foreign Trade in Staaken , which he graduated with a degree in economics.

Professional and political career in the GDR

German-German encounter at the Leipzig Spring Fair 1987 - from left: Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski, Gerold Tandler , Günter Mittag , Franz Josef Strauss , Theo Waigel and Erich Honecker

On March 5, 1953, Schalck-Golodkowski applied for membership in the SED and was accepted as a member after the candidate period in 1955. As early as 1956, before the end of his studies, he became the main administrative manager at the Ministry for Foreign Trade and Internal German Trade. He held this position until 1962. In 1958 he was also appointed foreign trade representative on the Standing Commission on Construction of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. From 1962 to 1966 he was the full-time first secretary of the SED district leadership in the Ministry of Foreign Trade.

From 1966 he was responsible for the newly established area of commercial coordination (KoKo), which he played a key role in building. This area was supposed to secure the solvency of the GDR with covert transactions for foreign exchange.

His career in the Ministry for State Security (MfS) began in 1967, when he was appointed Officer on Special Use (OibE) of the Commercial Coordination Working Group (AG BKK). In 1975, Schalck-Golodkowski was promoted to colonel . A further rise to general was out of the question, as this would inevitably have resulted in his exposure as an MfS officer ; In the end, however, he received the salary of a lieutenant general .

In 1970 he defended his dissertation on "Avoiding economic losses and generating additional foreign currency" at the Law School in Golm near Potsdam , which is part of the Ministry for State Security, together with his commanding officer , MfS Colonel Heinz Volpert . This work was secret until the end of the GDR. In addition to two MfS doctors, the “ doctoral supervisor ” was the Minister for State Security Erich Mielke , who himself neither had a high school diploma nor an academic degree.

From 1967 to 1975, Schalck-Golodkowski was officially one of the Deputy Ministers for Foreign Trade and subsequently State Secretary in the Ministry for Foreign Trade until the end of the GDR . At the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED he was a member of the Economic Commission from 1976, and from 1981 of the Commission for the Coordination of Economic, Cultural and Scientific and Technical Relations between the GDR and the countries of Asia, Africa and the Arab region. In 1981 he took part in the negotiations between Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and the Chairman of the State Council Erich Honecker in the Hubertusstock hunting lodge on the Werbellinsee . As a result, in 1983 he led the successful negotiations with the Bavarian Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss about a West German billion dollar loan for the GDR.

Since 1986 Schalck-Golodkowski was a member of the Central Committee (ZK) of the SED .

Privileges

As Deputy Minister, State Secretary, Central Committee member and Head of Commercial Coordination, Schalck-Golodkowski was one of the most important men in the GDR economy and a member of the nomenklatura . Due to his access to western goods of all kinds, he was a sought-after and courted personality within the GDR leadership. The Commercial Coordination also had the goods confiscated from the GDR customs administration , some of which it passed on to party officials in the form of gifts, including goods that were illegal under GDR law, such as pornographic products or drugs .

Schalck-Golodkowski himself lived in a single-family house in Manetstrasse in the villa district on Orankesee in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, not far from other domiciles of high-ranking employees of the MfS, such as the row house of Mielke's son and the Mielkes guest house. He owned a holiday home in the Schorfheide , the construction of which was approved, although it was in the middle of a nature reserve, and the sanitary development of which cost over 200,000 marks (GDR) . Both houses were built and furnished by western companies.

End of the GDR and life after reunification

Gravestone for Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski in the Resurrection Cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee

Schalck-Golodkowski was, together with Gerhard Schürer , Gerhard Beil , Ernst Höfner and Arno Donda, one of the authors of the analysis of the economic situation in the GDR with conclusions , a submission for the meeting of the SED Politburo on October 30, 1989. In this also as “ Schürer-Papier ”, the secret report that became known, the over-indebtedness and economic disruption of the GDR was clearly named for the first time. He was a clear criticism of Erich Honecker's leadership and was one of the reasons for his removal.

In the course of the collapse of the GDR, Schalck-Golodkowski was expelled from the Central Committee and the SED because of press reports on criminal activities by KoKo companies at the last meeting of the SED Central Committee on December 3, 1989. He then fled to West Berlin with his wife Sigrid on December 4th , where he surrendered to the authorities and was remanded in custody for about six weeks . He stated that he feared being branded a bogeyman and being eliminated by his former comrades. An extradition request from the GDR public prosecutor's office was rejected. In January 1990, the Schalck-Golodkowski couple moved to Rottach-Egern am Tegernsee . There he ran the company trading in goods of all kinds .

Under the code name "Snow White" he made extensive statements to the Federal Intelligence Service about the criminal economic methods of the Commercial Coordination department and his work for the Ministry for State Security. He received impunity from the BND and was given the prospect of papers with a false name. It is presumed that, on the basis of these identification documents, Schalck-Golodkowski was able to access previously created reserves in the form of secret accounts. Only access to a West Berlin safe deposit box with unknown content is confirmed.

When his old place of activity, Commercial Coordination, was dissolved, further dubious details of his activities became known, which resulted in several investigations . Among other things, Schalck-Golodkowski was accused of offenses under the Narcotics Act , breach of trust , fraud and espionage . In 1991 there was public criticism of the delay in the investigation against Schalck-Golodkowski, which the press linked to the contacts between him and important West German politicians and entrepreneurs from the GDR era. The Federal Minister of Justice at the time, Klaus Kinkel, vigorously contradicted suspicions that Schalck-Golodkowski would be protected by West German authorities .

In an appearance on the TV show Der hot Stuhl on RTL , he asserted that he “handled everything properly and correctly” and acted “to the best of his knowledge and belief”, “with the intention of serving the GDR and the people”.

The entire area of ​​commercial coordination, in particular the tasks and activities of Schalck-Golodkowski, was the subject of the 1st   investigative committee of the 12th German Bundestag under the chairmanship of CDU member Friedrich Vogel . There are extensive reports on the results of the investigations, above all the recommendation for a resolution and the report printed matter 12/7600 of May 27, 1994 with three annex volumes and an appendix volume.

The investigation into violations of the Narcotics Act was discontinued in 1992, the proceedings for embezzlement of billions of euros by the GDR government through transfers abroad in 1993. However, it came to trial in 1995 on charges of conducting illegal arms deals. As a result, Schalck-Golodkowski was sentenced to one year imprisonment in January 1996 for violating the Military Government Act No. 53, which continues to apply as federal law . An appeal against the judgment was rejected by the Federal Court of Justice . The sentence was suspended on probation . In July 1996, there was another charge of embargo violations . In 1998, Schalck-Golodkowski was declared incapable of standing because of cancer and initially no longer had to appear in court. However, in July 1998 he was sentenced to another 16 months' imprisonment; again the sentence was suspended. His defense counsel was the Berlin lawyer and later SPD member of the Bundestag, Peter Danckert , who also represented other Stasi officers.

In March 2003, Schalck-Golodkowski suffered cardiac arrest while on vacation and had to undergo emergency surgery. After suffering from cancer for a long time, he died on June 21, 2015 in his house on Lake Tegernsee. He was buried in the Resurrection Cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee .

Private life

Schalck-Golodkowski was married twice. His first wife Margareta (née Becker; born August 23, 1932) was a trained seamstress. After the marriage in 1955, a son was born in 1956. Their daughter was born in 1964. The marriage ended in divorce in 1975.

Shortly thereafter, he married his second wife Sigrid (née Gutmann; born October 28, 1940) in 1976. She was the daughter of the former mayor of Schwerin Johanna Blecha (née Kutzerra, divorced Gutmann). Her stepfather Kurt Blecha was the head of the press office of the GDR Council of Ministers . Professionally, as a graduate financial economist, she was also active in the KoKo division as head of the special imports work group, in particular special supplies for the Wandlitz political office complex . She had the rank of Colonel of the MfS ( OibE ).

Awards

Highly decorated State Secretary in the GDR

Fonts

literature

  • Christian Jung: History of the Losers. Historical self-reflection by high-ranking members of the SED after 1989 (= Heidelberg Treatises on Middle and Modern History - NF , Volume 16). Universitätsverlag Winter Heidelberg, Heidelberg 2007, ISBN 978-3-8253-5308-7 (Dissertation University Heidelberg 2006 under the title: From my life - poetry and truth , 387 pages).
  • Wolfgang Brinkschulte, Hans Jörgen Gerlach , Thomas Heise: Independent buyers. The co-earners in the west. Ullstein Report, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-548-36611-2 .
  • Egmont R. Koch : The secret cartel. BND, Schalck, Stasi & Co. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-455-08435-4 .
  • Peter-Ferdinand Koch: The Schalck Empire is alive. Germany is bought. Piper, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-492-03564-7 .
  • Wolfgang Seiffert, Norbert Trautwein: The Schalck papers. GDR Mafia between East and West. The evidence. Zsolnay, Vienna 1991, ISBN 3-552-04340-3 .
  • Matthias Rathmer: Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski: Pragmatist between the fronts. A political biography. Münster 1995, DNB 948745975 (Dissertation University of Münster (Westphalia) 1996, 297 pages).
  • Frank Schumann , Heinz Wuschech: Schalck-Golodkowski: The man who wanted to save the GDR . edition ost, Berlin, 2012, ISBN 978-3-360-01841-0 .
  • Helmut Müller-Enbergs :  Schalck-Golodkowski, Alexander . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Matthias Judt: The commercial coordination area. The GDR economic empire of Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski. Myth and Reality . Links, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86153-724-3 .

Movies

Web links

Commons : Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Munzinger.de
  2. ↑ Bayernkurier from July 16, 1983 ( Memento from November 16, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Billion injection for the wall builder. Spiegel Online , July 22, 2008.
  4. ↑ Horst Fischer: Schalck Empire. Selected documents . University Press Dr. N Brockmeyer, Bochum 1993, ISBN 3-8196-0179-1 , document 4.
  5. ↑ List of the doctoral procedures carried out at the Law School of the MfS in Golm (near Potsdam)
  6. ↑ Private homepage GDR lexicon with article Doctoral thesis Schalck
  7. ↑ Officially unpublished dissertation of 210 pages as an online Pdf from a Turkish host: [1]
  8. ↑ a b Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski dead . MDR. June 22, 2015. Archived from the original on June 22, 2015.
  9. ↑ Printed matter 12/7600. German Bundestag, accessed on November 9, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Schalck's arms trade remains punishable , Die Welt . July 10, 1997
  11. ↑ Burial of Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski. A wreath from Krenz. In: Berliner Zeitung , July 24, 2015
  12. ↑ Schalck Committee. A little Bond. Der Spiegel, June 10, 1991.
personal data
SURNAME Schalck-Golodkowski, Alexander
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Golodkowski, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SED) and economic functionary
DATE OF BIRTH July 3, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin-Treptow
DATE OF DEATH June 21, 2015
Place of death Rottach-Egern