August Mayer (General)

August Mayer (born June 9, 1898 in Munich , † October 11, 1969 in Berlin ) was a major general of the People's Police of the GDR and head of the penal system administration (VSV).

Life

The son of a working-class family worked after primary school as an unskilled metalworker, then as an office worker. In 1916 he became a member of the Socialist Workers' Youth and the SPD . In 1917/18 he did military service. In 1920 he became a member of the KPD . In 1921/22 he was secretary of the KPD-BL Nordbayern in Nuremberg and from 1922 an employee of the Central Committee of the KPD in Berlin. From 1923 he was responsible for the procurement of weapons for Berlin, Brandenburg and Lausitz. He was arrested in March 1924 and sentenced on April 22, 1925 to six years in prison by the Reich Court in the so-called Cheka trial for “preparation for high treason” and “explosives crimes”. In October 1927 he was amnestied by the "Hindenburgerlaß" and was then again an employee of the Central Committee of the KPD. In 1930/31 he was responsible for the KPD for arms procurement throughout the Reich. After his exposure, he fled to the USSR in March 1931 . Here he was trained at a military school in Moscow in 1931/32 . From 1932 to 1945 he did illegal work under the code name “Anton Keller” for the Comintern in Prague , The Hague , Amsterdam and Paris . Most recently he was head of the KPD emigration group in Holland.

In September 1945 he returned to Germany and was deputy director of the tracing service at the Allied Control Council in 1945/46 . In 1946 he became a member of the SED and from 1946 to 1948 he was president of the tracing service for missing Germans in the Soviet occupation zone (SBZ). In November 1948 he went to the German Administration of the Interior (DVdI), and as Inspector General of the German People's Police, in December 1948 he became head of the main criminal police department. In 1949 he became deputy head of the German People's Police (DVP) and at the same time remained head of the HA criminal investigation department in the DVP's head office (HVDVP). From 1951 to 1959 he was head of the penitentiary administration in the HVDVP, most recently from July 1957 with the rank of major general.

Awards

• 1954 Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze and 1968 in gold
• 1958 Order Banner of Labor

literature

• Andreas Herbst (eds.), Winfried Ranke, Jürgen Winkler: This is how the GDR worked. Volume 3: Lexicon of functionaries (= rororo manual. Vol. 6350). Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-499-16350-0 , p. 221.
• Bernd-Rainer Barth , Andreas Herbst:  Mayer, August (Gustl) . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

• Jan Philipp Wölbern: The historical processing of the forced labor of political prisoners in the penitentiary system of the GDR , p. 18 f. (accessed October 27, 2017).