Bernhard Geier

Bernhard Geier (born December 5, 1926 in Altkarbe ; † June 2009 in Berlin ) was a German officer ( VP / NVA ). He was major general and from 1971 to 1979 commander of the border command center of the GDR border troops . In 1999 he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for manslaughter and aiding and abetting manslaughter.

Life

The son of a bricklayer learned the trade of industrial clerk after attending elementary school from 1941 to 1943. In 1943 he was first called up for the Reich Labor Service . From 1943 to 1945 he had to do military service as a radio operator in the Navy , most recently as a private.

After the war he went to the Soviet occupation zone and retrained as a bricklayer in 1945/46. On December 15, 1946, he became a member of the People's Police (VP) and was a sergeant in the VP district office in Lübben until 1948 . He joined the SED in 1948 and went to the German Border Police (DGP). From 1948 to 1950 he was chief of staff at the Eldena border command , from 1951 to 1954 head of the command of the Schönberg border brigade and from 1954 to 1956 instructor in the command of the DGP. After a special course in 1956/57 in the USSR , he was head of the border service subdivision in the command of the DGP in 1958/59 and head of the border service subdivision in the Ministry of the Interior (MdI) from 1959 to 1962 . From 1962 to 1964 he acted as deputy chief of staff and head of the operational department of the Berlin city command and from 1964 to 1969 as commander of the 2nd border brigade in Groß Glienicke near Berlin. Geier attended the General Staff Academy of the USSR from 1969 to 1971 and was then commander of the Central Border Command from May 1, 1971 to August 31, 1979. On March 1, 1972, he was appointed major general by Erich Honecker . From 1979 to 1984 he was then deputy commander for training at the officers' college of the border troops and chairman of the army sports association Vorwärts Plauen . From 1984 until his release on December 31, 1986, he held a post for officers of the border troops who were not deployed in the GDR Ministry for National Defense .

After investigations from 1993 onwards, Geier was sentenced on August 27, 1999 by the Berlin regional court for four border incidents with fatal results for " manslaughter and aiding and abetting manslaughter" to a prison term of two years and six months. He was detained from December 10, 1999 to April 13, 2000, but was released on three years probation because of serious illness and incapacity.

Geier last lived in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde , was a board member of the Initiative Group for the Protection of Social Rights eV and a member of the Society for Legal and Humanitarian Support eV He died at the age of 83 and was buried in the central cemetery in Friedrichsfelde .

Awards in the GDR

• 1976 Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze
• Battle medals "For services to people and fatherland" in gold

literature

• Klaus Froh, Rüdiger Wenzke (ed.): The generals and admirals of the NVA: A biographical manual. 5th, through. Edition. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-86153-438-9 , pp. 98 and 285.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Obituary notice in Neues Deutschland from June 13, 2009.