Bernt von Kügelgen

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Bernt von Kügelgen

Bernt von Kügelgen (born July 31, 1914 in Saint Petersburg , † January 30, 2002 in Berlin ) was a German journalist .

Life

Bernt von Kügelgen came from the humanistic southern and Baltic German noble family von Kügelgen . His father, Paul von Kügelgen , was the last editor of the St. Petersburgische Zeitung , the oldest German-language newspaper published abroad at the time.

Impoverished as a result of the October Revolution , the family came to Berlin in 1921. Kügelgen graduated from the Baltic School in Miedzyzdroje in 1934 with “ deferral of costs” . In 1933 he had become a member of the Jungstahlhelm , which joined the SA in June 1933 , where Kügelgen remained until 1934. In Berlin he received training as an advertising specialist from the Scherl Verlag in the Hugenberg Group and then worked in its advertising department. Officer candidate at the beginning of the Second World War and promoted to lieutenant in the French campaign in 1940, Kügelgen was wounded as one of the few German officers to be taken prisoner by the Soviets on July 19, 1942 .

He was sent to the Oranki officers' camp near Nizhny Novgorod , which recently opened the first Antifa school . Soviet officers brought Kügelgen into interrogations, which were more like discussions, to the conviction that they had to do their part to overthrow the Hitler regime and thus to end the war. One of them was Lew Kopelew , which Kügelgen only found out after the reunification in the GDR. Kügelgen became a co-founder of a group of anti-fascist German officers and employees of the Soviet newspaper for German prisoners of war, The Free Word . From January 1943 he attended the Central Antifa School in Krasnogorsk near Moscow, where he met exiled German communists such as Walter Ulbricht , Wilhelm Pieck , Anton Ackermann and Max Emendörfer . In July 1943, Kügelgen was one of the founding members of the National Committee for Free Germany and in September one of those of the Association of German Officers (BDO). From the end of 1943 to May 1944, the NKFD deployed him as a front officer on the 2nd Belarusian Front for loudspeaker and leaflet propaganda and for interrogating German prisoners. Thereafter, Kügelgen was editor of the NKFD newspaper Free Germany .

Returned to Germany in August 1945, he worked in Berlin as editor of the Berliner Zeitung and reported a. a. as a correspondent for the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial . In 1946 he married and joined the KPD / SED . In 1949 Kügelgen was first deputy and in 1950 editor-in-chief of Neue Berliner Illustrierte .

The weekly cultural-political magazine Sonntag , published by the German Cultural Association , aroused the displeasure of the SED leadership by publishing time-critical texts in 1956, prompted by the de-Stalinization that was beginning in the Soviet Union . The arrest of Walter Janka in December 1956, the head of the Aufbau publishing house, in which Sunday was published, was followed in March 1957 by Heinz Zögers , the editor-in-chief, and his deputy Gustav Just . Now Kügelgen succeeded Zöger on behalf of the SED for the "necessary line correction". When Janka and his friends were sentenced to prison terms in a show trial in July 1957 , Kügelgen applauded in the hall.

In May 1968 the Ministry for State Security (MfS) recruited Kügelgen as an unofficial employee (IM). It set him under the alias "Wilhelm" u. a. in the processing of Franz Fühmann , Ulrich Plenzdorf and Rolf Schneider and for reporting on moods among writers. Kügelgen's wife Else had been working as an IM with the code name "Jenny" since at least 1961, and from 1968 to 1977 increased as a full-time unofficial employee (HIM). In December 1989, the MfS was able to purposefully destroy Bernt von Kügelgen's IM files with the exception of a few sheets.

Kügelgen, who was perceived as "exotic" in the GDR, kept his post at the head of Sonntag until he retired from professional life in 1976. He was a member of the Presidium of the GDR Cultural Association . After the fall of the Wall, Kügelgen became involved in the association DRAFD (Association of Germans in the Resistance, in the armed forces of the anti-Hitler coalition and the "Free Germany" movement). Until his death on January 30, 2002, Kügelgen was primarily involved as a journalist and speaker who To preserve the memory of the National Committee, especially the broad alliance policy cultivated by the Committee in the fight against fascism and for a democratically constituted Germany.

In 1983, Bernt von Kügelgen published the book The Night of Decision with his memories and description of his life until 1946. In a manuscript created after the end of the GDR, Kügelgen broke his silence about the persecution of Emendörfer and General Seydlitz-Kurzbach , "on the contempt of mankind of Stalinism" and in one case described the "shabby behavior of the SED Politburo, especially Walter Ulbricht".

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Soviet Union had expatriated the civil rights activist Kopelew in 1981 during a trip to western countries. He later lived in Cologne. Kügelgen made friendly contact with him after 1989 with a visit. Kühn, p. 236 with proof
  2. ↑ So Regina General in A Sincere One Who Was Wrong Twice . Obituary in the Berliner Zeitung on February 4, 2002, see web link
  3. ↑ At the end of 1989 Kügelgen apologized to Janka for his behavior, as the FAZ reported on December 23, 1989.
  4. ↑ Information from Joachim Walther: Security area literature - writers and state security in the German Democratic Republic (= Ullstein pocket book number 26553), Ullstein, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3548265537 . On the ordered destruction p. 351, on Fühmann p. 351, on Plenzdorf p. 428, on Schneider p. 474, on Else Kügelgen (HIM) 195
  5. ↑ Regina General in A Sincere One Who Was Wrong Twice . Obituary in the Berliner Zeitung on February 4, 2002, see web link
  6. ↑ Gottfried Hamacher: Always committed to humanism Obituary
  7. ^ Quotations from Kühn, from: Bernt von Kügelgen: After. The National Committee for Free Germany, its legacy and heirs. In the estate of Bernt von Kügelgen, Bundesarchiv Berlin, NY 4583 / Vorl. 6th
personal data
SURNAME Kügelgen, Bernt von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist
DATE OF BIRTH July 31, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint Petersburg , Russian Empire
DATE OF DEATH January 30, 2002
Place of death Berlin