Dirk Schneider (politician)

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Dirk Schneider (born April 21, 1939 in Rostock ; † November 3, 2002 in Berlin ) was a German politician ( Die Grünen and PDS ). He was an informant for the GDR State Security for almost ten years .

Life

Schneider studied journalism at the Free University of Berlin . After Benno Ohnesorg was shot at the demonstration on June 2, 1967 in West Berlin , he became involved a. a. in the "Committee for Public Relations". He was in charge of the left-wing newspaper projects Agit 883 and Radikal .

After grassroots district work in Berlin-Kreuzberg in the early to mid-1970s, he was a founding member in 1978 and then for several years one of the spokespersons for the Alternative List (AL) in Berlin. In 1979 he also became a member of the Greens. From 1979 to 1981 he was chairman of the AL parliamentary group in the Berlin-Kreuzberg district council .

Schneider was drawn up from the Alternative List in January 1983 as a candidate for the 1983 federal election . Because of the special status of West Berlin , he was then elected to the Bundestag by the House of Representatives , following the proposal of the AL parliamentary group. Like the other Berlin members of the Bundestag , he was not fully entitled to vote. Since the Greens and the AL then applied the so-called rotation principle, he gave up his place for Christian Ströbele (also AL Berlin) as early as 1985 after the first half of the legislative period .

At times Schneider was the German political spokesman for the Green parliamentary group, in 1983 he and Petra Kelly , Otto Schily , Gert Bastian , Antje Vollmer and Lukas Beckmann signed a "personal peace treaty" with Erich Honecker during a visit by this Green delegation to East Berlin . Under his influence, the focus of the Greens in Germany policy shifted from cultivating relations with the GDR opposition to a partial identification with positions of the GDR regime, for example taking over the Gera demands by Erich Honecker. Schneider described Petra Kelly and Lukas Beckmann, who sympathized with the GDR peace movement, as “politically incapable” in the parliamentary group. At the time, the parliamentary group mocked that he was the "Permanent Representation of the GDR to the Greens".

In August 1984 he issued a press release that a policy of German reunification according to West German ideas was peace-threatening. In 1984, Schneider, as a member of the committee for intra-German relations, described those wishing to leave the GDR as “luxury refugees”. Among his supporters of a change of course in the party were Annemarie Borgmann and Antje Vollmer, with whom he visited Honecker in November 1984.

In July 1990, during the process of German reunification , he switched from the Alternative List, which was now the Berlin State Association of the Greens, to the PDS .

Informant of the GDR State Security

In October 1991 Schneider was exposed by former GDR opposition members as a former informant of the Ministry for State Security (code name IM Ludwig ). He had also received cash benefits in this connection. Schneider thereupon resigned his mandate for the PDS in the Berlin House of Representatives . In 1996 he left the PDS. The public prosecutor finally closed the proceedings against him in 1996 because no secret service activity could be proven. It was not until new records found in 1998 that the extent of his reporting on internal events at the Greens became clear. His contact with the GDR state security had existed since 1975.

In a study commissioned by the Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen party (2016), the historians Jens Gieseke and Andrea Bahr found that there were a total of around 15 to 20 informants who at least temporarily provided news from inside the party that was about the public reporting and were of particular concern to the interests of the GDR.

literature

  • Werner Breunig, Andreas Herbst (ed.): Biographical handbook of the Berlin parliamentarians 1963–1995 and city councilors 1990/1991 (= series of publications of the Berlin State Archives. Volume 19). Landesarchiv Berlin, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-9803303-5-0 , p. 331.
  • Hubertus Knabe : The infiltrated republic. Stasi in the west . Ullstein Berlin 2001, pp. 73-80
  • Prince of Kreuzberg . In: Der Spiegel . No. 46 , 1991 ( online ).
  • Sponti on new paths . In: Der Spiegel . No. 3 , 1983 ( online ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "We didn't take it seriously". In: taz.de . October 25, 2005, accessed December 31, 2014 .
  2. ^ BStU : The German Bundestag 1949 to 1989 in the files of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) of the GDR. Report to the German Bundestag in accordance with Section 37 (3) of the Stasi Records Act , Berlin 2013, p. 246 ( PDF ( memento of November 8, 2013 in the Internet Archive )).
  3. ↑ Ole Giec, Frank Willmann ( eds .): Wall Warriors: Actions against the Wall in West Berlin 1989 . Ch. Links 2014, ISBN 978-3861537885 , p. 104 ( online )
  4. ^ Prince of Kreuzberg . In: Der Spiegel . No. 46 , 1991 ( online ).
  5. ^ Prince of Kreuzberg . In: Der Spiegel . No. 46 , 1991, pp. 80-85 ( online ).
  6. ^ Dorit Pries: Stasi employees in German parliaments ?. Lit, 2008, ISBN 9783825805937 , p. 76. Limited preview in Google Book Search
  7. ↑ Jens Gieseke, Andrea Bahr: The State Security and the Greens. Between SED-West politics and East-West contacts . Ch. Links, 2016, ISBN 978-3-86153-842-4 .
  8. ^ Mitteldeutsche Zeitung online, October 11, 2016: State Security - This is how the Greens were spied on in the GDR
personal data
SURNAME Schneider, Dirk
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politicians (Die Grünen and PDS), MdA, MdB, agent of the MfS
DATE OF BIRTH April 21, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Rostock
DATE OF DEATH November 3, 2002
Place of death Berlin