Ellen Thiemann

Ellen Thiemann, b. Dietrich (born May 23, 1937 in Dresden ; † May 6, 2018 in Cologne ) was a German journalist and author .

Life

Ellen Dietrich moved with her family to East Berlin in 1957 , where she worked as a freelance craftsperson and for DEWAG . She was also a sought-after model and gained a certain fame when the photographer Klaus Fischer made a series of nude photos of her , which appeared in the monthly magazine Das Magazin in March 1971 and May 1972 .

Since 1960 she was married to the soccer player and sports journalist Klaus Thiemann . The couple wanted to flee the GDR to the West in 1972 . But on December 29, 1972, the car of the escape helper , with which her eleven-year-old son Carsten was to be brought out of the country, was stopped and examined by border guards at the border crossing in Chausseestrasse / Invalidenstrasse in Berlin, which thwarted the escape plan.

Ellen Thiemann was arrested the same day and took all the guilt on herself. She was first taken to the Stasi prison in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen . On May 22, 1973, she was sentenced to three years and five months in prison and sent to the Hoheneck women's prison , of which she had to serve two years.

After her release at the end of May 1975, she was divorced on July 8, 1975 from her husband, who had meanwhile been living with another woman. With the help of the GDR lawyer Wolfgang Vogel , she was then ransomed and was able to leave the GDR on December 19, 1975 with her son Carsten. She later discovered that her divorced husband had acted as IM "Mathias" for the Ministry of State Security and had betrayed her escape plans.

About her imprisonment, she credited the experience report Confront the Minions , published in 1984. Her book The Enemy at My Side (2005) reports on the research into the legacies of the State Security. In it she tells the internals of GDR sport, such as the soccer association trainer Georg Buschner , the BFC Dynamo and 1. FC Union Berlin , Lutz Eigendorf , about doping and the MfS's influence on soccer, but also about the spying on Uwe Seeler , Franz Beckenbauer , reporter from Kicker and others based on detailed evidence.

In 2011 Thiemann received the Order of Merit of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia .

Publications

• Make good on the minions. Herbig, Munich 1990, ISBN 3-7766-1655-5 .
• The enemy by my side. Herbig, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-7766-2453-1 (with a preface by Joachim Gauck ).
• Where are the dead from Hoheneck? Herbig, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-7766-2750-3 (with a preface by Norbert Lammert ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Ellen Thiemann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Video about sleep deprivation torture on the Places of Repression page
• Ellen Thiemann: imprisonment in the Hoheneck women's prison. (Video, 10:37 minutes) In: YouTube. September 2, 2011. 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ellen Thiemann: contemporary witness of the GDR women's prison Hoheneck died. dpa article at MZ-Web.de , May 6, 2018, accessed on May 7, 2018 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b} memorial page by Ellen Thiemann. Retrieved June 27, 2018 . 
3. ↑ See Jürgen Stryjak, "Magazin" process , in: Das Magazin , issue 1/1994, pp. 24–28
4. ↑ Thomas Purschke: Sportsman murder on behalf of the Stasi? Deutschlandfunk broadcast “Sport am weekend”, February 14, 2010, accessed on May 7, 2018 . Klaus Brinkbäumer, Udo Ludwig, Georg Mascolo, Thomas Purschke: STASI: "The source is reliable". In: Der Spiegel 46/1999. November 15, 1999, pp. 92-94 , accessed May 7, 2018 . 
    
5. ↑ Johann Frömel: Ellen Thiemann, The enemy at my side. A footballer's spy career. Reviews from the archive for social history online , August 2006, accessed on May 7, 2018 .