Erich Gaida

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Erich Gaida (born June 23, 1928 in Hennersdorf in the Sudetenland , Czechoslovakia ; † February 13, 2015 ) was a colonel in the Ministry for State Security (MfS) of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). He was a working group leader in the science and technology sector of the Enlightenment Headquarters (HVA), the GDR's foreign intelligence service.

Life

Gaida, son of a warehouse worker who was arrested as a communist in 1938 and murdered in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944 , attended secondary school, was drafted into the German armed forces at the age of 16 in 1944 and fought in World War II . In 1945 he was taken prisoner by the Soviets , from which he was released in 1948.

After his return to Germany, Gaida settled in the Soviet occupation zone , initially worked as a fitter and joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). In 1950 he was employed by the MfS and was employed in the economic department of the Thuringian state administration until 1954 .

After a brief activity in the district office in Putbus on the island of Rügen, Gaida switched to HVA in 1955, the GDR's foreign intelligence service in East Berlin . From 1955 to 1971 he was an employee of the main departments IV and V, responsible for industrial espionage . In 1959/60 he completed several internal HVA courses and from 1967 to 1969 studied at the University of Electrical Engineering (HfE) in Ilmenau .

In 1971 Gaida became deputy head of the HVA department XIV, responsible for electronics and optical espionage, and in 1978 head of working group 3 of the HVA, responsible for science and technology. In 1980 he was promoted to colonel.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the peaceful revolution in the GDR , he was released from work in 1989 and released from service in 1990.

In 1996, in connection with the embezzlement of GDR assets amounting to 17 million D-Marks against Gaida, an investigation was made and he was taken into custody because of the risk of escape. After 18 months of pre-trial detention in Berlin-Moabit Prison, charges of embezzlement were brought on April 30, 1998. On June 23, 1998, after 23 days of trial, he was acquitted and released. The public prosecutor's office, which had demanded six years in prison, initially submitted an application for an appeal, but later withdrew it.

Gaida died at the age of 86 as a result of a serious traffic accident.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Walter Süß: The State Security in the Last Decade of the GDR - History of State Security, Part III In: BStU : Anatomie der Staatssicherheit , MfS-Handbuch, Berlin 2009. ( PDF , 1 MB).
  2. ^ Obituary in: Rotfuchs No. 207 / April 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Gaida, Erich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Colonel in the Ministry for State Security (MfS) of the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Hennersdorf (today Dolní Branná , Czech Republic )
DATE OF DEATH February 13, 2015