Fritz Schröder (politician, 1915)

Fritz Schröder (born October 4, 1915 in Momehnen ( East Prussia ), † July 5, 2001 in Neuenhagen near Berlin ) was Deputy Minister for State Security of the GDR from 1964 to 1974 .

Life

Fritz Schröder was born in Momehnen ( East Prussia ) in 1915 . His father was a worker, his mother a housewife. After attending middle school , he completed an apprenticeship as a butcher from 1931 to 1935 . He was then called up for the Reich Labor Service and completed his military service in the Wehrmacht from 1936 to 1938 . He then worked as a butcher's journeyman before he was drafted into the Wehrmacht again in autumn 1939. From 1942 to 1945 Schröder was a Soviet prisoner of war . There he attended the Antifa school for six months in 1943 and was then NKFD - Front Officer . After serving as a propagandist at the Trench Loudspeaker, he attended a Soviet front school on the Baltic Front .

Schröder returned to Germany in 1945 and in July accepted a job with the People's Police . There he was promoted to head of the Nauen District Police Department. In 1945 he joined the KPD and became a member of the SED in 1946 when the SPD and KPD were forced to merge . He attended the Biesenthal State Police School in 1946 and was transferred to Teltow in 1948 as head of the District Police Office. From September 1949 he worked for the administration for the protection of the Brandenburg economy , which from February 1950 became the state administration Brandenburg of the Ministry for State Security (MfS). There he was initially head of the Frankfurt (Oder) office , but in the same year he was appointed head of department V (underground activities) of the Brandenburg state administration. After the districts were formed in the GDR in July 1952, he took over the management of the MfS district administration (BV) Cottbus with the rank of lieutenant colonel and became a member of the SED district management in Cottbus. Schröder was transferred to Berlin in July 1955 and appointed as the successor to Bruno Beater as head of the main department (HA) V (state apparatus, churches, underground) of the MfS. In February 1958 he was promoted to colonel . In January 1964 he took over the post of Deputy Minister for State Security, the successor to HA V (later HA XX) was Paul Kienberg . In October 1964 he was appointed major general by Walter Ulbricht and promoted to lieutenant general by Erich Honecker on October 4, 1972 . For health reasons he was released from his duties in 1974 and dismissed in January 1975. He was succeeded by Rudi Mittig . Fritz Schröder lived as a pensioner in Neuenhagen near Berlin until his death.

Awards

• 1970 Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold
• 1975 Karl Marx Order
• 1985 medal "40. Anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945 "

literature

• Jens Gieseke : Fritz Schröder . In: BStU : Who was who in the Ministry for State Security? (PDF, 537 KB), MfS-Handbuch V / 4, Berlin 1998, p. 65.
• Jens Gieseke:  Schröder, Fritz . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Roland Wiedmann: Fritz Schröder. In: Roger Engelmann , Bernd Florath , Helge Heidemeyer, Daniela Münkel , Arno Polzin, Walter Süß (eds.): Das MfS-Lexikon. 3rd updated edition, Ch. Links, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86153-900-1 , p. 291, online version .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Der Morgen , October 5, 1972, p. 1.