Günter Grell (journalist)

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Günter Grell (born September 14, 1926 in Babelsberg ; † June 26, 1952 in Moscow ) was a German journalist and youth politician . From 1949 to 1950 he was a member of the People's Council of the Soviet Zone and the Provisional People's Chamber of the GDR .

Life

Grell, a trained toolmaker, did military service in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War and was taken prisoner by the Soviets at the end of the war.

After his release he started working as a freelance newspaper journalist in March 1948. In the same year he became a member of the FDGB , the NDPD and the FDJ . He became deputy district chairman of the NDPD in Potsdam and youth officer of the party. From February 1949 he worked for the FDGB state executive in Brandenburg and wrote articles for the union newspaper " Tribüne ". In September 1949 he became editor of the " National-Zeitung ". At the same time he worked for the " General German Intelligence Service ". From May 1949 he represented the FDJ as the youngest member in the 2nd People's Council of the Soviet Zone and from October 1949 in the Provisional People's Chamber of the GDR. On November 10, 1949 he and Erich Honecker were elected to the youth committee of the Volkskammer. In January 1950 he was expelled from the NDPD and an application for expulsion from the People's Chamber took place. At the beginning of March 1950 he fled to West Berlin and was recruited by the CIA as a political refugee in Berlin-Marienfelde during the admission process . He got the code name "John Helmert" and was supposed to recruit agents in the GDR. After some of his attempts at contact were reported to the Ministry for State Security (MfS), the MfS was monitored and finally on November 2, 1951 at an ordered meeting in Lohmühlenstrasse not far from the zone border for deportation to Berlin-Treptow . After a short interrogation he was transferred to the Ministry for State Security of the USSR (MGB) in Potsdam. On April 16, 1952, he was sentenced to death by shooting by the Soviet Military Tribunal (SMT) No. 48240 in Potsdam for alleged espionage and membership in a counter-revolutionary organization . His pardon was rejected on June 20, 1952 by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR . The sentence was carried out in Moscow on June 26, 1952 . On April 12, 2001, Russian military prosecutors rehabilitated him.

literature

  • Jörg Rudolph, Frank Drauschke, Alexander Sachse: executed in Moscow. Victims of Stalinism from Berlin 1950–1953 . Series of publications by the Berlin State Commissioner for the Documents of the State Security Service of the former GDR, Volume 23, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-934085-26-8 .
  • Horst Bienek : Vorkuta . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-1230-2 .
  • Susanne Muhle: Mission: kidnapping. Kidnappings of West Berliners and German citizens by the Ministry for State Security of the GDR . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-525-35116-1 , p. 188.

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The committees of the People's Chamber . In: Neues Deutschland , November 11, 1949, p. 2.