Günter Malkowski

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Günter Malkowski (born October 25, 1926 in Berlin , † July 4, 1952 in Moscow ) was a student at the German University for Politics and participant in the resistance in the early GDR .

Life

Life until 1945

Günter Malkowski's parents divorced before their son started school. At the age of eleven, his single , working mother sent him to the Potsdam National Political Education Institute , a boarding school . From there, drafted into the Navy in January 1944 , Malkowski experienced the end of the war in a military hospital in Norway. During the war, "the absurdity of the National Socialist ideology made the value of a well-founded and self-developed worldview [...] the mainspring" of his later study plans.

In the Soviet Zone

After the end of the war, Malkowski joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in Leipzig . He rejected the compulsory unification of the SPD and KPD to form the SED in April 1946 and remained in the Soviet occupation zone (SBZ) as a member of the SPD, which had now disappeared underground .

Malkowski began studying at the University of Leipzig with the support of Theodor Litt . In Leipzig he moved in circles of oppositional schoolchildren and students who were guided by the model of Western democracy . These groups sought and received support from institutions and organizations in the western sectors of Berlin , such as the East Office of the SPD , the radio station RIAS- Berlin , the investigative committee of liberal lawyers or the combat group against inhumanity (KgU).

The activities of the opposition groups included the acquisition and reading of forbidden literature, the production, importing and distribution of pamphlets, the posting of their own slogans and the destruction of opposing slogans. Inseparably linked to the underground struggle for “liberation from communism” was the acquisition and transfer of information, not only about covert armaments, the secret arms industry, surveillance and security apparatus or human rights violations, but all kinds of information to Western supporters. Malkowski guaranteed such a connection for a group of at least 15 people, presumably with an undercover agent of the French secret service .

Student in West Berlin

For the summer semester of 1949, Malkowski successfully applied for a place at the Free University of Berlin . In the admission interview, in which Ernst Tillich , a lecturer at the German University of Politics (DHfP) and head of the KgU, took part, he spoke frankly of his contact with the French secret service . Tillich claims to have warned Malkowski in a later private conversation about his non- conspiratorial behavior and against continuing his secret service activities.

Malkowski's intention to continue his studies in West Berlin in 1949 failed. In January 1949 an HO store had also opened in Leipzig , which, contrary to the propagated equal distribution of goods, offered otherwise rationed goods to better-off customers at very high prices. Malkowski had destroyed the shop window in protest and was later arrested.

Released after five weeks, he was unable to continue his studies in Leipzig or West Berlin and fled to West Germany , where he worked as a miner in the Ruhr area and became a union member. Malkowski remained, as before in the GDR, a member of the SPD, but gave the party's refugee care office the impression of a “political adventurer”.

Since the spring semester in 1950 Malkowski attended courses at the DHfP in order to qualify for a position in the German Trade Union Federation , for example with Eugen Fischer-Baling and Werner Ziegenfuß , who attested him “excellent scientific talent” and awarded him “a special grant worthy ”.

Activity for the KgU

According to the KgU tradition, in January 1951 their employee Hanfried Hieke (born 1929) registered Günter Malkowski, who was said to have previously worked for “foreigners”, as an undercover agent under the code name “Junker”. Hieke, since August 1950 “Head of Saxony” of the KgU, cooperated under the code name “Fred Walter” with opponents of the regime who obtained information conspiratorially.

As early as the spring of 1951, the KgU had discovered that Hieke was also illegally working for the American military intelligence service MID , and separated from him in May 1951. Hieke had previously started to remove "about two dozen informants and the groups connected to them without their knowledge from the KgU" in order to work only for the MID. He submitted his resignation in July. Malkowski, whom Hieke had taken under contract, continued to collect messages in Saxony under the code name Junker and transmitted orders. With the KgU he had "not appeared again" since March 1951.

Arrest and death

On September 9, 1951, the Soviet secret police arrested Malkowski in the East Berlin district of Treptow . It is unclear whether these and around 200 other arrests of KgU members in Saxony were largely due to Hieke's betrayal. The wave of arrests, which resulted in more than forty executions, was one of the largest by the Soviet secret police and the Ministry for State Security (MfS) in the early days of the GDR. After his release in 1956, a survivor reported that "Junker alias Malkowski ... had been silent until the end" and, in contrast to Hieke and others, had not incriminated or betrayed anyone despite the "inhuman" imprisonment.

In a hearing on April 16, 1952 before the Soviet Military Tribunal (SMT) No. 48240, Malkowski was accused of having participated in a KgU leaflet campaign during the Leipzig Spring Fair in 1951 and the smuggling of the courier of the anti-Soviet, Ukrainian organization OUN through the GDR . The court in Weimar sentenced him to death by shooting for “ espionage , anti-Soviet activity and propaganda and membership in a counter-revolutionary organization” .

Malkowski was transported from Berlin-Lichtenberg via Brest-Litowsk to the Soviet Union in May 1952 . After the Supreme Soviet had refused Malkowskis clemency on 26 June 1952 the death sentence was on July 4, 1952 at the Moscow Butyrka -Gefängnis enforced . Malkowski's body was cremated and the ashes were anonymously buried in Moscow's Donskoy cemetery .

In July 1960 the Soviet embassy in Bonn informed Malkowski's mother that her son had "died in Soviet custody in 1952".

Similar fates

Volker Bartsch: "Perspectives"

The same fate as Malkowski suffered the nine Berlin students Günter Beggerow (1928–1952), Fritz Flatow (1930–1952), Kurt Helmar Neuhaus (1924–1951), Aegidius Niemz (1929–1952), Friedrich Prautsch (1929–1952), Peter Püschel (1927–1951), Werner Schneider (1922–1951), Wolf Utecht and Karl-Heinz Wille (1923–1952). All were sentenced to death by SMT No. 48240 and deported to the Soviet Union for execution .

On the campus of Freie Universität Berlin, the bronze sculpture “Perspektiven” by Volker Bartsch has been a reminder since 2007 that “ten of the first student members at Freie Universität paid for their commitment to freedom of teaching and science with their lives”.

Something similar happened in other regions of the GDR, such as the case of Arno Esch in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania .

literature

  • Enrico Heitzer: "Affair Walter". The forgotten wave of arrests. Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-940938-11-4 , pp. 67-69.
  • Arsenij Roginskij, Jörg Rudolph, Frank Drauschke, Anne Kaminsky (eds.): Shot in Moscow ... The German victims of Stalinism in the Moscow Donskoye cemetery 1950–1953 . 2nd Edition. Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-938690-14-3 , p. 256.
  • Jörg Rudolph, Frank Drauschke, Alexander Sachse: executed in Moscow. Victims of Stalinism from Berlin 1950–1953. 2007 (= series of publications by the Berlin State Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR, No. 23). The Berlin State Commissioner for the Documents of the State Security Service of the Former GDR, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-934085-26-8 , p. 107, berlin.de (PDF; 3.1 MB) More at the homepage of Facts & Files - factsandfiles .com
  • Jochen Staadt : Don't forget them! In: Journal of the SED State Research Association. 24/2008, pp. 60-79.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Staadt quoted from Malkowski's application for a place at the Free University, p. 77
  2. ↑ Staadt quoted from a letter from the SPD party executive to the KgU on September 5, 1950, p. 77
  3. ^ On the activities of the KgU in the years 1948–1951 among Saxon schoolchildren and Leipzig students, see Waldemar Krönig and Klaus-Dieter Müller: Adaptation, Resistance, Persecution. University and students in the Soviet occupation zone and GDR 1945–1961 . Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, Cologne 1994, ISBN 3-8046-8806-3 , pp. 266-268
  4. ↑ On the problem of espionage, see Heitzer pp. 14-17, with further information
  5. ↑ Heitzer, p. 68
  6. ↑ The information on Malkowski's studies is taken from the Small Chronicle of the FU web.fu-berlin.de
  7. ^ Staadt, p. 71, from a KgU dossier created in 1956
  8. ^ Report of the agency to the KgU of May 13, 1950, cited above. in Heitzer, p. 68
  9. ↑ Staadt cited from assessment notices of October 19, 1950 and March 3, 1951 from the Malkowski's DHfP file, p. 78
  10. ^ Staadt, p. 71, dossier, there also the time of Malkowski's last appearance in March 1951
  11. ↑ Heitzer, p. 61 on removal, 67 on termination; also Gerhard Finn: doing nothing is murder. The fighting group against inhumanity - KgU. Westkreuz-Verlag, Bad Münstereifel 2000, ISBN 3-929592-54-1 , p. 84
  12. ↑ On the "Walter affair" see Heitzer (literature list), p. 113ff .; Staadt is critical of this, especially pp. 71–73
  13. ↑ For the rather small proportion of the MfS, see Heitzer, p. 13.
  14. ↑ Staadt, p. 72f. (with wrong date of arrest: September "1956" instead of correct "1951")
  15. ↑ Arsenij Roginskij, Jörg Rudolph, Frank Drauschke, Anne Kaminsky (eds.): Shot in Moscow ... The German victims of Stalinism in the Moscow Donskoye cemetery 1950–1953 . 2nd Edition. Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-938690-14-3 , p. 256.
  16. ↑ Arsenij Roginskij, Jörg Rudolph, Frank Drauschke, Anne Kaminsky (eds.): Shot in Moscow ... The German victims of Stalinism in the Moscow Donskoye cemetery 1950–1953 . 2nd Edition. Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-938690-14-3 , p. 32
  17. ↑ an article about Flatow by Jochen Staadt can be found in the 2018 edition of the FU magazine "Fundiert", see A Student for Freedom , accessed September 30, 2019
  18. ↑ Short biographies in Roginsky (list of literature)
  19. ^ So Dieter Lenzen , the President of the Free University of Berlin. FU press release No. 193/2007 of September 6, 2007
personal data
SURNAME Malkowski, Günter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German dissident
DATE OF BIRTH October 25, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 4th July 1952
Place of death Moscow