Gerhard Lauter

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Gerhard Lauter (born April 9, 1950 in Dresden ) is a former officer of the People's Police and from July 1, 1989 until reunification was the main department head for passport and registration in the Ministry of the Interior of the GDR . In this role he played a central role in the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.

Education and career

Gerhard Lauter, the son of SED functionary Hans Lauter , studied law at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig. In the years after 1976 he was a criminalist and responsible for building up the 9th People's Police Company (anti-terrorist unit) in the German People's Police (DVP). Later he was personal assistant to the first deputy of the Minister of the Interior of the GDR and chief investigator of the DVP. In 1985 he became the chief investigator of the GDR criminal police. On July 1, 1989, he took over as the successor to Major General Günther Fischer, the position of head of the Passport and Registration Department in the Ministry of the Interior of the GDR. His last rank was Colonel VP.

The travel regulations of November 9, 1989

On November 8, 1989, Lauter received the order from Interior Minister Friedrich Dickel to draw up a resolution to change the situation of GDR citizens permanently leaving for the FRG via the CSSR . The regulation itself should exclusively regulate the final leaving of the GDR ("permanent departure"). In preliminary talks with his employees, Lauter came to the conclusion that it was absurd to draft a regulation solely for “permanent departure” while those who wanted to stay in the GDR were denied visiting trips.

On the morning of November 9th, Major General Gotthard Hubrich (Head of the Internal Affairs Department) and the two Stasi men, Colonel Hans-Joachim Krüger and Colonel Udo Lemme , arrived in Lauter's office to draft the ordinance together with Lauter . At Lauter's suggestion, they inserted the paragraph in the middle of the "permanent departure" regulation that would later form the basis for the fall of the Berlin Wall:

“Private trips abroad can be applied for without the existence of any prerequisites (reasons for travel and family relationships). The permits are granted at short notice. Reasons for refusal are only used in special exceptional cases. "

The drafted paper was passed on to two places: to the Central Committee of the SED and - via the Ministry of the Interior - to the Council of Ministers of the GDR . It consisted of three documents: a press release, a political decision and a draft regulation of the Council of Ministers of the GDR. According to his own statements, he hoped that the SED Politburo would not understand the implications. He saw this as the only way to stabilize the GDR. Following the approval of the SED Politburo, all 44 ministers of the GDR should approve the resolution proposed by Lauter by 7 p.m. on the same day. Until the handover to Günter Schabowski , the objection period had not expired, nor had all the members of the Council of Ministers agreed. A blocking period of 4 a.m. the following day contained in the press release was the only sentence on the second page of the press release. On November 9, 1989, at a press conference at around 6:54 p.m. , the newly installed media officer, Schabowski, read the decision that Egon Krenz had given him without explanation, without having taken note of the blocking notice. Lauter himself heard about the breakdown of the early publication from his son after going to the theater at around 10:00 p.m., whereupon he immediately drove to the Ministry of the Interior and ran the crisis management there overnight.

Without the additional paragraph in the ordinance initiated by Lauter, the fall of the Berlin Wall in the form it was then on November 9, 1989 would not have come about.

At the extraordinary party congress of the SED in December 1989 he was elected to the SED Arbitration Commission.

After the turn

After the reunification, Lauter worked for several commercial companies, worked as a consultant for an airline and, together with his wife, ran the law firm Lauter & Lauter in Leipzig, specializing in labor law and social law , until 2012 . Today he is a member of the party Die Linke in Leipzig and is active there on the city council.

Works

  • Gerhard Lauter: Chief investigator: The top investigator of the K in the GDR reports , 1st edition. Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 2012. ISBN 978-3-36001-826-7 .

literature

  • Hans-Hermann Hertle : Chronicle of the fall of the wall. The dramatic events around November 9, 1989 , 11th edition. Ch. Links, Berlin 2009. ISBN 978-3-86153-541-6 .
  • Hans-Hermann Hertle: The fall of the wall. The unintended self-dissolution of the SED state , 2nd edition. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1999. ISBN 3-531-32927-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Brief presentation ( Memento of the original from November 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Gerhard Lauters at Eulenspiegel-Verlag .  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.edition-ost.de
  2. ↑ Andreas Herbst (eds.), Winfried Ranke, Jürgen Winkler: This is how the GDR worked. Volume 1: Lexicon of organizations and institutions, departmental union management , League for Friendship between Nations (= rororo-Handbuch. Vol. 6348). Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-499-16348-9 , p. 223.
  3. ^ Leipzig: The fall of the wall. Accident or calculation? ( Memento of the original from February 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Vita of Gerhard Lauter  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.linke-bueros.de
  4. ↑ Der Spiegel , issue 45, November 2, 2009: The night of the wild boar (author: Cordt Schnibben), page 57.
  5. ^ A sentence that will make history, Spiegel Online from November 9, 2004
  6. ↑ Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk : The "Grenzfall" and its causes . May 5, 2009.
  7. ↑ Interview: Tina von Löhneysen with Gerhard Lauter in the ARD morning magazine on November 9, 2009 at 8:42 a.m. (Video 00:14:46)
  8. ↑ It was the Volk Spiegel Online from October 22, 1990
  9. ^ New Germany of December 11, 1989
  10. ↑ Stefan Locke: "And by the way: The border is open". In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . November 9, 2013, accessed November 9, 2014 .
  11. ↑ Die Linke: City Association and Leipzig
personal data
SURNAME Louder, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German administrative lawyer; involved in the drafting of the new GDR travel regulations of November 9, 1989
DATE OF BIRTH April 9, 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden