Gordian Meyer-Plath

Gordian Meyer-Plath at a panel discussion in Dresden, 2015

Gordian Meyer-Plath (born August 7, 1968 in Karlsruhe ) is a former German intelligence service. From August 1, 2013 to June 30, 2020 he was President of the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Saxony .

Life

Study and family

After graduating from high school in Koenigswinter in 1987 , he studied Medieval Studies , Modern History , American Studies and Public Law at the University of Bonn and the University of Sussex in Brighton from 1987 to 1993 . He is an old man of the Marchia Bonn fraternity , to which he has been a member since his student days. Meyer-Plath is married and has two children.

Protection of the Constitution Brandenburg

After his exams in December 1993, Meyer-Plath, under the impression of the wave of right-wing violence at the time, applied himself to the Brandenburg Constitutional Protection , which was to be filled with humanities scholars at the instigation of the state government in the field of right-wing extremism. From April 1994 he worked in the constitution protection department of the Brandenburg Ministry of the Interior. He started as a consultant for right-wing extremism in the “Evaluation of Political Extremism”, then became deputy head of the “Procurement of Political Extremism” unit and later head of the “Evaluation and Procurement of Political Extremism” unit. In 2007 he took part in the six-month seminar for security policy at the Federal Academy for Security Policy (BAKS). In 2008 he was the representative of the state in the German Islam Conference (while the state of Brandenburg was chairing the conference of interior ministers ) .

In April 2013, when the first Bundestag Committee of Inquiry terrorist group NSU the role of undercover agent examined -Wesens was Meyer-Plath for his role as an undercover agent leader of Carsten Szczepanski (alias "Piatto" or Plato) at LFV Brandenburg heard. The "Piatto" case was so explosive because it had reported to the Brandenburg LfV in August 1998 that a Blood & Honor guide from Chemnitz had been commissioned to procure weapons for the trio, which later became known as the National Socialist Underground . The decisive hint was given in connection with a meeting of “Piattos” with his second undercover agent, Reinhard G. Beate Zschäpe , Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt went into hiding in 1998 and lived unrecognized for years in Chemnitz and Zwickau in Saxony. However, the information about the three was never passed on to the Thuringian police who were looking for them. On February 15, 1995, Szczepanski was sentenced to eight years imprisonment for the attempted murder of a black African and had applied to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution with a postcard in 1994. In the meantime he would no longer hire such a criminal as an undercover agent, said Meyer-Plath and pointed out: “I was a newbie at the time and I lacked the standards for the moral evaluation of the case”. The chairman of the left-wing parliamentary group in the Brandenburg NSU investigative committee, Volkmar Schöneburg, accused Meyer-Plath of making false statements before the committee. Schöneburg also accused Meyer-Plath of helping the neo-Nazi Szczepanski, who had been convicted of attempted murder, in prison to produce the neo-Nazi fanzine "United Skins" , which he published from 1992 to 1999 , for the militant Nazi scene.

Research Associate in the Bundestag

On November 1, 1998, Meyer-Plath changed to work as a research assistant for the CDU politician Katherina Reiche, who was first drafted into the Bundestag . He returned to the Brandenburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution on April 17, 2001.

Protection of the Constitution of Saxony

With effect from August 15, 2012, he was appointed President of the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Saxony , provisionally seconded for six months . On June 25, 2013, the Saxon state government appointed him President , effective August 1, 2013 at the suggestion of Markus Ulbig . Its predecessor was the because of inconsistencies in the investigation into the murder of the right-terrorist NSU resigned Reinhard Boos . As a consequence of the mishaps of the secret service, the agency was restructured. Meyer-Plath should introduce transparency and a change of philosophy.

Meyer-Plath came under fire in June 2014 because of his membership in the Marchia Bonn fraternity . He had reported for the first time in an interview on June 13, 2014 that he was there, old man , and had not previously made it public because he considered it a “private matter”, namely as “an expression of my private commitment to society and democracy”, the “ not relevant in all professional contexts ". The opposition in the Saxon state parliament accused the government of ignoring the “right-wing extremism of fraternities” and considered the proximity of fraternities and security services to be problematic. The opposition criticized the fact that the "annual small inquiries about right-wing extremist activities at Saxon universities" regularly gave no information about fraternities' events.

On June 30th, 2020 it was announced that Meyer-Plath is no longer head of the Saxon Office for the Protection of the Constitution and will be appointed to the State Ministry for Science, Culture and Tourism on July 1st. The Saxon Interior Minister Roland Wöller did not justify the change. At the same time, it became known through the media that in the run-up to Meyer-Plath's replacement, the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution had been instructed to delete the data by Dirk-Martin Christian, Head of Department in the State Ministry of the Interior, for data from members of the Alternative for Germany , including four members of the State Parliament MEPs and three members of the Bundestag, including party chairman Tino Chrupalla , who opposed Meyer-Plath for weeks, are said to have passed. Christian had previously refused to declare the Pegida an observation case by the Saxon Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Dirk-Martin Christian has been the new head of the Saxon Office for the Protection of the Constitution since July 1, 2020.

literature

Hajo Funke , Micha Brumlik : On the way to the »deep state«? The Federal Republic and the superiority of the services. In: Sheets for German and international politics . Vol. 58, 2013, No. 8, pp. 77-84.
Stefan Aust , Dirk Laabs : Homeland Security. The state and the NSU series of murders. Pantheon, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-570-55202-5 , pp. 53–56 and 58–60 on Carsten Szczepanski and more often (preview) .
German Bundestag , 17th electoral term: Shorthand minutes of the 64th meeting of the 2nd committee of inquiry on Monday, April 15, 2013. Meyer-Plath's statement before the first NSU committee of inquiry (PDF) .

Web links

NSU Watch article dossier on Gordian Meyer-Plath

Individual evidence

↑ Old man at the secret service , Die Tageszeitung from June 13, 2014

↑ Meyer-Plath constitutional protector and fraternity , Berliner Zeitung from June 15, 2014

^ German Bundestag , 17th electoral term: Stenographic minutes of the 64th meeting of the 2nd committee of inquiry on Monday, April 15, 2013. p. 2 (PDF) .

^ V-Mann Piatto in the NSU complex: The knowing source. In: NSU-Watch , October 29, 2014; Konrad Litschko: NSU trial in Munich: The forgetful constitutional protector. In: Die Tageszeitung , July 1, 2015.

↑ Gordian Meyer-Plath says to V-Mann "Piatto". In: Bundestag.de , accessed on June 19, 2014.

↑ The protection of the constitution acted intolerably. In: Der Tagesspiegel , April 10, 2013.

↑ Christian Tretbar: Criminal engaged as an undercover agent - Meyer-Plath defends himself before the NSU investigative committee. In: Der Tagesspiegel , April 15, 2013.

↑ According to the NSU investigative committee: Accusation of false statements against Saxony's head of the protection of the constitution , Der Tagesspiegel, June 5, 2019

↑ German Bundestag , 17th electoral period: Shorthand minutes of the 64th meeting of the 2nd committee of inquiry on Monday, April 15, 2013. P. 7 f. (PDF) .