Heinrich Folk

Heinrich Folk (born July 7, 1919 in Hindenburg ( Upper Silesia ), † May 21, 1980 ) was a colonel in the Ministry for State Security (MfS) of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). From 1952 to 1954 he was the district administration manager of the MfS in Schwerin and later in East Berlin a senior staff member of the Central Enlightenment Administration (HVA), the GDR's foreign intelligence service.

Life

Folk, the son of a miner, trained as a technical draftsman after elementary school and worked in this profession until 1939. After a brief employment at the post office, he was drafted into the German Wehrmacht in 1940 and fought in World War II . In 1943 he defected to the Red Army , returned to the Wehrmacht undercover as a Soviet agent, but in 1944 he was again taken prisoner by the Soviets. After attending the Antifa school , he tried to convince German soldiers to defend as a reconnaissance officer for the Red Army and was seriously wounded. Folk stayed in the Soviet Union until 1947 and taught German prisoners of war at an Antifa school.

After his return to Germany, Folk became an employee of the German People's Police (DVP) in Berlin in the Political Culture Department in 1948 , and in 1949 a teacher at the Prora police school . In 1949 he joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), and in 1950 he was employed by the MfS.

Initially, Folk was deputy head of Department VII of the Mecklenburg state administration, responsible for "safeguarding" the police and the Ministry of the Interior (MdI) and from 1951 head of Department IV, responsible for counter-espionage. After the administrative reform and the abolition of the states in the GDR in the summer of 1952, he became head of the newly formed MfS district administration in Schwerin in August 1952 .

In 1954 Folk moved to the HVA in East Berlin, where he became the deputy head of Department II, responsible for counter-espionage. In 1956 he became deputy head of Department I, responsible for political espionage, and in 1959, Head of Department I, responsible for the "State Apparatus of the Federal Republic of Germany". He remained in this capacity until his retirement in 1968. In 1960 Folk was promoted to colonel.

Honors

• 1979 Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold (GDR)

literature

• Jens Gieseke :  Heinrich Folk . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Jens Gieseke: Who was who in the Ministry for State Security (MfS manual) . BStU. Berlin 2012. ( Online )
• Roger Engelmann, Bernd Florath , Helge Heidemeyer, Daniela Münkel, Arno Polzin, Walter Süß : The MfS Lexicon. 3. updated edition, Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86153-900-1 , page 94, bstu.de .

Web links

• MfS lexicon: Heinrich Folk