Heinz Engelhardt (MfS employee)

Heinz Engelhardt (born February 9, 1944 in Angerapp ) is a former major general in the Ministry for State Security (MfS) of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). From 1987 to 1990 he was district administration manager of the MfS in Frankfurt (Oder) and in 1989/90 he was head of the GDR's Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which emerged from parts of the MfS and only existed for a short time.

Life

Engelhardt, the son of an electrician , was relocated from East Prussia to the Soviet occupation zone in Klingenthal after the Second World War . He attended primary school from 1950 to 1958 and the extended secondary school in Klingenthal from 1958 to 1962 . As a student he became a member of the FDJ , GST , DTSB and DSF .

Engelhardt became an employee of the MfS in Karl-Marx-Stadt after graduating from high school in 1962 . In the same year he joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). From 1968 to 1974 he completed a distance learning course at the university of the Ministry for State Security in Potsdam-Eiche and became a qualified lawyer . In 1970 Engelhardt became head of the travel and tourism division of the MfS district administration in Karl-Marx-Stadt , in 1971 head of the Reichenbach district office and in 1976 head of department XX, responsible for "State apparatus, culture, churches and underground" of the Karl-Marx district administration -City. Engelhardt became head of the Karl-Marx-Stadt district office in 1984 and was promoted to colonel in 1985 .

In June 1986 Engelhardt became an officer for special tasks in the district administration (BV) Frankfurt (Oder) and worked into his new function as the future head of the BV. On January 22, 1987, he was introduced as the successor to Herbert Stöß by Minister Erich Mielke as head of the BV. Soon afterwards he became a member of the district leadership of the SED and was appointed major general by the chairman of the National Defense Council of the GDR , Erich Honecker .

When the Office for National Security (AfNS) was set up in November 1989 at the turnaround and the peaceful revolution in the GDR , Wolfgang Schwanitz , then head of the Office for National Security, had proposed Engelhardt, the youngest Stasi general at the age of 45, as his deputy. While 85 management cadres were retired from the service, heads of district administrations and heads of main departments, Engelhardt remained in office. As deputy head of the AfNS and head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Engelhardt was supposed to set up a modern protection of the constitution from December 1989, which never came about. On January 15, 1990 he was commissioned by Prime Minister Hans Modrow to dissolve the State Security. After Lothar de Maizière took office , he remained an advisor for the dissolution until May 1990.

From June 1990 he was unemployed, later he retrained as a commercial clerk and worked as a branch manager in the Berlin travel company albion-tours founded by MfS officers.

Publications

• with Edgar Braun , Günter Möller , Gerhard Niebling : A necessary recommendation for gleaning . In: Reinhard Grimmer, Werner Irmler , Willi Opitz , Wolfgang Schwanitz (eds.): Security. For the defense work of the MfS . Volume 1. 3., suppl. And corr. Ed., Edition Ost, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-360-01044-2 , pp. 38–43.
• with Peter Böhm : The last man. Countdown for the MfS . Edition Ost, 2019, ISBN 978-3-360-01889-2 .

literature

• Jens Gieseke :  Heinz Engelhardt . 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. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin, 2nd, reviewed and expanded edition, April 2012, ISBN 978-3-86153-681-9 , p. 77.
• Bernd Florath: The powerlessness of the almighty. Ch. Links Verlag, 1992, ISBN 978-3-861-53039-8 , p. 232 ( limited preview in Google book search).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from March 27, 2015 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.  
2. ↑ It just doesn't work without us, Stasi General Heinz Engelhardt on the dissolution of the Mielke troop . In: Der Spiegel . No. 6 , 1990, pp. 62-63 ( online ).
3. ↑ Peter Wensierski: Stasi dissolver Heinz Engelhardt Der Spiegel, April 2019
4. ↑ Was Head of Stasi: Heinz Engelhardt, In: Der Oberlandesspiegel , Frankfurt (Oder), September 10, 2009.