Heinz Keßler

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Heinz Keßler (1988)

Heinz Keßler (born January 26, 1920 in Lauban ; † May 2, 2017 in Berlin ) was a German army general and politician of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). He was a member of the Council of Ministers of the GDR , Minister for National Defense and a member of the People's Chamber of the GDR . He was a member of the SED Central Committee, the Politburo and the National Defense Council of the GDR . In the wall rifle trials , he was sentenced to seven and a half years imprisonment for manslaughter .

Life

Heinz Keßler visiting the troops, 1968

Heinz Keßler was born into a working-class family in Lauban in Silesia . His parents moved to Chemnitz in 1923 . They were communists and were imprisoned several times in concentration camps during the National Socialist era . He attended elementary school and became a member of the Jungspartakusbund . From 1934 to April 1937 he learned the trade of a machinist and worked as such until 1940.

Military career

On November 15, 1940, Keßler was drafted into the Wehrmacht and trained as a machine gunner. In the spring of 1941 he came with the 134th Infantry Division to the Generalgouvernement in Petrikau . After further training, he went with the division to their starting position for the Barbarossa company near Białystok in June 1941 .

Three weeks after the start of the war against the Soviet Union , he defected to the Red Army on July 15, 1941 and was initially taken prisoner by the Soviets . As a result of his conversion, he was sentenced to death by the Reich Court Martial as a deserter and his mother, Hedwig Keßler, was imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp from 1941 to 1945 .

He was first taken to camp 27 in Krasnogorsk near Moscow, then with the defector Franz Gold to Spasso-Zavodsk near Karaganda in Kazakhstan . There he met Heinz Hoffmann . With Gold and Hoffmann, he received a five-month training at the newly created Antifa school in Gorki . Together with gold he was employed in POW camp 27 and then an employee of the 7th administration of the political headquarters of the Red Army. In December 1942 he was deployed to the front in Velikiye Luki for the first time . Gold and Keßler were ordered to Krasnogorsk after further missions at the front to co-found the National Committee Free Germany (NKFD). Together with the other co-founders of the NKFD, Keßler signed the manifesto of July 12, 1943. There he was involved as one of the most important youth functionaries and as a front officer on the Brjansk Front . In this role he called on German soldiers to defend.

Heinz Keßler (right) and Erich Honecker (2nd from right), August 5, 1947

Return to Germany

In May 1945 he returned to the conquered Berlin as a member of the Red Army, where he met his mother again after a long time. In 1945 Keßler was a member of the Central Anti-Fascist Youth Committee and in 1946 one of the founding members of the Free German Youth (FDJ). He joined the Communist Party at that in 1946 with the SPD for SED united . In the same year he became a member of the party executive committee of the SED, from 1950 Central Committee (ZK) of the SED . From 1948 to 1950 he was secretary of the Central Council of the FDJ. During this time he also took part in agitation missions in the Federal Republic of Germany ("I tried to agitate the youth associations and to win them over to stand up with us against the Paris Treaties ").

Entry into the armed organs of the GDR

On November 1, 1950, Keßler joined the armed organs of the GDR . Here he was until 1952 in the rank of inspector general, head of the People's Police-Luft (VP-Luft, code name Administration of the Aeroclubs). As a result of the first structural changes, his post was changed from 1952 to 1953 to Deputy Minister of the Interior and Chief of the VP Air . His rank was from October 1, 1952 Major General . Further structural reforms led to another name change until 1955, now head of VP-Luft , the predecessor organization of the NVA Air Force.

From December 1955 to autumn 1956, Keßler completed general staff training at the General Staff Academy of the USSR "Kliment Voroshilov" in Moscow. During this time, Major General Heinz-Bernhard Zorn , a former Air Force major i. G. of the Wehrmacht, temporarily at the head of the NVA air force .

General of the NVA and Minister of Defense

Promotions

Keßler with Walter Ulbricht in 1966
Generals Stechbarth (left) and Keßler (right) in their GAZ-13 Tschaika parade vehicles at the NVA parade on the 39th anniversary of the GDR (1988)

When the NVA was founded on March 1, 1956, Keßler was appointed Deputy Minister for National Defense. From September 1, 1956, he again took over command of the air forces of the National People's Army . After the amalgamation of the air forces and air defense on June 1, 1957 to form the Air Force / Air Defense Command (Kdo. LSK / LV), Keßler became deputy minister and head of the LSK / LV . Major General Zorn, his proven deputy and chief of staff from the time of the CIP air , was to stand by him again as a second man, but was transferred to the Friedrich Engels Military Academy in Dresden. On October 1, 1959, Keßler was promoted to lieutenant general; on March 1, 1966 as colonel general .

From March 1967 to 1978 was Heinz Kessler Deputy Minister and Chief of the Main Staff in the then Ministry of National Defense in Strausberg. He was then a member of the Military Council of the United High Command of the Warsaw Pact , based in Moscow. From 1979 to 1985 he was Deputy Minister for National Defense and Head of the Main Political Administration .

On December 3, 1985, Keßler took over the office of Defense Minister from the late Heinz Hoffmann . In 1986 he became a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED . In October 1989, Keßler was considered the greatest "risk post" by the group of officials around Egon Krenz , who were preparing the removal of Erich Honecker . He was in Nicaragua when Honecker was forced to withdraw on October 17 by a majority in the Politburo. Since then, Keßler has repeatedly stated that he “never agreed” to this. Coming straight from the airport, he took part in the plenary meeting of the Central Committee the following day, at which Honecker asked for the release of all functions “for health reasons”. The dismayed Kessler agreed, he broke off an improvised speech after several annoying interjections - among others from Günter Schabowski , Harry Tisch and Kurt Hager  . According to Keßler's view, expressed later, a faction had formed in the SED leadership at this point: “It was made up of gullible believers, including Krenz, because he obviously really believed that perestroika and glasnost were one way, and others who were never communists who were never really connected to our cause, including Schabowski, Schürer, Tisch and two or three others. "

Resignation, dismissal and expulsion from the party

On November 17, 1989, Keßler resigned and was released from the NVA. On 20./21. In January 1990 he was expelled from the SED-PDS on the grounds of representing an “anti-Soviet stance” . What was meant, however, was that he was against Gorbachev's reform program .

On January 24, 1990, Keßler was arrested on charges of being responsible for the "waste of national wealth" amounting to 80,000 marks . Keßler wrote in his memoir that he had been told “that the Ministry of Defense, like other ministries, had a hunting area . I never bothered about it because I didn't care. [...] I am responsible for this waste of national wealth. ”Until April 1990 he remained in custody in the former remand prison of the MfS in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen .

Manslaughter conviction

Like the rest of the leadership of the GDR, Keßler always denied the order to shoot at the inner-German border . In an interview with the weekly newspaper Die Zeit on September 30, 1988, he said: “It never - never! - given an order to shoot. There is no such thing now, I ask you to relieve myself of it [...] ”. After the end of the GDR, he and former party leaders and the other members of the National Defense Council of the GDR had to answer for the order before the Berlin Regional Court from November 1992 after he had been in custody in 1991/92. On September 16, 1993, he was in the wall protecting processes to a seven and a half year prison sentence for incitement to manslaughter sentenced. On July 26, 1994, the judgment was upheld by the Federal Court of Justice , but Keßler was classified as an indirect perpetrator of the manslaughter. In spring 1998 he was released on parole from the Hakenfelde prison in Berlin for health reasons.

After imprisonment

Even after German reunification, he justified the rule of the SED. In 2009 he joined the DKP . Until his death he was connected to former GDR cadres and functionaries who paid tribute to each other in associations and publications. For the Berlin House of Representatives election in 2011 he ran unsuccessfully on the DKP's list. Keßler lived with his wife Ruth († 2013) in the Berlin district of Lichtenberg until their death . Most recently he lived in a Catholic care facility in Berlin-Karlshorst . Keßler's urn was buried next to his wife's in the Baumschulenweg cemetery in Berlin .

Orders and awards

Keßler received the Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold (1965) and the bar of honor for this, the Scharnhorst Order (1969 and two more times), the Order of the Patriotic War (1970), the Order of the October Revolution (1976) and the Karl Marx Order (1979).

Fonts

literature

Web links

Commons : Heinz Keßler  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Matthias Uhl : Heinz Keßler - Honecker's political general. In: Hans Ehlert , Armin Wagner (Ed.): Comrade General! The GDR military elite in biographical sketches. Ch. Links, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-86153-312-X , pp. 421-454, here p. 422 f. ; Gottfried Hamacher u. a .: Against Hitler. Germans in the Resistance, in the armed forces of the anti-Hitler coalition and the "Free Germany" movement. Short biographies. (= Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Manuscripts. ) Volume 53. Dietz, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-320-02941-X , p. 99 f. (PDF; 894 kB) .
  2. ↑ You were the perpetrator. In: The time . July 29, 1994.
  3. ↑ Hans Ehlert and Armin Wagner: The military elite of the GDR in a life-history perspective. In: Hans Ehlert, Armin Wagner (ed.): “Comrade General! The military elite of the GDR in biographical sketches ”. Ch.links, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-86153-312-X , p. 7.
  4. ↑ Heinz Keßler: "One of the most beautiful days of my life": Heinz Keßler remembers the reunion with his mother in June 1945. Association of Germans in the Resistance, in the armed forces of the anti-Hitler coalition and the Free Germany Movement. V. Retrieved August 10, 2011.
  5. ↑ The generals and admirals of the NVA. Military history of the GDR: A biographical handbook, p. 122. Ed. Military history research office by Rüdiger Wenzke , Klaus Froh.
  6. ↑ The generals and admirals of the NVA. Military history of the GDR: A biographical handbook, p. 122. Ed. Military history research office by Rüdiger Wenzke , Klaus Froh.
  7. ↑ The generals and admirals of the NVA. Military history of the GDR: A biographical handbook, p. 122. Ed. Military history research office by Rüdiger Wenzke , Klaus Froh.
  8. ↑ Hans-Hermann Hertle, Gerd-Rüdiger Stephan: The last days of the Central Committee of the SED. Introduction and historical overview. In this. (Ed.): The end of the SED. The last days of the Central Committee. 4th edition. Berlin 1999, p. 57.
  9. ↑ Heinz Keßler: The last days of the SED and the German Democratic Republic (copy of an interview with Heinz Keßler). In: Erich Buchholz (among others): Under fire. The counter-revolution in the GDR. Hanover 2009, p. 101.
  10. ↑ See Stephan Hertle: End of the SED , pp. 127–130.
  11. ↑ See Keßler: Die last Tage , p. 106.
  12. ↑ Exclusion. The Politburo in front of the party court
  13. ↑ Bernd-Rainer Barth , Helmut Müller-Enbergs :  Keßler, Heinz . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  14. ↑ a b Lena Marg: Krenz, Schabowski and the others: Heinz Keßler: The man who denied the order to shoot. In: Focus . April 17, 2012.
  15. ↑ See Keßler: The Last Days , p. 103.
  16. ^ Criminal justice and GDR injustice: Violent acts on the German-German border, p. 599 ff .; Justice: The punishment of the fatal shots. In: n-tv.de . August 8, 2001.
  17. ↑ Eckhard Jesse : Facts and realizations, no myths and legends. In: Federal Center for Political Education . October 10, 2011.
  18. ↑ “It never - never! - given an order to shoot ”. In: The time . May 2017.
  19. ↑ Heinz Keßler: The man who denied the shooting order. In: Focus . 2011.
  20. ↑ Steffen Könau: Bowed, but undeterred: Ex-Defense Minister Heinz Keßler died at the age of 97. In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung . May 4, 2017; Former GDR Vice Minister Streletz turns 90 - lectures and trips. In: Leipziger Volkszeitung . 26th September 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Kessler, Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SED), MdV, Minister for National Defense
DATE OF BIRTH January 26, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Lauban
DATE OF DEATH 2nd May 2017
Place of death Berlin