Helmut Hackenberg

Helmut Hackenberg (born March 2, 1926 in Opole , Upper Silesia, † April 25, 1999 ) was a German SED functionary. From 1963 to 1971 he was first secretary of the SED city leadership in Magdeburg and from 1971 to 1989 second secretary of the SED district leadership in Leipzig .

Life until 1989

The worker's son attended elementary and middle school. In 1940 he began an apprenticeship as a car mechanic, which was followed by admission to a non-commissioned officer school that same year. After four years of training, Hackenberg was committed to military service in 1944, which ended for him in 1945 when he was captured by Soviet troops in the ČSR .

Hackenberg joined the KPD in 1945 . After the forced unification of the SPD and KPD in 1946, this entry into the party was followed by membership in the SED and until 1951 as a volunteer at the Dessau Insurance Company. Since 1951 Helmut Hackenberg has been an instructor for the SED state leadership in Saxony-Anhalt . After the dissolution of the federal states in the GDR, he took on the function of department head organization / management in the newly founded SED district management in Magdeburg in 1952. Parallel to this activity, Hackenberg studied at the SED party college. He finished his studies in 1957 as a social scientist . A little later, he studied at a technical college, which he graduated as an engineer-economist.

In 1963, Hackenberg rose to become the first secretary of the SED city administration in Magdeburg. In 1971 he changed to the position of second secretary in the SED district leadership in Leipzig. Between the incumbent since 1970, first secretary of the SED district leadership Leipzig Horst Schumann and since 1971 Acting General Secretary of the SED Erich Honecker there was political and personal differences that ultimately led to the cold position of Horst Schumann. The often hesitant politician was not replaced because he benefited from the fame of his father Georg Schumann, which he acquired as the head of the largest communist resistance group against National Socialism, the so-called Schumann-Engert-Kresse Group . Because of his poor health, Horst Schumann was often unable to exercise his function, especially in the 1980s, so that his representative Helmut Hackenberg was considered the actual SED ruler in the Leipzig district. Hackenberg also belonged to the editorial collective of the SED magazine " Einheit ". In 1977 he received the GDR Patriotic Order of Merit .

October 9, 1989 in Leipzig

The Leipzig Monday demonstrations began on September 4, 1989, during which demonstrators were arrested every week. Helmut Hackenberg, who represented Schumann, who fell ill again, wrote to Egon Krenz at the beginning of October : "The secretariat of the district operations management has made an assessment of the current situation and has taken all necessary measures to nip possible provocations in the bud."

In order to document the events on October 9, 1989 , Hackenberg ordered the recording of the deployment of the security forces on GDR television. After the bloody suppression of the student protests on Beijing's Tian'anmen Square , the people of Leipzig feared a “ Chinese solution ”. The fear of the population was fueled by the print of a letter from the commander of the combat group "Hans Geiffert", who wrote in the Leipziger Volkszeitung : "We are ready and willing to effectively protect what has been created by and with our hands in order to prevent these counter-revolutionary actions finally and effectively to stop. If need be, gun in hand! ”On October 2nd and 7th, 1989, police already used violence against demonstrators.

That evening, Hackenberg was part of the SED district leadership, where he heard about the situation in the city center over a telephone. After the prayers for peace in the Nikolaikirche , 70,000 people gathered and walked over the Georgiring to the main station . On the city ​​radio , the Gewandhauskapellmeister Kurt Masur read the call of the " Leipzig Six ", which included the three SED functionaries Kurt Meyer, Hans-Joachim Pommert and Roland Wötzel .

The police chief realized that the prepared measures were not feasible for 70,000 people and therefore prevented the use of police and security forces against the demonstrators. He informed Hackenberg, who called Egon Krenz and told him that the demonstration was peaceful and that the police units had been withdrawn. Krenz accepted the decision of the SED district leadership in Leipzig and Hackenberg thereupon instructed all police and security forces “not to take any active actions against people if there are no anti-state activities and attacks against security forces, objects and facilities”. During the 9th meeting of the Central Committee of the SED on October 18, 1989, at which it was decided to remove Honecker as General Secretary of the SED, the Minister of Culture Hans-Joachim Hofmann called for Horst Schumann to be removed from his position as 1st Secretary of the SED District Management Leipzig. Under the leadership of Egon Krenz, the Politburo of the SED decided to replace Schumann with the reform-oriented Roland Wötzel. Hackenberg, who was seen as a potential successor to Schumann, had to end his political career on November 4, 1989 as a result of the disempowerment of the former SED district leadership.

In the last years of his life, the former SED functionary answered questions about the events of October 9, 1989. In January 1999, at a contemporary history forum in Magdeburg, he claimed: “We never intended to shoot demonstrators.” And: “ We had the will to bring the Monday demonstration to a peaceful end. There was an express order to move out without weapons. "

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Ralf Geissler: Politics October 9, 1989. The SED wants to smash the opposition in Leipzig by force. In: Der Tagesspiegel , October 8, 1999.
2. ↑ Working people in the district demand: no longer tolerate public hostility. In: Leipziger Volkszeitung , October 6, 1989, p. 2.
3. ↑ Mario Niemann , Andreas Herbst :  Hackenberg, Helmut . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .