Herbert Grünstein

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Herbert Grünstein (born July 27, 1912 in Erfurt , †  January 9, 1992 in Berlin ) was a German communist resistance fighter against National Socialism . He was Lieutenant General and Deputy Minister of the Interior of the GDR .

Life

Grünstein was born as the third child of a Jewish family. His father came from a small town in the Rhön . He was a warehouse worker and later an employee. His mother came from Mülheim an der Ruhr . She worked as a housemaid and saleswoman. Grünstein attended elementary school from 1918 to 1921, and from 1921 to 1931 the Erfurt grammar school with Abitur. Under the influence of his father, who was a member of the SPD , he became a member of the SAJ , the youth association of the SPD , in 1928 . In 1930 he became a member of the KJVD and in August 1931 the KPD . As a political leader of the sub-district of Erfurt KJVD and member of the district leadership of the Communist Party of July 1932 to 1933, he worked closely with the organizing director of KJVD district headquarters Thuringia , Kurt Schneidewind together.

After the National Socialists seized power at the end of January 1933, he did illegal political work as an instructor for the KJVD district management in Thuringia. When he was supposed to be arrested on the night of the Reichstag fire on February 28, 1933, he was already in a different accommodation and thus avoided arrest. For this, his father was mistreated and temporarily arrested. His parents were later forced to emigrate to Palestine . They could only return to their old homeland, now the GDR , in 1950 . By decision of the party, he emigrated to Luxembourg in May 1933 . He then moved to the Saar region and was expelled from there to Luxembourg in 1934. In August 1935 he emigrated to Palestine and worked there as a farm and road worker. In 1935/36 he had contacts with the Communist Party of Palestine and did political work in the trade union and the aid to Spain .

In August 1936 he went to Spain and was a member of the Thälmann Battalion of the XI during the Spanish Civil War . International Brigade . He completed a four-week course in the spring of 1937 at the Pozo Rubio officers' school near Albacete with the appointment of lieutenant and certification as company commander. At the end of April 1937 he was assigned to a Spanish unit in Aragon with Walter Janka and Fritz Baumgärtel . He came to the 27th Division "Carlos Marx" near Almuniente and was used as a company commander and deputy battalion commander. He became a member of the Spanish Communist Party in 1938 and captain and battalion commander during the Battle of the Ebro . In October 1938 he was released from the Spanish army and taken to a demobilization camp in northern Catalonia . On October 28, 1938, he saw the interbrigadists bid farewell in Barcelona . On February 8, 1939, he crossed the French border with the mass of interbrigadists and was smuggled into the internment camp in Argelès-sur-Mer . In April 1939 he was moved to Gurs . On May 10, 1940, the day the German Wehrmacht invaded the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, he was deported to the Le Vernet internment camp and shipped to Algiers in November 1941 . From there he was transported to the Djelfa internment camp . After British-American troops landed in North Africa in November 1942, the French colonial administration in Algeria remained intact. Only after the communist MP in the British House of Commons William Gallacher raised his voice against the fact that anti-fascists were still imprisoned in the sphere of influence of the allied armies did the world public become aware of the situation of the internees. An attempt was made to persuade the internees to join the Foreign Legion , but it was then decided to deploy them in so-called work units until their whereabouts in the supply depots were finally clarified. In April 1943 he was able to leave Djelfa and worked in a fuel depot in the port of Algiers. On November 26, 1943, he began to emigrate to the Soviet Union. In December 1943 he reached Krasnovodsk in the Soviet Union via Cairo, Suez, Haifa, Baghdad, Basra, Tehran and Bender-Shah . He received training in Moscow in 1944 and was then entrusted with reconnaissance and defense tasks. He saw the end of the war on May 8, 1945 in Moscow.

On May 20, 1945 he was sent to the village of Talitsy near Juscha (about 300 km northeast of Moscow), where the POW camp 165 was located. Here he became a teacher at the Antifa School , which later became the Central School in 2041. As a class leader, he received Kurt Gossweiler as an assistant. At the school he met Paula Bessler (1913–1989), who worked in the management of the property and was later employed as a teacher. She was the oldest of nine siblings and had come to Talizy in 1943, where her brother worked as a teacher. They married and had their children Eva and Peter, a pair of twins, in November 1946. Grünstein became head of the German sector in 1947 and, after Robert Naumann was recalled, deputy head of the anti- fasc school that same year.

In September 1948 he and his family returned to Germany in the Soviet zone of occupation , where he initially worked in the SED party apparatus . In the management department of the central board, he was responsible for the deployment of the graduates of the Antifa schools and colleagues from the NKFD . By resolution of the secretariat of the SED party executive committee, he joined the German People's Police (DVP) on February 1, 1949 . He became an employee of the main department (HA) Polit-Kultur in the German Administration of the Interior (DVdI), initially as VP inspector and deputy to the head of HA Polit-Kultur and after the founding of the GDR as chief inspector and deputy to the head of HA Polit- Culture in the main administration of the German People's Police (HVDVP) in the Ministry of the Interior (MdI). In January 1951 he succeeded the deposed General Inspector Hans Klein as head of this department, which was renamed Political Administration in 1952. From September 1955 to 1957 he was deputy and from February 1957 to October 1973 1st deputy of the Minister of the Interior and at the same time State Secretary in the MdI . In July 1957 he was re-attested to major general by the chief inspector and promoted to lieutenant general on June 29, 1962 by decision of the GDR Council of Ministers.

From 1974 to 1984 he was deputy general secretary or secretary for international relations of the Society for German-Soviet Friendship (DSF), from 1976 to 1989 chairman of the Berlin district committee of the anti-fascist resistance fighters of the GDR and at the same time a member of the SED district leadership in Berlin. From 1953 to 1973 he was second chairman of the central management of the Dynamo sports association alongside Erich Mielke for 20 years .

Grünstein was a member of the board of the New Synagogue Berlin Foundation - Centrum Judaicum . He kept his Jewish identity hidden for a long time - also from his daughter Eva Neumann . Grünstein died at the age of 79. His urn was on the Central Cemetery in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde in the graves plant for the victims and persecuted by the Nazi regime buried ,, where his wife Paula (daughter of the Romanian Foreign Minister Ana Pauker ) is buried.

Awards

Publications

  • The struggle has many faces , military publishing house of the GDR, Berlin 1988.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery. Birthdays and deaths of those buried in the cemetery in 2014 .
  2. ↑ Honor for great merits. In: Neues Deutschland , June 30, 1962, p. 2.
  3. ↑ International Board of Trustees for the New Synagogue Berlin constituted. In: Neues Deutschland , November 11, 1988, p. 4.
  4. ↑ Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery. Round birthdays and deaths for those buried in the cemetery in 2012
personal data
SURNAME Grünstein, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SED functionary
DATE OF BIRTH July 27, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Erfurt
DATE OF DEATH January 9, 1992
Place of death Berlin