Hermann Kastner

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Kastner at the constitution of the Provisional People's Chamber in the DWK building in Berlin (1949)
Kastner at the opening of the Leipzig Spring Fair at the Schauspiel Leipzig (1950)

Hermann Kastner (born October 25, 1886 in Berlin , † September 4, 1957 in Munich ) was a German lawyer and politician ( DDP , LDP ).

From 1922 to 1933 and from 1946 to 1950 he was a member of the Saxon State Parliament , from 1946 to 1948 Saxon Minister of Justice and Deputy Prime Minister of the State of Saxony , from 1948 to 1949 Head of the Specialized Secretariat for Finance, Post and Telecommunications and Deputy Chairman of the German Economic Commission from 1948 Until 1949 member of the Presidium of the German People's Council , from 1949 to 1950 member of the Provisional People's Chamber and Deputy Prime Minister of the GDR .

From 1949 he functioned together with Karl Hamann as co-chairman of the LDP, but was removed from office in 1950 and expelled from the party. After he had been rehabilitated and resumed in 1951, he fled to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1956.

Life

Kastner was born the son of a teacher. After attending the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster , he studied law and economics at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin from 1904 to 1908 . During his studies he became a member of the Association of German Students in Berlin . Kastner passed the legal traineeship examination in 1908 and obtained his doctorate in 1909 at the University of Jena on the subject of compulsory vaccination and the Reich vaccination law of April 8, 1874 for Dr. jur. Kastner then worked as a trainee lawyer in the city administrations of Berlin-Lichtenberg and Berlin-Neukölln as well as at the Berlin magistrate. In 1917 he was appointed professor at the Fürst-Leopold-Akademie in Lippe-Detmold , where he held lectures on state , local and administrative law ; after leaving the Fürst-Leopold-Akademie, he continued his professor title in the sense of a titular professorship , for which there was no formal authorization. In 1920 Kastner went to Dresden as a syndic of the Saxon business associations .

In 1918 he became a member of the German Democratic Party (DDP). The party elected Kastner as chairman of East Saxony. From the 2nd electoral term in 1922 to the 4th electoral term in 1930 he represented the DDP as a member of the Saxon state parliament. In the 5th electoral term, he represented Julius Dehne from October 1930 to 1933 , the German state party that had now emerged in the Saxon state parliament. At times he sought to be close to the NSDAP and intended to join the Manfred von Killinger government (NSDAP) as finance minister . For the 6th electoral period, which stretched from May 16, 1933 to August 22, 1933 and was already under National Socialist rule, Kastner then no longer made himself available. From then on he worked as a lawyer in Dresden. During the time of National Socialism he maintained connections to the resistance group around Rainer Fetscher and was imprisoned several times.

In June 1945 he took over the office of President of the Chamber of Lawyers and Notaries in Saxony. He was one of the initiators of the founding appeal of the state association of Saxony of the "Democratic Party of Germany" on July 6, 1945. On August 15, the party was renamed the LDP , and Kastner became its first Saxon state association chairman, which he remained until October 1947. He was seen as a committed advocate of bloc politics, and so he was one of the 70 representatives of the “Advisory Assembly”, the forerunner of the Saxon state parliament. After the state elections of October 20, 1946 in Saxony, Kastner moved into the state parliament for the LDP and at the same time became vice president and member of the council of elders.

As part of the formation of the first Saxon state government after the war in December 1946, Friedrich's cabinet, Kastner was appointed Minister of Justice. He held this office until March 1948, when he was called to the German Economic Commission (DWK) in Berlin. Kastner was head of the finance, post and telecommunications secretariat. He was also one of four deputy chairmen of the DWK.

He also participated in the German People's Council for the LDP in drafting a constitution for the German Democratic Republic . In the same year Kastner became deputy LDP boss. At the Eisenach party congress in 1949, the party elected him chairman.

On October 11, 1949 Kastner became Deputy Prime Minister in the first GDR government under Otto Grotewohl . In the course of internal disputes within the LDP, he was replaced from the LDP party chairmanship and expelled from the party at the instigation of Hans Loch and Johannes Dieckmann. As a result, he lost his government office in July 1950. His advocacy of the bloc politics, his willingness to compromise towards the SED, his approval of the expropriations in the course of the land reform as well as wastefulness, vanity and corruption were criticized. In addition, Kastner was accused of his very good contacts with the Soviet military administration, especially with the later Soviet ambassador in Berlin, Vladimir Semjonow . The allegations made against him turned out to be baseless. Kastner was rehabilitated in 1951. He was appointed chairman of the "Promotion Committee for the German Intelligence at the Prime Minister of the GDR", an organ of the Prime Minister with considerable political and material influence over the intelligentsia, not least to prevent movements to the West. In 1953, Kastner was briefly discussed as Minister of Justice through the Soviet High Commissioner Vladimir Semjonow.

In September 1956 he fled to the Federal Republic , where he lived in Munich , because of increasing resignation about developments in the GDR . He died of a heart attack at Munich Central Station.

Intelligence activities

From 1948 onwards, under the code name "Helwig", Kastner had procured reports for the Gehlen organization on all organizations in the Soviet occupation zone and GDR in which he was represented. Among other things, he copied all the minutes of the cabinet meetings of the first GDR government and had his wife smuggle them with a special ID in the car to West Berlin, including reports he had written himself. In the early 1950s, the Gehlen organization and then the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) took over as an informant under the same code name .

When unrest broke out in the GDR in 1953 and the popular uprising of June 17, the BND learned through an agent at the High Commission of the Soviet Union in Germany that Kastner was in close contact with the Soviet administration in the GDR. But since he continued to provide a lot of information from the GDR, the BND stuck to him as a news source despite this knowledge. It was misunderstood that Kastner was launching targeted information to the West on behalf of SMAD and SKK.

According to an analysis by the BND, Kastner is said to have acted as a double agent for the NKVD and later for the MfS . According to recent research results, the fact that the MfS had designated him as "substitute prime minister" in the event of a possible reunification of Germany turns out to be an unconfirmed rumor.

After the network of agents of the BND in the GDR had been rolled up more and more by the MfS, there was a wave of arrests in 1953. Reinhard Gehlen then ordered the "Herbstwetter Aktion", in the course of which some top BND agents were smuggled from the GDR into the Federal Republic. Kastner did not want to flee at first, although his command officer Tarnay had given him a clear warning.

It was only when Konrad Adenauer sent him a personal invitation and an offer to hold an appropriate political position that he was convinced to move to West Germany. On the night of September 5 to 6, 1956, agents of the BND first escorted his wife and then himself by S-Bahn from East to West Berlin. The Kastner couple were greeted in their new apartment by a representative of the BND, who brought them a greeting from Adenauer.

Fonts

  • The mandatory vaccination and the Reich vaccination law of April 8, 1874. Fränkel, Berlin 1909, OCLC 793566951 (also: Diss. Jur., Jena 1909).
  • The historical picture of the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany (= LDP series of publications. Vol. 16). LDP, Berlin 1950, DNB 364257571 .

See also

Web links

Commons : Hermann Kastner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Louis Lange (Ed.): Kyffhäuser Association of German Student Associations. Address book 1931. Berlin 1931, p. 107.
  2. ^ Zeller: Kastner. P. 176 ff.
  3. ↑ Johannes Zeller: Prof. Dr. Hermann Kastner - politician, bon vivant, agent. An official biography 1945 to 1956. Kovač, Hamburg 2016, p. 178.
  4. ↑ http://saebi.isgv.de/biografie/Hermann_Kastner_(1886-1957)
  5. ^ Zeller: Kastner. Pp. 131-139.
  6. ^ Zeller: Kastner. Pp. 146-159.
  7. ^ Zeller: Kastner. Pp. 162, 179.
  8. ↑ SOVIET ZONE: Everything upside down . In: Der Spiegel . No. 29 , 1953 ( online ).
  9. ↑ http://saebi.isgv.de/biografie/Hermann_Kastner_(1886-1957)
  10. ^ Zeller: Kastner. P. 180.
  11. ^ Zeller: Kastner. P. 173 f.
  12. ^ Hermann Zolling, Heinz Höhne: Pullach internally - General Gehlen and the history of the Federal Intelligence Service. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1971, p. 159.
  13. ^ Zölling, Höhne: Pullach. P. 161.
  14. ^ Zeller: Kastner. P. 180.
  15. ↑ Benedict Maria Mülder: Because he got in Mielke's way: 50 years ago Walter Linse was executed in Moscow. In: Der Tagesspiegel . December 13, 2003, accessed May 5, 2016 .
  16. ^ Zeller: Kastner. Pp. 162, 179.
  17. ^ Zölling, Höhne: Pullach. P. 262.
personal data
SURNAME Kastner, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (LDPD), MdV, Deputy Prime Minister of the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH October 25, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 4th September 1957
Place of death Munich