Karl Kleinjung

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Karl Kleinjung (born March 11, 1912 in Remscheid -Stockden; † February 20, 2003 ) was a German head of Department I of the Ministry for State Security , most recently as Lieutenant General.

Life

Weimar Republic

Karl Kleinjung was the son of a stapler. After training to be a hairdresser, he became unemployed. In 1929 he turned to the communist movement and became a member of the KJVD . In 1930 he became a member of the Red Front Fighters League and in 1931 the KPD . His party group met regularly in the Neumann family's shed right next to the mill pond in the Büchen working-class district of Remscheid. Little boy's nickname "Kognak" comes from this time

time of the nationalsocialism

In 1933 he fled because of his involvement in the murder of an SA man in the Netherlands , where he took part in the organization of a KJVD congress in 1935, during which he was arrested with Albert Hößler and interned at Fort Honswijk . From there he was later deported to Belgium . At the Spanish Civil War he took from 1936 to 1939 on the part of Republicans as Interbrigadist part, most recently in the Counter-Enlightenment. After the defeat of the republic, he went to the Soviet Union , where he worked for a time in the car factory in Gorky . After the German attack on the Soviet Union he received special training in sending and receiving, encryption and decryption as a reconnaissance officer in Moscow and Ufa; from 1943 to 1945 he was in service with the Belarusian partisans and was involved in carrying out special NKVD missions. In 1945 he returned to Moscow and attended a party school there.

Career in the GDR

In 1946 he returned to Germany, where he became a member of the SED . He received the function of district police director in Nordhausen and became group leader of the border police in Mühlhausen . In 1947 he became deputy head of the People's Police (VP) for the state of Thuringia and then head of VP Mecklenburg. In 1949/50 he completed a course for DVP officers at the Military Academy of the USSR in Wolsk near Saratov .

In 1950 he became an employee of the MfS and head of administration for Greater Berlin, in 1951 head of the MfS property administration at Wismut SAG and in 1955 head of HA I (main department I), which was responsible for military defense. In this capacity he ran a plan to murder the NVA deserter Rudi Thurow . From 1957 to 1981 he was a member of the College of the Ministry for National Defense of the GDR and was appointed major general in 1959. In 1974 he was promoted to lieutenant general.

On April 26, 1976, Kleinjung drafted an “action plan to prevent further border provocations” with the aim of “arresting or destroying the perpetrator or perpetrators”. This plan referred to Michael Gartenschläger , who was sentenced to life imprisonment in September 1961 at the age of 17 in the GDR after protests against the building of the Wall, but was ransomed by the Federal Republic of Germany after ten years in prison. Gartenschläger then dismantled two self-firing systems at the inner-German border on March 30 and April 23, 1976 in order to make the world public aware of the situation at the border. The head of the External Defense Department in HA I, Colonel Helmut Heckel, replaced the border troops assigned to this section of the border with special forces from the MfS. Company commander was Lieutenant Colonel Wolfgang Singer . On April 30, 1976, Michael Gartenschläger was shot again while attempting to dismantle a self-firing system. Singer himself had led the border guards that fired the fatal shots.

Kleinjung retired in 1981.

After German reunification

In 1997, Kleinjung, Heckel and Singer were charged with manslaughter by the Schwerin Regional Court . The public prosecutor's office accused the three defendants of collective manslaughter as indirect perpetrators. In particular, they were also accused of having a conditional intention to commit murder, as the public prosecutor's office was of the opinion that garden bat was still being shot when he was already injured and defenseless on the ground. The allegation of intent to murder was dropped. The events on the night of the crime could not be clarified beyond doubt, according to the judgment. During the trial, Kleinjung denied that “extermination” meant an order to kill.

The appeal proceedings were discontinued in June 2003 with regard to Kleinjung because he had died in the meantime. The proceedings against Wolfgang Singer were discontinued in April 2003 due to the statute of limitations and Heckel was acquitted.

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Berens: Trotskyists against Hitler. ( Memento of March 11, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Neuer ISP-Verlag, Cologne 2007. ISBN 978-3-89900-121-1 .
  2. ^ Karl Kleinjung: Memories ... ; in: DRAFD-Information 12/2002, p. 16 (pdf; 977 kB)
  3. ↑ Plan for operational measures to liquidate Thurow, Rudi (copy of Stasi documents)
  4. ↑ Dirk Banse, Michael Behrendt: Liquidate the man! The world of October 1st, 2003
  5. ↑ https://www.potsdam.de/content/fluchthelfer-thurow-ist-zu-erschlagen-rudi-thurow-beriziert-als-zeitzeuge-von-seinem
  6. ↑ Klaus Froh, Rüdiger Wenzke , Military History Research Office (ed.): The generals and admirals of the NVA: A biographical manual . 5th, through. Edition. Ch. Links Verlag , Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-86153-438-9 .
  7. ↑ Uwe Münster: STASI: death sentence from East Berlin ; Focus 12/1997 from March 17, 1997
  8. ↑ Roland Schissau: Stasi crimes . Walter de Gruyter, 2006, ISBN 978-3-89949-344-3 ( google.de [accessed December 10, 2018]).
personal data
SURNAME Little boy, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Spanish fighter and Stasi general
DATE OF BIRTH March 11, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Remscheid- Stockden
DATE OF DEATH February 20, 2003