Karli Coburger

Karli Coburger (born October 4, 1929 in Neuhaus-Schierschnitz ) was from 1984 to 1989 head of Department VIII of the Ministry for State Security (MfS), which was responsible for observation, investigation and arrests .

Childhood and youth

Coburger was born in Neuhaus-Schierschnitz in 1929 as the son of a porcelain lathe operator. After elementary school, Coburger learned the trade of a businessman from 1943 to 1946 at the commercial school. He then attended the Sonneberg Business School and was a volunteer at the Plasta plant in Köppelsdorf from 1948 to 1949 . In 1949 he joined the SED . After a one-year course at the German Administration Academy "Walter Ulbricht" in Forst Zinna , he worked as an operations assistant until 1952 and attended the technical evening school.

State security

1952 Coburger entered the service of the MfS. There he initially worked in the MfS district administration in Leipzig before he was transferred to Berlin in 1953 . Here he worked as an investigator in Main Division IX. In his interrogations of political prisoners, he resorted to psychological torture such as sleep deprivation and solitary confinement in order to force his victims to make incriminating statements and to prepare them for political show and secret trials. Coburger worked on the case of the former chief secretary in the office of Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl Elli Barczatis , who was executed by guillotine in 1955. From 1957 to 1960 Coburger completed a correspondence course in criminology at the Aschersleben Police School . In 1966 he passed the state examination at the Humboldt University in Berlin . In the same year he rose to the position of deputy head of the investigative department. In 1976 he was together with two other Stasi officers with a collective dissertation Dr. jur. at the university of the Ministry for State Security with a thesis on "The enforcement of the criminal responsibility of citizens of non-socialist states by the MfS". In 1984 Coburger was appointed major general and succeeded Albert Schubert as head of Department VIII. He did this until 1989. In the course of the dissolution of the Stasi, Coburger was dismissed with the end of the SED dictatorship in 1990. He works in the legal working group of the historical revisionist society for legal and humanitarian support . In 2003 he was interviewed with other MfS officers as part of the documentation "The Ministry for State Security - Everyday Life in an Authority".

Condemnation

On December 14, 1992, the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office brought charges against Coburger for being a secret service agent. In connection with the Robert Havemann case , Coburger was sentenced in July 2000 by the Berlin Regional Court to a one-year prison sentence on probation for aiding and abetting perversion of the law and deprivation of liberty . In the process, Coburger declined any responsibility for the acts committed by him.

Fonts

• with Peter Rauscher: Operative investigation and observation . In: Reinhard Grimmer / Werner Irmler / Willi Opitz / Wolfgang Schwanitz (eds.): The security - On the defense work of the MfS , Volume 1, edition ost , Berlin 2002, pp. 384-413. ISBN 3-360-01044-2 .
• with Dieter Skiba : The investigative organs of the MfS (HA IX in the MfS / Abbot IX of the BV) . In: Reinhard Grimmer / Werner Irmler / Willi Opitz / Wolfgang Schwanitz (eds.): The security - On the defense work of the MfS , Volume 2, edition ost, Berlin 2002, pp. 426–494. ISBN 3-360-01044-2 .
• with Horst Bischoff: criminal prosecution of members of the MfS . In: Society for Legal and Humanitarian Support : Siegerjustiz? - Political criminal justice as a result of German unity , Kai Homilius Verlag 2003.

literature

• Jens Gieseke : Karli Coburger . In: BStU : Who was who in the Ministry for State Security? (PDF, 537 kB), MfS-Handbuch V / 4, Berlin 1998, p. 11.
• Jens Gieseke:  Coburger, Karli . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Roger Engelmann, Bernd Florath , Helge Heidemeyer , Daniela Münkel, Arno Polzin, Walter Süß: The MfS Lexicon. 3. updated edition, Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86153-900-1 , page 68, bstu.de .

Web links

• MfS-Lexikon: Karli Coburger (with photo)
• Karl Wilhelm Fricke: The Schönfärber mock their victims

Individual evidence

1. ^ Karl Wilhelm Fricke : The Schönfärber mock their victims. In: Frankfurter Rundschau of November 16, 2007. Online version .
2. ↑ Eckhard Jesse : Facts and realizations, no myths and legends
3. ↑ Hubertus Knabe : The perpetrators are among us. About the glossing over of the SED dictatorship. Berlin 2008, p. 304
4. ↑ See author's vita at Kai Homilius Verlag f ( Memento from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), viewed on June 14, 2009
5. ↑ Silke Kettelhake: Self- exposure - The Ministry for State Security - Everyday life of an authority. In: floodlights. Archived from the original on April 2, 2015 ; Retrieved April 6, 2011 . 
6. ↑ Roland Schißau: Criminal proceedings because of MfS injustice - The criminal proceedings of German courts against former employees of the Ministry for State Security of the GDR, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-8305-1140-3 , p. 151.
7. ^ Günter Förster: The Law School of the Ministry for State Security, Berlin 2001, p. 351
8. ^ Karl Wilhelm Fricke: Reinhard Grimmer u. a. (Ed.): Security. For the defense work of the MfS. New Berlin publishing house. May 27, 2002, accessed September 12, 2015 (review).