Klaus-Dieter Baumgarten

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Klaus-Dieter Baumgarten (born March 1, 1931 in Werna ; † February 17, 2008 in Zeuthen ) was a German politician of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The Colonel was from 1979 to 1989 Deputy Minister of National Defense and Chief of the Border Troops of the GDR . In 1996 he was convicted eleven times manslaughter committed and five counts of attempted manslaughter of East German refugees to imprisonment convicted of six and a half years.

Life

Baumgarten, the son of a gardener, learned the profession of carpenter in Ellrich from 1945 and worked in this profession until 1949. In 1946 he joined the Free German Youth (FDJ), two years later the SED. On February 7, 1949 he was employed by the German People's Police (VP). Initially in various positions, he attended the college of the barracked people's police in 1953/54 and was appointed major. Until 1959 he headed the combat training department in the command of the GDR border police . Then he graduated from a Soviet military academy. In 1963/64 he was 1st deputy commander of the Kalbe border brigade (Milde) . In 1964/65 he held a chair at the NVA military academy in Dresden . From 1965 to 1970 Baumgarten was the first deputy of the head of the border troops of the GDR. 1970 to 1972 he studied at the General Staff Academy of the Soviet Union . From 1973 to 1978 he was in command of the South Border Command and was made major general in 1974. In 1978 he switched to the command of the border troops as chief of staff.

From August 1, 1979 to December 31, 1989, Baumgarten was the successor to Erich Peter , deputy minister for national defense and head of the border troops of the GDR. On October 7, 1979, he was promoted to lieutenant general. He was a member of the SED district leadership in Erfurt from 1974 to 1979, and from 1981 he was a candidate for the Central Committee (ZK) of the SED . In 1988 he was promoted to colonel general. As head of the border troops, Baumgarten was responsible for expanding the GDR border systems on the inner-German border with fragmentation mines and self-firing systems . He was retired in February 1990. In 1990 Baumgarten became a member of the Democratic Socialism Party (PDS), and in 2001 he left the party. Baumgarten succumbed to cancer on February 17, 2008 in Zeuthen.

Manslaughter conviction

After the turning point and peaceful revolution in the GDR, the public prosecutor's office of the State of Berlin investigated Baumgarten and other generals of the border troops. The trial began on October 27, 1995. On September 10, 1996, Klaus-Dieter Baumgarten was charged with eleven manslaughter and five attempted manslaughter, committed on GDR refugees, sentenced to six and a half years' imprisonment. Five ex-generals of the GDR border troops who were co-accused received sentences of between three years, nine months and three years and three months. From November 12, 1996 he was in custody (Berlin-Moabit) because of the risk of escape. Later he was imprisoned in the Berlin-Plötzensee correctional facility . In 1997 the Federal Court of Justice rejected Baumgarten's appeal. Baumgarten denied the existence of an order to fire , of self-firing systems and mines in the trials and in later writings. Baumgarten described the construction of the wall as a measure that was taken "to show the Federal Republic of the limits of its power." Baumgarten described his imprisonment as a perversion of justice and deprivation of liberty . According to Judge Föhrig, Baumgarten was "in his stubbornness and lack of insight [...] by none of the defendants known to me [...] even remotely."

pardon

He has been released from prison since 1997, and in December 1999 he was pardoned by the Justice Senator and Governing Mayor Eberhard Diepgen after serving about half of his prison term without justification against the opposition of the public prosecutor, the mercy committee of the Berlin House of Representatives and the trial court under Judge Friedrich-Karl Föhrig and released on March 15, 2000. Since 1990 Baumgarten has written articles for the daily newspaper Neues Deutschland . After his imprisonment, he sent letters from the dungeon to "PDS newspapers" . Baumgarten was completely unapologetic until his death, wrote Der Spiegel in an obituary.

Fonts

  • Memories. Autobiography of the head of the border troops of the GDR , edition ost , Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-360-01095-7
  • Edited with Peter Freitag: The borders of the GDR. Stories, facts, backgrounds , edition ost, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-360-01057-4
  • The state border of the German Democratic Republic is always reliably protected - on the 35th anniversary of the border troops of the GDR. In: Military , Volume 25 (1981), Issue 11, pp. 3ff.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ spiegel.de
  2. ^ GDR: Former head of the border troops is dead . August 31, 2015. Accessed September 14, 2015.
  3. ↑ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, October 14, 2008, No. 240 / Page 10: Guilty party with a clear conscience. In: FAZ.net . October 14, 2008, accessed October 13, 2018 .
  4. ↑ http://www.n-tv.de/politik/Die-Ahndung-der-Todesschuesse-article95028.html
  5. ↑ GDR border troop chief denies any guilt in the Berliner Zeitung of August 14, 1996
  6. ↑ a b Roman Grafe : German Justice. Trials against GDR border guards and their commanders , p. 201, Siedler, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-88680-819-X
  7. ^ DIED: Klaus-Dieter Baumgarten . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 2008 ( online ).
  8. ↑ Review
personal data
SURNAME Baumgarten, Klaus-Dieter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German military, chief of the border troops of the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH March 1, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Werna at Ellrich
DATE OF DEATH February 17, 2008
Place of death Zeuthen