Kurt Richter (MfS employee, 1919)

Kurt Richter (born June 6, 1919 in Berlin ; † January 25, 1975 ) was a German lawyer and from 1956 to 1964 head of the investigation department (main department IX) of the Ministry for State Security (MfS). As such, he was responsible for all investigations and interrogations against politically dissenters in the GDR .

Life

Richter was born in Berlin in 1919. His father was a postal worker, his mother a housewife. After attending elementary school, Richter worked as a farm hand, messenger and laborer. While trying to get to Spain, he was arrested and extradited in the spring of 1937 after crossing the border illegally in Czechoslovakia ; seven months in prison followed. In 1939 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht . In 1945 he was taken prisoner by the Soviets , from which he did not return until 1948. During this time he was from 1947 chairman of the anti-fascist committee of the prisoner of war camp. In 1948 he joined the SED . Between 1948 and 1949 he worked as a teacher at the district party school in Berlin-Kaulsdorf before he was appointed secretary of the SED operating group of the Berlin-Treptow district office in 1949 . In 1950 he completed a one-year course at the Karl Marx party college of the SED.

Stasi career

In 1951, Richter joined the Investigation Department (Main Department IX) of the Ministry of State Security. Just one year later, he was promoted to deputy head of the investigative body. In 1956 Richter was appointed head of Division IX. During his service in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen, political prisoners such as the head of the Aufbau publishing house Walter Janka or the reform communist Wolfgang Harich were interrogated for months, taken into strict solitary confinement, systematically intimidated and pressured into making incriminating statements under the threat of severe punishment. 1958 Richter was promoted to colonel . In 1964 he was entrusted with the execution of a special task at the office of the management of the MfS and was therefore directly subordinate to Erich Mielke . 1964 Richter took a correspondence course at the Humboldt University of Berlin in which he in 1966 with a doctorate Dr. jur. completed. In 1968 he became head of the Working Group on Safeguarding State Secrets (SVS) or the later Central Working Group on Secrecy Protection (ZAGG) of the MfS.

literature

• 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 275, bstu.de .

Web links

• MfS lexicon: Kurt Richter (HA IX)
• Jens Gieseke : Kurt Richter . In: BStU : Who was who in the Ministry for State Security? (PDF, 537 KB), MfS-Handbuch V / 4, Berlin 1998, p. 59.
• Jens Gieseke:  Judge, Kurt . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .