Kurt Wagner (General, 1904)

Kurt Wagner (born July 31, 1904 in Chemnitz ; † July 8, 1989 in Strausberg ) was a trained stone setter , persecuted by National Socialism and Deputy Minister for National Defense of the German Democratic Republic .

Life

The son of a plumber attended elementary school from 1911 to 1919 and advanced training school from 1919 to 1922. In the 1920s, he began an apprenticeship as an electrician and carried out various unskilled and semi-skilled activities, and was temporarily unemployed . In 1928 Wagner learned the profession of stone setter at the Chemnitz tram company . Since 1932 he was a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In April 1933 Wagner was dismissed from the Chemnitz tram company without notice. He then worked as a courier for the KPD in Chemnitz-Nord, later he was KPD district leader in Chemnitz. On March 28, 1935 he was arrested and sentenced in a trial for high treason to ten years imprisonment; he was denied military status. Until April 24, 1945 he was a prisoner in the penitentiary, the Waldheim correctional facility . Chemnitz, like large parts of Saxony, was initially occupied by the United States Army after the end of World War II . The city commandant, Major Ebbers, gave Wagner the job of setting up a criminal investigation department, and so from May 8 to July 15, 1945, he was director of crime in Chemnitz.

After the withdrawal of the 3rd US Army , Leipzig was taken over by the Soviet Army on July 2, 1945 . The Soviet military commander of Leipzig, Lieutenant General Nikolai Iwanowitsch Trufanow , had Hermann Matern replace the Leipzig police chief Heinrich Fleißner, appointed by his predecessor Ebbers, with Wagner. Wagner was police chief of Leipzig from July 16, 1945 to September 16, 1946.

On July 30, 1946, the German Administration of the Interior (DVdI) was formed to coordinate the police in the Soviet Zone . The previous state police chief of Thuringia, Erich Reschke , became president of the DVdI . Vice-presidents became General Inspectors Erich Mielke , Willi Seifert and Kurt Wagner, who was responsible for the police. Since October 1949 he has been part of the main training administration, completed a special course in the USSR from 1949 to 1950 and was head of the VP department in Hohenstücke from 1950 to 1952, now from July 1, 1952 only with the rank of chief inspector. With the introduction of military ranks on October 1, 1952, he was appointed major general and served in the CIP . From 1952 to 1955 he was first deputy, then chief operational manager and deputy chief of staff in the staff of the CIP. From 1955 to 1957 he attended the General Staff Academy of the USSR and was then chief of Military District III. At the end of 1959, Kurt Wagner was appointed Deputy Minister for National Defense and Chief of Training and was promoted to Lieutenant General on October 7, 1961. On March 1, 1966 he was promoted to Colonel General of the NVA and retired a year later. He lived in Strausberg until his death.

His urn was in the grave conditioning Pergolenweg the memorial of the socialists at the Berlin Central Cemetery Friedrichsfelde buried.

Awards

• June 30, 1955 Patriotic Order of Merit in silver

literature

• Hans Ehlert , Armin Wagner (Ed.): Comrade General! The GDR military elite in biographical sketches. Links, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-86153-312-X , pp. 333-360 ( military history of the GDR 7).
• Bernd-Rainer Barth, Helmut Müller-Enbergs :  Wagner, Kurt . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Dieter Kürschner: From convict to general. PDF at www.leipzigs-neue.de

Web links

• Dieter Kürschner: Kurt Wagner (1904–1989) . In: Institute for Saxon History and Folklore (Ed.): Saxon Biography .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Leipzig journey through time: Police chief twice, fired twice ( memento of the original from September 5, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. by Ralf Julke, March 3, 2008, in: Leipziger Internet newspaper, on www.lizzy-online.de, viewed October 20, 2009 
2. ↑ See Michael Rudloff / Thomas Adam with the collaboration of Jürgen Schlimper, Leipzig - cradle of German social democracy, Berlin 1996, p. 180, also The GDR in German history at the Federal Agency for Civic Education at www.bpb.de.
3. ↑ 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 .