Manfred Dietze

Manfred Dietze (born December 10, 1928 in Lindenthal ; † June 10, 2014 in Berlin ) was a lieutenant general of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) and from 1981 to 1989 head of Main Department I (HA I) of the MfS.

Life

Dietzes father was a locksmith, his mother a housewife. After secondary school , he still had to do military service as an air force helper.

In 1945 he joined the KPD , in 1946 after the forced unification of the SPD and KPD he automatically became a member of the SED . In 1946 he was employed by the police. In 1949 he attended the Political Culture School of the People's Police (VP) before moving to the main training department of the Ministry of the Interior (MdI) in 1950 . There he worked as a personal assistant to the chief inspector.

In 1951 Dietze moved to Department I (VP readiness) of the MfS, where he became department head in 1955. From 1960 to 1965 he completed a distance learning course at the Law School (JHS) of the MfS in Potsdam-Eiche . He completed this as a qualified lawyer with a thesis entitled “The coordination and organization of the complex work in the organs of the MfS, illustrated by the interaction of the HA I with the district administrations and district offices in securing the area around the military objects of the air forces and air defense to combat the espionage activities of imperialist secret services ” . From 1967 to 1971 he was an officer in special operations (OibE) and head of a foreign operational group in Department III (legally covered residences) of the intelligence headquarters . In 1971 Dietze was appointed deputy head of HA I (military defense) and in 1972 promoted to colonel. On June 24, 1981 he was finally head of this HA (successor to Karl Kleinjung ), appointed major general and in 1989 promoted to lieutenant general. In the course of the political change and peaceful revolution in the GDR Dietze was released from his position on December 6, 1989 and dismissed in 1990.

Since then he has lived as a pensioner in Berlin. In March 2001 he and 22 other former high-ranking MfS officers signed an open letter in the young world in which they denounced the alleged “witch hunt” on former employees of the State Security. As an author he contributed with a contribution to Die Sicherheit - zur Abwehrarbeit des MfS , a justification of former MfS members, which Karl Wilhelm Fricke classified as part of the historical revisionism of Stasi cadres. Dietze died at the age of 85 on June 10, 2014 in Berlin.

Awards

• 1985 Patriotic Order of Merit in Gold
• 1989 Order of the Red Banner of the USSR

Fonts

• with Bernhard Riebe: On military defense (HA I in the MfS) , in: Reinhard Grimmer / Werner Irmler / Willi Opitz / Wolfgang Schwanitz (eds.): Security - for the defense work of the MfS , Volume 1, edition ost , Berlin 2003, p. 350-401.
• with Wolfgang Schwanitz, Werner Großmann and others: Questions to the MfS - information about an authority , edition ost, Berlin 2010.

literature

• Stephan Wolf: Main Department I: NVA and border troops . (PDF; 1209 kB) In: Siegfried Suckut, Ehrhart Neubert , Walter Süß , Jens Gieseke (eds.) And a .: Anatomy of the State Security - History, Structure and Methods , Berlin 1995,.
• Jens Gieseke: Manfred Dietze . In: BStU : Who was who in the Ministry for State Security? (PDF; 537 kB), MfS-Handbuch V / 4, Berlin 1998, p. 13.
• Jens Gieseke:  Dietze, Manfred . 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. 3rd updated edition, Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86153-900-1 , p. 71.
• Klaus Froh & Rüdiger Wenzke , (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 , pp. 31 and 246.

Web links

• MfS lexicon: Manfred Dietze

Individual evidence

1. ↑ VVS MfS 160-D 139, JHS MF 139, quoted. n. Günter Förster: The dissertations at the "Law School" of the MfS. An annotated bibliography , 2nd edition, BStU, Berlin 1997.
2. ↑ See Stasiopfer.de: media reports , accessed on October 5, 2015.
3. ↑ Hubertus Knabe : The perpetrators are among us. About the glossing over of the SED dictatorship. Berlin 2008, p. 284
4. ↑ "Security. On the defense work of the MfS “ PDF, 3.85 MB
5. ^ Karl Wilhelm Fricke : Historical revisionism from a MfS perspective Stiftung-hsh.de, Forum, pp. 490–496. 2006 ( Memento from June 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 132 kB)
6. ↑ Farewell, but unforgettable! ( Memento of the original from August 30, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Communications from the Society for Legal and Humanitarian Support , No. 7/14, p. 2 (accessed on August 26, 2014). 
7. ^ 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 11, 2015 .