Ministry of the Interior (GDR)

Ministry of the Interior - MdI -
State level	Central government
position	Ministry
legal form	Council of Ministers of the GDR
Consist	1949-1990
Headquarters	East Berlin , Behrenstr. 1-19

The Ministry of the Interior ( MdI ) of the German Democratic Republic was a ministry in the Council of Ministers of the GDR . It was founded in 1949 and disbanded with German reunification in 1990.

tasks

The Ministry of the Interior was one of the ministries of the armed organs and was responsible, among other things, for the People's Police and the combat groups . After 1963, the official title of the Minister of the Interior of the GDR was also “Chief of the German People's Police”. The tasks of the MdI also included the field of fire brigades , the penal system , passport and registration, as well as the registration of motor vehicles and the issuing of driving licenses. The State Secretary for Church Affairs was technically and politically also subordinate to the Ministry of the Interior.

In addition to the MdI, the Ministry for State Security ( MfS or Stasi for short ) was responsible for internal security . The GDR's domestic and foreign secret service and also the investigative authority ( investigative body ) for “ political crimes ” were located here. The Ministry of National Defense (MfNV) had been responsible for the border police since 1961 .

The real center of power in the GDR, however, was the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED with its secretariats. It controlled the party and the government.

history

When the GDR was founded on October 7, 1949, the first Minister of the Interior, Karl Steinhoff, was appointed . The Ministry of the Interior (MdI) took over the functions performed by the German Administration of the Interior in the Soviet occupation zone (SBZ) in accordance with the transfer of administration . It was responsible for central management tasks in ensuring public order and security, internal security and border security in the republic, and in protecting the GDR's economy.

This served the formation of the main administration of the German People's Police , the main administration for training and the main administration for the protection of the national economy . The main administration for the protection of the national economy and its transformation into the Ministry for State Security were spun off in 1950. The main administration for training was renamed under Willi Stoph in 1952 as Kasernierte People's Police and functioned as the highest until the founding of the National People's Army (NVA) in 1956 State leadership body of the barracked armed forces of the GDR.

The main administration of the German People's Police (HVDVP) was given responsibility for police tasks in the narrower sense. In July 1962, the HVDVP was dissolved as an independent management body and its administrations, main departments and departments were directly subordinate to the departments of the MdI.

In the 1950s and 1960s, 14% of the MdI's employees were former NSDAP members. This was the result of a study carried out on behalf of the Federal Ministry of the Interior in 2018 by the Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) and the Center for Contemporary History Research (ZZF), in which around 800 CVs of MdI officials were evaluated. This percentage is significantly lower than in the Federal Ministry of the Interior at the same time, but higher than previously assumed and granted by the GDR at the time.

In October 1963, Friedrich Dickel succeeded Karl Maron as Minister of the Interior and Chief of the German People's Police . Until 1976 he was also head of civil defense in the GDR . On November 17, 1989, the Stoph government, and with it Dickel, resigned. Until the ministry was dissolved in the course of German reunification in 1990, Lothar Ahrendt (SED) in the Modrow government and Peter-Michael Diestel (DSU / CDU) in the de Maizière government followed .

The tasks of the MdI were then taken over by the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the interior ministries of the federal states . The address of the Ministry of the Interior was (1960) Berlin W 8, Mauerstraße 29/32.

Honors by the MdI

Medal of Honor of the MdI for 30 years of service in the organs - Ministry of the Interior

Long-standing employees of the organs of the MdI were honored after 30 years of service with gifts of honor such as medals and jewelry watches from Glashütte . The reverse of the medal read the following text: "Led by the party - loyal to the working class - forever linked to the Soviet Union".

The interior ministers of the GDR

Minister (party)	Reign	cabinet
Karl Steinhoff (SED)	1949-1952
Willi Stoph (SED)	1952-1955
Karl Maron (SED)	1955-1963
Friedrich Dickel (SED)	1963-1989
Lothar Ahrendt (SED)	1989-1990	Modrow government
Peter-Michael Diestel (DSU / CDU)	1990	Government de Maizière

Web links

Commons : Ministry of the Interior (GDR)  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Project to process the post-war history of the Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI) and the Ministry of the Interior of the GDR (MdI)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Andreas Malycha, Peter Jochen Winters : The SED: History of a German Party; Beck, Munich, ISBN 3-406-59231-7 , pp. 67, 70, 205, 211.
2. ↑ Federal Archives: Holdings Ministry of the Interior (DO 1) ( Memento of the original from June 13, 2013 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. 
3. ↑ Many former NSDAP members , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 5, 2015. p. 4.
4. ↑ Frank Bösch / Andreas Wirsching (ed.): Guardian of order. The interior ministries in Bonn and East Berlin after National Socialism. Göttingen 2018. Wallstein, Göttingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-8353-3206-5 .
5. ^ Handbook for Customs Service (GDR) - Office for Customs and Control of Goods Movement; Verlag Die Wirtschaft Berlin (1960); Permit number 195/133/60
6. ↑ Glashuetteuhren.de - Special editions award watches. Accessed on February 13, 2017

literature

• Christian Adam , Martin Erdmann (ed.): Restricted areas in the GDR. An atlas of locations of the Ministry of State Security (MfS), the Ministry of the Interior (MdI), the Ministry of National Defense (MfNV) and the Group of Soviet Armed Forces in Germany (GSSD) (= BF . 34). Developed by Horst Henkel and Wolfgang Scholz, Federal Commissioner for Stasi Records, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-942130-77-6 .
• Torsten Diedrich, Hans Ehlert, Rüdiger Wenzke (eds.): In the service of the party. Handbook of the armed organs of the GDR (research on GDR history). 2nd edition Chr. Links, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-86153-160-7 .
• Constitution of the GDR: Section I: Basics of the socialist society and state order. Chapter 1: Political Foundations , April 6, 1968 (as amended October 7, 1974).

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 9 ″  N , 13 ° 23 ′ 12 ″  E