Operational border lock

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Operational border lock at Lübeck-Schlutup . Hand sketch from 1962 ( coordinate )

An operational border lock ( OGS ) was a secret crossing set up by the GDR on the inner German border and the Berlin Wall to covertly overcome one's own border security. The locks served as a material lock (OGS / M) for the exchange of documents between East and West or as a people lock (OGS / P) for GDR agents to pass through the border . Until the early 1960s, GDR authorities also used border sluices to kidnap alleged enemies of the state from the west to the east. The number of secret crossings at the inner-German border is estimated at around 60.

location

Border sluices, like the entire border security, were always located exclusively in GDR territory in places that were as difficult to see as possible (especially when viewed from the West German side), mostly in dense forests, or near places with a covered access road to the border fence . The border crossing and the handover of files mostly took place at night. Some border locks were only used when there was no snow, others with motor boats across the Ratzeburg Lake . There were also operational locks over rivers, such as the “Weißwasser” crossing over the Werra . The border locks had names; one of the first was the "Grenzstelle Waldmann" near Meiningen in Thuringia . The last locks included "Wurzel" and "Zwerg" on the Großer Ehrenberg in the Harz Mountains.

A secret passage quickly discovered by the west was the border lock "Stadtrand" in the immediate vicinity of the Dreilinden border control point . To get to the border fence, you had to cross the green strip in the middle of the motorway. The lock was blocked by Spanish horsemen who could be cleared to the side. In August 1962 the object was blown up. Several western newspapers reported on it, and the West Berlin police tightened controls in the area of ​​the Königsweg motorway bridge . The concept of the border lock had been known in the German Bundestag since 1953.

business

Concrete tube as an operational border lock on the Gobert ridge , view from the west ...
... and from the east

The operation of the operational border locks was subordinate to the Ministry for State Security (MfS). The working group "Operational Locking Technology" (HA I of the MfS) was responsible for the construction and maintenance of the border locks. Among other things, it provided mine detectors, tools and power supply.

Both the planning of new locks and each individual crossing involved a high level of approval effort within the various departments in the MfS. Initially, in the early 1950s, the Ministry's Headquarters A and Department VIII carried out the movements through the operational border gates without communicating with other authorities such as the People's National Army or the Border Police. They feared that their agents would be exposed.

Such agreements became necessary after the construction of the Berlin Wall and the extension of the 1,378-kilometer border with minefields in the early 1960s. Typically, the border troops were withdrawn from the section in question, and State Security employees in border uniform took over the mine-free, precisely marked area - the "unofficial alley in the minefield". A local IM placed border police uniforms in the trunk of his car for the agents, who put them on over civilian clothes and kept them on until they crossed the border and then hid them in the forest. In civilian clothes and equipped with forged West papers, they then started their "educational work" in the Federal Republic. The comrades responsible for finding the crossings safely and for the return of the agents were called “Grenz-IM” or “Grenzschleuser”. As a rule, they had normal jobs. The lock only caught the eye of the trained eye, especially through a metal box and the joint that was connected to it to open the fence.

meaning

The operational border gates played a central role in building and supporting GDR-friendly movements and parties in the West, such as the KPD , which was banned in 1956, and the DKP, which was founded in 1968 . Border sluices also enabled the GDR's foreign intelligence service to meet agents from the West in the GDR, unnoticed by Western secret services and without border controls. The operational border gates were still in use until the turnaround and the associated collapse of the GDR.

literature

  • Angela Schmole: Secretly, quietly and quietly: The border sluices and "border IM" of the MfS . In: Journal of the SED-State Research Association , ISSN  0948-9878 , No. 35 (2014), pp. 80–90 ( pdf, 451 kB ).

Web links

Commons : Operative Grenzschleuse  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. Eberhard Vogt: secret code Karla. In: Focus Online . March 24, 1997, accessed December 24, 2019 . Focus cites allegedly "exclusively available documents" of the BStU , which are however accessible to everyone, so they were never exclusive.
  2. Wolfgang Welsch : I was public enemy No. 1: Escape helper on the Stasi death list . Eichborn, Frankfurt 2001, ISBN 3-8218-1676-7 .
  3. Annett Meiritz: The smuggler agent came at night. In: Spiegel Online . August 11, 2011, accessed January 16, 2020 .
  4. Susanne Muhle: Order: kidnapping kidnapping of West Berliners and German citizens by the Ministry for State Security of the GDR . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-525-35116-1 .
  5. The debate on June 24, 1953 dealt with the intra-German trade in grain, whereby the operational border gates apparently played a role. German Bundestag - 275th session. (pdf, 4 MB) Bonn, June 24, 1953, pp. 13638–13639 , accessed on January 16, 2020 .