Paul Laufer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paul Laufer (born January 1, 1904 in Striegau , Silesia , † June 11, 1969 in Berlin ) was a resistance fighter against National Socialism and head of department in the Ministry for State Security (MfS) of the GDR .

Life

During his training as a shaper, Laufer became a member of the SAJ and in 1921 the SPD . His resistance to “reformist” tendencies in the SPD brought him into contact in 1927 with the KPD , of which he became a covert member. For the "defensive work" of the KPD he worked in the SPD under the code name "Stabil". In 1935 he was a member of the illegal district leadership of the SPD in Berlin. The People's Court sentenced him in 1936 to three years in prison , which he spent in Brandenburg and Waldheim . In 1944 he was used by the Wehrmacht in the penalty battalion 999 . He was taken prisoner in Yugoslavia and, after his release, served with the partisans and in the Yugoslav People's Liberation Army . He then fought in the Yugoslav People's Army.

When he returned to Berlin in October 1945, he initially went back to the SPD in agreement with the KPD. The party used him to rebuild its secret apparatus in human resources. In 1945/1946 he initially worked in the “press office” of the Berlin police headquarters , from 1946 in the “Investigations and Arbitration Courts” section of the KPD headquarters. When the SPD and KPD were forced to merge to form the SED in April 1946, he became a member of the SED . In 1947 he became the main consultant of the newly formed "Defense Department" of the personnel policy department at the Central Secretariat of the SED under Bruno Haid . In 1949 he switched to the Central Party Control Commission (ZPKK), where he had to examine SED cadres. After attending the “Karl Marx” party college in 1954/55, he came to the MfS's Enlightenment Headquarters on January 28, 1955 as a major and head of Department II , which was responsible for processing the SPD and DGB . Paul Laufer was the commanding officer of Guenter and Christel Guillaume . At this point, however, as evidenced by the files of the MfS, he already had considerable problems that led to his retirement.

He retired in 1969 as a colonel of the Stasi presented him with Markus Wolf to fight the Order "For services to people and fatherland" in gold.

Laufer lived together with the physician Hildegard Cahn-Lohner (1909–1954) until 1954, married the DFD functionary Elli Bergner on May 12, 1955 and was the father of three children. Laufer died at the age of 65 and was buried in the central cemetery in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Joachim Hoffmann : Berlin-Friedrichsfelde. A German national cemetery . Das Neue Berlin, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-360-00959-2 , p. 192.
  2. ^ Gravestone at the Friedrichsfelde cemetery at www.billiongraves.com (accessed on December 17, 2018).