Peter Pragal

Peter Pragal (born June 8, 1939 in Breslau in Silesia ) is a German journalist who lived and worked as a western newspaper correspondent in the GDR for many years .

family

His family left Breslau in January 1945 and fled to the West. Dr. med. Heinz Pragal, the father of Peter Pragal and his two younger brothers, was a prisoner of war until September 1949. Peter Pragal and his wife Karin have two children, Markus (* 1971) and Katharina (* 1973). Both attended a Protestant kindergarten in East Berlin , Markus then started school in 1977 at a polytechnic high school . Due to the special status of his parents, he was not allowed to join the Young Pioneers - but he was allowed to take part in their activities without receiving the typical blue scarf. In later years the children attended schools near Bonn and from 1984 in West Berlin .

Life

Pragal first attended the elementary school of his place of residence Krombach in Siegerland (in North Rhine-Westphalia ) for a few weeks . At the Fürst-Johann-Moritz-Gymnasium in Weidenau he was head boy from 1959 to 1960, worked for the school newspaper strebergarten , of which he was part of the founding team, and graduated from high school in 1961 . He then moved to Munich , where he first studied newspaper , political and historical science at the Ludwig Maximilians University and later attended the German School of Journalism .

In 1965 he started his professional activity in the Bayern editorial team of the Süddeutsche Zeitung , later he switched to the domestic affairs department as a reporter. As part of the basic treaty of 1972, the GDR undertook to accept West German journalists with permanent residences in East Berlin. As the only interested party in his editorial team, Pragal received approval to move to the Lichtenberg district in March 1973 . This took place in January 1974 and he was the first West German correspondent living in East Berlin to report from the capital of the GDR . Although the daily work was determined by strict regulations, harassment by the authorities and Stasi surveillance , Pragal also enjoyed some advantages of his work - for example, he was allowed to cross the border crossings to West Germany at any time (even at night) without any problems. Cross Berlin .

In 1979 he moved to Stern , for whom he initially worked in Bonn as head of the parliamentary office. In 1984 he moved to East Berlin again as a correspondent, but this time also received an official apartment in the western part of the city. In March 1991, Pragal finally moved to the Berliner Zeitung and worked there until his retirement in 2004.

From around 1991 onwards, at the authority of the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi files, he inspected the files that had been created about him over the years and filled several thousand pages. He had been meticulously shadowed throughout his time in East Berlin. Several conversations with the former officer in charge revealed that it quickly became clear to those who were shadowing that neither Pragal nor his wife were secret service spies or similar infiltrants manipulated by the Western powers. Nevertheless, the observation had to be continued at the request of higher authorities. In the minutes, Peter Pragal was referred to as "Starnberg" and his wife as "Kobra".

publication

• Peter Pragal: The tolerated class enemy: As a Western correspondent in the GDR . Osburg Verlag, Berlin, 2008, ISBN 3-940731-09-9
• Peter Pragal: You have it nice here! Piper Verlag, Munich, 2011
• Peter Pragal: We'll see you again, my Silesian country - in search of home . Piper Verlag, Munich, 2012

Web links

• Literature by and about Peter Pragal in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See you again, my Silesian region: In search of home from Peter Pragal, accessed on August 11, 2014