Richard Baier

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Richard Baier (middle row, 2nd from right) during the RIAS trial in 1955

Richard Baier (born November 27, 1926 in Kassel ) is a former German journalist and broadcaster .

Career

Baier's father Ludwig Baier was Kapellmeister at the City Theater in Kassel. Richard Baier played various children's roles at the State Theater. Because of the Second World War, he was unable to realize his original wish to become a doctor . He was trained as a medic (" Feldscher ") in Hofgeismar . The training consisted of four days of theoretical instruction and three days of service in a flak position.

Speaker for the Großdeutscher Rundfunk

Richard Baier learned from his father's relationship with the broadcasting director of the Kasseler Rundfunk that the Großdeutsche Rundfunk was looking for a “youthful voice”. In November 1943 he was invited to audition in Berlin , along with around 20 other candidates . He passed the prescribed exams and received a traineeship , which he began on November 23 in Berlin. First, Baier came to the sports department, where he met the legendary broadcaster Rolf Wernicke , who let him work in the archive for four weeks in order to build up a basic knowledge of sports. Baier spoke the sports news and from April 1944 every afternoon at 3 p.m. the Wehrmacht report . At the end of April 1944 his traineeship ended and Baier got an employment contract in the Reichsansage. On June 1, 1944, the then 17-year-old spoke for the first time at 7 a.m. the news that came directly from the Propaganda Ministry . On July 20, 1944, at 6:32 p.m., Baier distributed the first news of the assassination attempt on Hitler . In the last days of the war, Baier and two other speakers ( Siegfried Niemann and Elmer Bantz ) broadcast the air situation reports from a radio bunker next to the Berlin radio station . On April 30, 1945, the day of Hitler's suicide , Baier spoke the Wehrmacht's propaganda report at 6 p.m. The death of Hitler, who had committed suicide two and a half hours earlier, was broadcast over the radio a day later. On the instructions of the broadcasting director at the time, Großdeutsche Rundfunk was officially ended on May 2nd by a cancellation by Baier.

His voice announced to the listeners at 12:50 a.m.:

“With this, Großdeutscher Rundfunk ends its broadcasting series. We greet all Germans and once again commemorate the heroic German soldiery, on land, on water and in the air. The Führer is dead, long live the Reich. "

- Richard Baier as a broadcaster

Speaker at the RIAS

In the turmoil of the fall of the German Reich, Baier walked from Berlin to Bad Sooden-Allendorf on June 3 , where he met his mother and sister. On July 1, he was hired as an interpreter by the American city commandant. In this role he took part in the negotiations on the Wanfried Agreement . After the US forces withdrew from Bad Sooden, Baier and his mother moved to Eschwege . He reported from the Eschwege region for the Kasseler Zeitung . Baier went to Marburg at the beginning of 1947 and tried to enroll in medicine. Since the medical faculty at that time only accepted students who had completed a few semesters before the war, matriculation failed. Instead, Baier began external studies at the Institute for Contemporary History, which he graduated with a diploma in April 1950. During his studies he worked for the Hessian Latest News . He later became editor-in-chief of the magazine Der Illustrierte Boxring, which was newly published by the Gesamtdeutscher Sportverlag . He received an offer from RIAS (radio in the American sector), founded in 1946, to report on the GDR and Berlin. Baier, who lived in East Berlin , subsequently became one of the station's most famous speakers. On June 17, 1953, he reported on the popular uprising in the GDR and was targeted by the Stasi . The RIAS operated a Strategy of Constructive Subversion and was viewed by the SED as an enemy transmitter. In the spring of 1955 49 so-called "RIAS agents" were arrested in the GDR. Presumably a notebook with names and addresses stolen by a Stasi informant led to the arrest of the East German informants. On April 13, 1955 - two days after his engagement - Baier was picked up by the Stasi at 7:30 a.m. in Marienstraße in East Berlin and taken to the Hohenschönhausen detention center , where he said he was interrogated and tortured. Of the 49 arrested by Erich Mielke's “Operation Enten”, five people were arbitrarily selected - including Richard Baier - and charged with espionage. There was a show trial before the Supreme Court of the GDR , the so-called RIAS trial . The 29-year-old Richard Baier was to 13 years prison sentenced. The amount of the penalty was set on the personal instruction of Walter Ulbricht . After six years and nine months in prison, Baier was released  from prison in Potsdam on August 21, 1961 - eight days after the Berlin Wall was built . He was banned from working and was not allowed to return to Berlin.

Life in the GDR

After his prison sentence, Baier worked, among other things, in the park of Sanssouci Palace as a "park picture explainer" and for the concert and guest performance management. In 1968 he married his wife Ute, who only found out about her husband's past much later. On June 17, 1982, he was arrested by the Stasi for "publicly degrading the GDR and its friendly Soviet Union" and sentenced to one year in prison for criticizing the demolition of the Potsdam garrison church as a cultural decline. After ten months in prison, he was paroled. After his release, Baier worked as a restaurateur in the Marchwitza cultural center . In 1990 he moved to Kassel, where he still lives today.

Baier worked on the documentary The Last Battle . In the film his role is played by Marek Harloff .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Andreas Dippel: Beginnings at ends. In: Medienmagazin pro , issue 5, 2009, pp. 26–29.
  2. ↑ a b I was Hitler's last vote. In: bz-berlin.de. March 27, 2005, accessed July 23, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Guido Knopp: The last battle. Edel: Books, 2013, ISBN 978-3-955-30270-2 , p. 185 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  4. ↑ Richard Baier reports from his eventful and dramatic life as a journalist under the heading: "Between the Fronts". In: Politik-bildung-brandenburg.de. October 30, 2007, accessed July 23, 2015 .
  5. ^ A b c d Norman Dankerl: Deported, tortured, condemned. In: FAZ.net . June 10, 2003, accessed on July 23, 2015 (based on an article in the FAZ of June 11, 2003, No. 133, p. 3).
  6. ↑ Norbert F. Pötzl: Foolish and deadly. In: Spiegel Special. July 29, 2008, accessed on July 23, 2015 (pp. 34–37).
  7. ↑ See: RIAS duck
  8. ^ GDR contemporary witness Richard Baier & information on other GDR contemporary witnesses. (No longer available online.) In: ddr-zeitzeuge.de. June 17, 1953, archived from the original on September 23, 2015 ; accessed on July 23, 2015 . 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ddr-zeitzeuge.de
  9. ↑ Sven Felix Kellerhoff : Another "downfall". In: welt.de . March 15, 2005, accessed July 23, 2015 .
  10. ↑ Sabine Schneider: The ZDF documentary drama “The Last Battle” shows the everyday madness at the end of the war: the downfall of the little people. In: berliner-zeitung.de. March 15, 2005, accessed July 23, 2015 .
  11. ^ The last battle - Berlin April 1945 film review. April 2, 2015, accessed July 23, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Baier, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German broadcaster and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH November 27, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH kassel