Richard Staimer

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Richard Staimer (born January 25, 1907 in Munich , † October 24, 1982 in East Berlin ) was a German communist, Spain fighter and major general of the NVA . From 1955 to 1963 he was chairman of the central board of the Society for Sport and Technology (GST).

Life

youth

After attending primary school, the son of the former Munich police president and union secretary Josef Staimer learned the trade of tiling from 1922 to 1925. He practiced this profession until 1931, traveling between 1927 and 1929 and working in Switzerland and Austria in 1929/1930. As a member of a free proletarian children's group from 1920 onwards, Staimer joined the KJVD when he started his apprenticeship . In 1923 he belonged to the M-Apparat as well as to the district management of North Bavaria of the KJVD. In 1925 he became a member of the KPD . At the same time he joined other communist organizations, such as the Red Aid , the RGO and the RFB . In 1930 Staimer was expelled from Austria for political activity. He found work as a construction worker in Nuremberg and became head of decomposition work in the police and the Reichswehr in the M-Apparat for Nuremberg and chairman of the German construction workers' association. In 1931 he was delegated by the Communist International to a military-political school in Moscow . From November 1931 to October 1932 he was Gauleiter of the now banned RFB North Bavaria, and at the same time a consultant and instructor for the KPD district leadership. He then worked illegally in Berlin until February 1933. When Staimer was threatened with high treason charges in June 1933, he emigrated to the Soviet Union .

In emigration

After arriving in Moscow, he became a student at the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West Julian Marchlewski . There he was given the code name Egon . After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and the establishment of the interbrigades , Staimer went to Spain. He was temporarily in command of the Thälmann Battalion and later in command of the XI. International Brigade under the code name General Hoffmann . In connection with Hans Beimler's death, Staimer appears repeatedly in the role of a GRU agent as a shooter. However, this has not yet been clarified. Staimer’s involvement in Beimler’s death is likely. He returned to Moscow in January 1938 with the rank of major. From February 1939 Staimer was used in Western Europe. First he stayed in Paris in March / April 1939 and then went illegally to Switzerland for the KPD. Staimer was arrested in Basel on December 7, 1939 and interned in Switzerland for over a year, the longest time in the St. Gallen penal institution. In addition, he had been on the Gestapo's special wanted list "USSR" since early 1941 . However, Staimer managed to travel to Italy by acquiring Soviet citizenship, from where he returned to the Soviet Union on July 4, 1941 with the staff of the Soviet embassy in Rome. From August 1941 Staimer received special military training near Moscow, only to be sent to the KI school in Kuschnarenkowo. There he was recalled at the end of 1941 for “violating the conspiratorial rules and personal weaknesses”. He survived the subsequent party investigation without reprimand. On probation, Staimer had to take on a job in a construction company in Ufa , until the KPD leadership decided in May 1943 to include him again in party work. For a short time he was an instructor in the POW camp for officers No. 97 in Yelabuga . However, he was recalled by the NKVD in 1943 and transferred back to Ufa. After a preparatory political course near Moscow, Staimer returned to Germany in July 1945.

Career in the GDR

Staimer was initially head of the Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg police station . SED member since 1946 , in April 1946 he became chief of the Brandenburg state police authority in Potsdam , and from November 1, 1950 in the rank of chief inspector . On November 7, 1947, he married Eleonore Pieck , the daughter of Wilhelm Pieck . Presumably, both met during stays in Ufa or Kuschnarenkowo, the overlap in the biographies of both allows this assumption. The marriage lasted until 1954. In 1950 and 1951 Staimer was delegated to a special military training course in Priwolsk (USSR). Thereafter, until 1952 he was in command of the Leipzig VP readiness in the rank of general inspector. For the time being, Staimer resigned from the armed organs and from 1952 to 1954 he was Deputy Director General of the Deutsche Reichsbahn , responsible for management work. In addition, he was appointed Deputy Minister for Transport from May 1954. From 1955 to February 1963 Staimer was chairman of the central board of the GST . At the same time he became a member of the Central Council of the FDJ in 1955 and was a member of the National Council of the National Front until 1965 . On May 6, 1955, he received the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver. On February 15, 1960 Staimer was appointed major general of the reserve. He was reactivated on April 1, 1963. He was appointed head of the Department of Military Training at the State Secretariat or the Ministry of Higher Education and Technical Education. In 1967 he received the Patriotic Order of Merit (VVO) in gold.

tomb

On October 1, 1969, Staimer was transferred to the reserve and retired. In 1977 he received the Karl Marx Order and in 1982 the gold medal for the VVO. His grave can be found in the “Pergolenweg” grave complex at the Socialist Memorial at the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erich Günthart: The death of Hans Beimler and Louis Schuster in Ludwig Renn's "The Spanish War" . In: Journal of the SED State Research Association of the Free University of Berlin . tape 43 , 2019, ISSN  0948-9878 , p. 106-130, 126-129 ( [1] ).
personal data
SURNAME Staimer, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Egon (alias)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German communist, Spain fighter and major general of the NVA
DATE OF BIRTH January 25, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH October 24, 1982
Place of death East Berlin