Roland Claus

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Roland Claus 2012

Roland Claus (born December 18, 1954 in Hettstedt ) is a German politician ( SED / PDS / Die Linke ). From 2000 to 2002 he was chairman of the PDS - parliamentary party . From 1998 to 2002 and from 2005 to 2017 he was a member of the Bundestag . Claus was a member of the GDR People's Chamber , a member of the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt and an unofficial employee of the GDR State Security .

biography

In the DDR

After attending school in Hettstedt and Merseburg , Claus began studying at the Technical University of Leuna-Merseburg . In 1976 he finished his studies as a Dipl.-Ing. oec .

From 1978 until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the peaceful revolution in the GDR , he held various elective positions in the FDJ , including a. he was first FDJ district ssekretär in Halle (Saale) . On November 9, 1989, he was elected as the successor to Hans-Joachim Böhme as the last 1st Secretary of the SED district leadership of the largest SED district of Halle. In this function he was instrumental in the transformation of the SED-PDS since the extraordinary party congress of December 1989.

Unofficial employee of the GDR State Security

According to records from the Enlightenment Headquarters (HVA), from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, Claus did "a reliable job in the previous unofficial cooperation". On September 26, 1977, the HVA created an IM file with the code name Peter Arendt . In a document with the headline Report on Roland Claus it says: “After positive information from the KP 'Kiefer' in May 1976, on September 16, 1977 in the TH Merseburg the C. was advertised as IM in the category IMS with the code name 'Peter Arendt '. ”According to the documents of the Birthler authorities , Claus was“ positively recorded for our service unit ”in 1982 in the HVA department for science and technology. Under the heading Operational use of the Roland C. as IM , it goes on to say: “Roland C. was used as an IMS to develop management notices. [...] In his work as IM he is rated as positive. ”Claus denied in a statement that he was an IM and that he had adopted an alias. “ I neither aspired to nor carried out an activity for the HVA of the MfS ”, says Claus.

The Immunity Committee of the German Bundestag has established an unofficial activity by Claus as proven on 9 November of 2006. The files on Claus include ten pages and the period from May 31, 1976 to January 6, 1989. The small amount of material is explained by the fact that the HVA was able to destroy documents. Despite the destruction of these files, however, the Rosenholz files indicate that Roland Claus was recorded by the MfS. Furthermore, a personnel file and a work or report file were created.

In the Federal Republic of Germany / from 1990

From 1990 to 1997 he was state chairman of the PDS in Saxony-Anhalt . From March to October 1990 Claus was a member of the first freely elected People's Chamber of the GDR for the PDS. He was then a member of the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt until 1998 . He is considered to be the father of the tolerance of the minority government of Reinhard Höppner ( SPD ) from 1994 to 2002 by the PDS, which became known as the Magdeburg Model .

After the federal election in 1998 he became a member of the German Bundestag . There he was initially the parliamentary manager of the PDS parliamentary group and from October 2, 2000 chairman of the parliamentary group . His predecessor Gregor Gysi did not run for office again during this electoral term .

Roland Claus (left) in the Bundestag on the evening of the 2002 Bundestag election

In the 2002 federal election , Claus was one of the four top candidates in his party. After the PDS failed to pass the five percent hurdle , Claus left the Bundestag. He criticized the role of party chairman Gabi Zimmer and supported the election of the chairman. When none of the announced candidates ran after losing the vote, Claus himself decided to run. In his speech he made it clear that after the previous decisions of the party congress, he himself did not believe in his election. After his clear defeat, he took a position as coordinator of the six PDS parliamentary groups.

In the early federal election in 2005 on September 18, Claus again entered the Bundestag via the Saxony-Anhalt state list . He represented the left-wing parliamentary group as a full member of the budget committee and the finance committee of the Bundestag.

Roland Claus failed in the Bundestag election 2009 in the Bundestag constituency Burgenland - Saalekreis (constituency 74) in the fight for the direct mandate with 31.7% of the first votes by 1.3% to CDU candidate Dieter Stier . As 4th place on the state list of the party Die Linke, he nevertheless moved into the Bundestag. In the 2013 federal election , he was able to return to parliament. Claus was a member of the nine-person body responsible for monitoring the financial market stabilization fund .

The Bush apology

In the PDS, Claus came under fire when he apologized to US President George W. Bush : After some parliamentary group members placed a banner with the slogan “Mr. Bush + Mr. Schröder: Stop your wars! ”, Claus asked Bush to apologize. This turned large parts of the party base against him; he was accused of having too much of a state policy and he did not represent the positions of the PDS aggressively enough.

literature

Web links

Commons : Roland Claus  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Berliner Abendschau, November 9, 1989 .
  2. ↑ A file relates to a letter on the management order 1796 and has the following content:

    “Claus, Roland, b. on December 18, 1954 in Hettstedt is recorded positively for our service unit. C. has done a reliable job in the previous unofficial cooperation. [...] We have no objections to the proposed assignment in the cadre reserve of the Central Committee of the SED. signed Beyer, Colonel, deputy head of the department. "

  3. ↑ Roland Claus: Press release: Declaration by Roland Claus after viewing the documents from the so-called "Rosenholz" file: After my inspection on April 7th, 2006 I can confirm what I have always publicly declared in this regard. Left Party, April 11, 2006, archived from the original on February 19, 2007 ; Retrieved November 4, 2014 .
  4. ↑ The ten pages concerned are the following documents: Printed matter 16/3392. ((PDF; 313 kB)) German Bundestag, November 10, 2006, archived from the original on November 4, 2014 ; Retrieved November 4, 2014 .
    • Index cards F 16 and F 22, each front side (Annex 1.1, Bl. 1-2)
    • Extract from the SIRA database TDB 21 (Annex 1.2)
    • Letter from the HVA dated May 7, 1982 (with a copy of the cover of the AP file (Annex 1.3, Bl. 1-2))
    • Processing sheet (with a copy of the cover sheet from the material of HA XX (Annex 1.4, Bl. 1-2))
    • HA XX report on Roland Claus dated January 6, 1989 (Annex 1.5, Bl. 1-3).
  5. ↑ Election of the 17th German Bundestag on September 27, 2009. Accessed on November 4, 2014 .
  6. ↑ Manfred Schäfers: The secret guardians over the big billions . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 27, 2009
  7. ^ Protest in parliament: PDS apologizes to the US President . Spiegel dated May 23, 2002
personal data
SURNAME Claus, Roland
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (Die Linke) and SED functionary, MdV, MdL, MdB, unofficial employee of the GDR State Security
DATE OF BIRTH 18th December 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Hettstedt