Rudolf Menzel

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Rudolf Menzel (born November 19, 1910 in Dresden ; † July 16, 1974 ) was a German politician, deputy to the Minister of the Interior (MdI), the Minister for State Security (MfS) and the Minister for National Defense (MfNV) of the GDR .

Life

Born as the son of a factory worker in Dresden, Menzel completed an apprenticeship as a commercial clerk between 1924 and 1928 after primary school . In 1928 he joined the KPD and from 1930 worked there as an employee of the Borna sub-district management. After a year of unemployment, he worked as a factory worker between 1930 and 1932. In 1931 he became sub-district political leader of the KJVD Borna and from 1932 worked in the KPD sub-district office in Bautzen . After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, he was arrested, but given an amnesty in December 1933 . In 1934 he emigrated to Czechoslovakia on behalf of the KPD , and finally to the USSR in 1936 . There he attended the Lenin School . Between 1937 and 1939 he took part in the Spanish Civil War on the republican side and was an employee of the cadre department of the Interbrigades , later with the war commissioner in the Thälmann battalion of the XI. Brigade. After Franco's victory , he emigrated to Belgium in 1939 , was interned in France and extradited to Germany. He was initially imprisoned here and was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp in 1941 . In 1942 he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for high treason and, after serving it in Waldheim, was brought back to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he became a member of the KPD party activists.

After the war he became head of the electrical engineering department in the Thuringian State Office for Economics and was a personnel officer there from 1946. In 1948 he was employed by the People's Police (VP) and was there commander of the Thuringian Police . In 1949 he moved to the Thuringian Economic Protection Administration, which in February 1950 became the Thuringian State Administration of the MfS. In the same year he took over its management. Between 1951 and 1954 he completed a distance learning course at the Karl Marx Party College of the Central Committee of the SED . In 1951 he changed to the MfS regional administration in Mecklenburg and in 1952 was appointed Deputy Minister for State Security for economic issues. He is said to have participated in the fall of Wilhelm Zaisser with denunciating statements. From October 1953 to 1955 he was also Deputy Minister of the Interior for Finance and Administration and then Chief of Construction of the Barracked People's Police (KVP). On November 1, 1953, he was appointed major general. In 1956 he became Deputy Minister for National Defense (for Construction and Housing, from 1957 for Armaments and Technology). Due to a lack of professional qualifications, he was deposed in 1959 and had to attend the NVA military academy until 1961 . He then became deputy head of the rear services in the MfNV. From 1965 he was director of the German military library in Strausberg and from 1967 military attaché in the GDR embassy in Moscow . In 1973 he was promoted to lieutenant general and retired.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Petra Weber: Justice and dictatorship - administration of justice and political criminal justice in Thuringia 1945-1961 , Munich 2000, p. 295.
  2. ↑ See Heike Amos: Politics and Organization of the SED Headquarters 1949 - 1963 , Münster 2003, p. 307.
  3. ↑ Cf. Andreas Herbst: Friedrich Dickel , in Armin Wagner / Hans Ehlert (Hg): Comrade General! - The military elite of the GDR in biographical sketches , Berlin 2003, p. 197.
personal data
SURNAME Menzel, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (KPD, SED), Deputy Interior Minister, State Security, National Defense of the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH November 19, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Dresden
DATE OF DEATH July 16, 1974