Siegfried Kath

Siegfried Karl Willi Kath (born December 12, 1936 in Steglin , Köslin district , † June 10, 2008 in Berlin ) was a German entrepreneur and art dealer . He founded an art trading company in the GDR and worked for the commercial coordination department in the Ministry of Foreign Trade . This made him one of the few self-made millionaires in the GDR. In 1974 he was arrested by the Ministry for State Security and deported to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1975 .

Life

Youth, training and private matters

Siegfried Kath grew up in Pomerania . In 1944/45 his mother fled to Lower Saxony with Siegfried and his older brother . She remarried and had four other children. Kath left home at the age of 15 and completed an apprenticeship as a miner in the Ruhr area . In 1957 he married his first wife Renate; In 1960 he got divorced. Between 1959 and 1961 Kath worked as a representative for Saxonia GmbH & Co KG, a fraudulent vending machine distributor. He then spent three months in the “Hacienda Mexikana” restaurant in Salzgitter near Hanover .

Siegfried Kath's first marriage resulted in a common son Jürgen. After his divorce, he fathered an illegitimate daughter with whom he had no contact. In 1962, an affair in the GDR had another son, with whom he was also not in contact. Kath paid child support for each of the three children.

On the evening of December 15, 1961, four months after the Berlin Wall was built , Kath took the train across the border into the GDR . He himself insisted all his life that he only wanted to visit his grandparents in Tambach-Dietharz , Thuringia , for a while . However, he had neither a visa nor a valid passport with him. The GDR border guards took him off the train, took his personal details and took him to a reception center for West German migrants in Barby . After a few weeks he was released from there after having made an official application with reference to “social problems” in the Federal Republic. According to Kath's own statements, he was advised to do so so that he could be released more quickly. Kath received temporary GDR papers and was assigned a job. Initial applications to leave the Federal Republic were rejected.

Further life in the GDR 1962–1966

As a result, Siegfried Kath was refused to return to the Federal Republic. According to his own statements, the GDR authorities told him that his stay in the GDR would be viewed as compensation for skilled workers who had emigrated to the Federal Republic. In the summer of 1962, Kath tried to flee across the border to Lower Saxony, but was arrested by border guards and given a suspended sentence. As a result, Siegfried Kath worked as a waiter in numerous restaurants, excursion boats and pubs. In 1966 he and his new wife Annelies Kath (née Schneider) opened the “Café Baltimore” in Dresden . Around the same time, Kath began collecting antiques, which he gradually expanded into a business.

Art trade

After numerous difficulties, Kath opened a "second-hand goods store" in Pirna in 1969 . After a short time, the GDR state art trade offered a collaboration: Kath procured the goods and the state art trade the buyers (mostly from the Federal Republic). In 1971 Lothar Austria, alleged honorary consul of Denmark and West German business partner of the Ministry of Foreign Trade of the GDR, contacted the Kaths and invited them to a meeting with the Ministry in East Berlin. There, Kath received a new offer: In future, his goods should be sent to the ministry for export to the West. In return, Kath received an advance from the Ministry for the purchase of the antiques. As a result, Kath systematized the purchasing of goods throughout the GDR, maintaining up to 50 buyers and warehouses in all districts of the GDR. In 1972 alone he is said to have turned over around 3 million marks. He was directly friends with Manfred Seidel , director in the Ministry of Foreign Trade, Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski's deputy in the area of ​​commercial coordination and “ officer on special assignments ” of the Ministry for State Security .

The MfS and Siegfried Kath

As early as 1963, the Dresden district administration and the Pirna district office of the Ministry for State Security had repeatedly received IM reports and denunciations about Kath. With its rapid rise, the rumors and investigations of the Stasi increased. Kath's new residential property, the Obere Mühle in the village of Döbra , came into particular focus. Kath was suspected of smuggling, working for Western intelligence services and fraud. The MfS had no evidence, but instead practiced a distrust and criminalization that was particularly cherished against West German immigrants. The MfS in Dresden and Pirna had been planning Kath's arrest since 1972/73. Manfred Seidel intervened in Kath's favor. In November 1973 he gave up his resistance. On the morning of April 18, 1974, Siegfried Kath was arrested by the MfS.

Detention

Siegfried Kath was imprisoned for almost 14 months, first in Dresden, then in Karl-Marx-Stadt ( Chemnitz ). After the first interrogation, the only offense he was charged with (fraud in socialist property amounting to 18,000 marks in the GDR) was quickly invalidated. In subsequent interrogations, he was again accused of fraud in settling accounts with the Ministry of Foreign Trade. One of his buyers had been arrested together with Kath, who was set up as a witness against Kath. While in custody, the public prosecutor advised Kath to replace his previous lawyer with Wolfgang Vogel .

deportation

After Kath had hired Wolfgang Vogel as a lawyer at the insistence of the GDR, his departure to the Federal Republic was negotiated. Ultimately, the GDR let the Kaths go without judgment, in exchange for the transfer of their entire assets, the two companies including their inventory, the art collection and their property. In total, the equivalent was several million GDR marks. Vogel initially offered Kath to the West Berlin lawyer Jürgen Stange in the course of the prisoner ransom by the Federal Republic. The Federal Republic refused to buy Kath out. As a result, Kath von Vogel and Stange was taken to the Gießen emergency reception center on June 10, 1975 . His wife was allowed to leave the GDR six months later.

Life in the Federal Republic

In the fall of 1975, Kath met Manfred Seidel in East Berlin and received a large sum of cash and the prospect of a new job in the Federal Republic. A short time later, the Ministry of Foreign Trade set up an antique trading company in Munich through an intermediary . In this way, art and antiques from the GDR were sold in the Federal Republic. It belonged in the further network of the art and antiques GmbH of Horst Schuster and Joachim Farken . Kath got a job here, but left the company after a few months. He then moved back to Berlin and opened several antique shops. In 1978 Kath sold his story to Spiegel , which in December 1978 turned it into a two-part series of articles. In 1979 the Kaths moved to the vicinity of Wiesbaden and ran other antique shops.

death

In 1981 Kath had a serious car accident and from then on was severely restricted physically and mentally. In 2004 he also had a fire accident. He spent his last years as a nursing case in Berlin , where he died in 2008.

Literature and Sources

• Christopher Nehring: millionaire in the GDR. The German-German history of the art millionaire Siegfried Kath . Marburg: Büchner-Verlag, [2018], ISBN 978-3-96317-100-0
• Vending machines. Bankruptcy with guarantee . In: Der Spiegel . No. 32 , 1962, pp. 35 ( online ).
• Old dolls for the west . In: Der Spiegel . No. 49 , 1978, pp. 210-222 ( online ).
• Old dolls for the west . In: Der Spiegel . No. 50 , 1978, pp. 116-122 ( online ).
• Ingolf Kern, Stefan Locke: A divided story. 25 German-German locations and what became of them , Bonn, 2015, pp. 219–229.
• Ulf Bischof: The art and antiques GmbH in the field of commercial coordination , Berlin, 2003.
• Third recommendation for a resolution and the third partial report of the 1st committee of inquiry according to Article 44 of the Basic Law - printed matter 12/654, 12/662 ( online (pdf, 18 MB))
• Second amendment to the third recommendation for a resolution and to the third partial report of the 1st committee of inquiry under Article 44 of the Basic Law - printed matter 12/654, 12/662
• Günter Blutke: Obscure shops with art and antiques. A crime report , Berlin, 1992
• Jörg Stock: The incredible Siegfried . In: Saxon newspaper . May 29, 2018 ( online [accessed May 29, 2018]).