Siegfried Rataizick

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Siegfried Rataizick (also Rataizik ; born May 29, 1931 in Halle (Saale) ) was head of the remand prison in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen and head of the central prison administration of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) from 1963 to 1989 . As such, he was responsible for the custody of spies and thousands of arrested GDR opposition members .

Childhood and youth

Rataizick was born out of wedlock in Halle an der Saale in 1931. He didn't grow up with his mother. Regarding the origin of his mother, Rataizick did not mention in a questionnaire from the Stasi that she was a prisoner convicted in 1931. After 1989 he stated several times that his mother had died in the Waldheim concentration camp in 1939 . His foster father was a train driver. From 1937 to 1945 he attended elementary school in Glesien and then took up an apprenticeship and work as a plumber. Later he worked as a grinder, from 1950 as a driver. In 1946 Rataizick joined the FDJ , five years later also the SED .

Career in the Ministry of State Security

In August 1951, at the age of 20, he joined the MfS. Initially he was a security guard in the state administration of Saxony-Anhalt, from the end of 1951 he worked as a guard in the cellar prison in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen . Step by step he worked his way up to the clerk, later chief clerk, of the detention department (department XIV). In 1953 he was promoted to lieutenant and in 1956 took over the provisional management of Section 1. In 1957/58 he attended the SED district party school in Bad Blankenburg . He then became a first lieutenant and head of unit. The increased staffing requirements of the MfS as a result of the construction of the wall favored Rataizick's professional advancement. In 1963 he was appointed head of Department XIV - and thus the central administration of the 17 MfS pre-trial detention centers. On October 1, 1962, he had already taken over this post as the acting successor of the dismissed Hans Bialas . Unlike his two predecessors in office, Paul Rumpelt and Hans Bialas, who, as old, battle-tested communists of the Weimar Republic with their own detention experience, corresponded to the usual sociological profile of the MfS prison guards, he belonged to the later, so-called construction generation , whose socialization began with childhood began in the Nazi regime and in which the MfS primarily recruited cadres in its development phase. For Elisabeth Martin he is a “typical representative” of the MfS employees of this generation, who - often from socially underprivileged backgrounds and unemployed - were quickly accepted into the MfS apparatus without formal training and with “extraordinarily good opportunities for advancement”. When Rataizick took office, there was long-term continuity in the department.

From 1963 he attended the central evening school of the Ministry of the Interior of the GDR and was promoted to major on October 7, 1964 on the 15th anniversary of the GDR . He completed a four-year distance learning course at the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1968 as a qualified criminalist with the grade “good”. The criminalistics section there was a cadre forge controlled by the MfS. On the 20th anniversary of the foundation of the MfS on February 8, 1970, he was promoted to colonel . In 1984 he received a so-called collective dissertation on the higher demands resulting from the political-operational situation and tasks of the MfS on the enforcement of pre-trial detention and its implementation in the pre-trial detention centers of the MfS with other MfS officers at the university of the Ministry for State Security to the Dr. jur. PhD. In 1986, the dissertation was the basis of the internal service instructions of the Stasi on pre-trial detention. Despite this doctorate, he was not promoted to the rank of general , as was customary at the MfS for chief department heads or officers in comparable positions. His superiors attested that he was conscientious and uncompromising; he received 42 commendations and awards. In the course of the dissolution of the MfS he was released in January 1990.

After the end of the GDR

After the end of the GDR and the dissolution of its administrative apparatus, Rataizick repeatedly played down and justified the conditions in Stasi prisons. He denied that prisoners there were subjected to psychological torture and harassment and, according to Karl Wilhelm Fricke, discriminated against and mocked them. Hubertus Knabe describes Rataizick as a staunch hardliner who had no doubts about the correctness of his actions. In March 2001, he and 22 other former high-ranking MfS officers signed an open letter in the Junge Welt denouncing the alleged “witch hunt” on former MfS employees, and in 2002 he told the Tagesspiegel : “I don't want a day miss, would do it again anytime ”. As one of nine former MfS employees, Rataizick had a say in the 2003 film The Ministry for State Security - Everyday Life in an Authority by Christian Klemke and Jan Lorenzen . In 2010 he reported in detail on his work in the documentary “Tell me where you stand” by Anja Reiss and Márk Szilágyi . Rataizick is a member of the Society for Legal and Humanitarian Support , in which former MfS employees and other GDR functionaries have come together. The political scientist Eckhard Jesse states that this organization is about primitive GDR apology.

In 2013, Rataizick's office rooms at the Hohenschönhausen Memorial were faithfully restored, according to Hubertus Knabe, "in order to give a precise impression of the control center where all threads came together". According to Knabe, Rataizick appeared in person to triumphantly watch Knabe's departure from the memorial after he had received notice from Berlin's Senator for Culture, Klaus Lederer ( Die Linke ), to head it.

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ According to Elisabeth Martin, in his publications after 1990 he started to write Rataizik ; this: "I only adhered to the applicable law". Origin, working method and mentality of the guards and interrogators at the Stasi remand prison in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2014, p. 31, fn. 38.
  2. ↑ Hubertus Knabe : The perpetrators are among us - About the glossing over of the SED dictatorship. Berlin 2007, p. 292.
  3. ^ Karl Wilhelm Fricke : GDR State Security - The Schönfärber ridicule their victims. In: Frankfurter Rundschau , November 16, 2007. The MfS lexicon, on the other hand, indicates that Rataizick worked for the MfS as early as 1950, see Jens Gieseke : Siegfried Rataizick. In: Roger Engelmann , Bernd Florath, Helge Heidemeyer, Daniela Münkel , Arno Polzin, Walter Süß (eds.): Das MfS-Lexikon. 3rd updated edition, Ch. Links, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86153-900-1 , p. 268 .
  4. ↑ Johannes Beleites: Department XIV: Detention (= MfS manual. Part III / 9). BStU, Berlin 2004, facsimile reprint 2009, p. 51 (PDF) . For the generational and sociological profile of the MfS guards and interrogators in general, see Jens Gieseke : The staff of the GDR State Security (review). In: Sehepunkte . Vol. 16, 2016, No. 2, February 15, 2016. On the GDR generations, see Mary Fulbrook : Generations and Cohorts in the GDR. Protagonists and opponents of the GDR system from the perspective of biographical data. In: Annegret Schüle , Thomas Ahbe , Rainer Gries (eds.): The GDR from a generational perspective. An inventory. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2006, pp. 113–130 (preview).
  5. ↑ Elisabeth Martin: "I only adhered to the applicable law". Origin, working method and mentality of the guards and interrogators at the Stasi remand prison in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2014, p. 156 f. and 416.
  6. ↑ Johannes Beleites: Department XIV: Detention (= MfS manual. Part III / 9). BStU, Berlin 2004, facsimile reprint 2009, p. 51 (PDF) .
  7. ↑ Roger Engelmann , Clemens Vollnhals : Justice in the service of party rule: legal practice and state security in the GDR (= analyzes and documents. Scientific series of the Federal Commissioner. Vol. 16). 2nd, revised edition. Ch.links, Berlin 2000, p. 445.
  8. ↑ Elisabeth Martin: "I only adhered to the applicable law". Origin, working method and mentality of the guards and interrogators at the Stasi remand prison in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2014, p. 146.
  9. ↑ Roger Engelmann , Clemens Vollnhals : Justice in the service of party rule: legal practice and state security in the GDR (= analyzes and documents. Scientific series of the Federal Commissioner. Vol. 16). 2nd, revised edition. Ch. Links, Berlin 2000, p. 445. According to Jens Gieseke , however, the promotion did not take place until 1975, see this: Who was who in the Ministry for State Security? Brief biographies of the MfS management staff from 1950 to 1989 (= MfS handbook. Part V / 4). Updated edition. BStU, Berlin 2012, p. 61 (PDF) .
  10. ^ Wilhelm Bleek , Lothar Mertens : Bibliography of the secret GDR dissertations. Vol. 1, Munich 1994, p. 587. Quoted from Karl Wilhelm Fricke : “Offensive Disinformation”. Stasi history revisionism and historical truth. In: The Political Opinion No. 442, September 2006, pp. 10–14, (PDF) .
  11. ↑ Johannes Beleites: Department XIV: Detention (= MfS manual. Part III / 9). BStU, Berlin 2004, facsimile reprint 2009, p. 50 (PDF) .
  12. ↑ Hubertus Knabe : The perpetrators are among us. About the glossing over of the SED dictatorship. Berlin 2007, pp. 291-298.
  13. ↑ Steffen Alisch: We don't need such a so-called memorial ... ( Memento from August 25, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) In: Insights and Perspectives No. 2/2006.
  14. ^ Karl Wilhelm Fricke : Historical revisionism from the MfS perspective. Former Stasi cadres want to reinterpret their history ( Memento from June 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) In: Germany Archive No. 3/2006, pp. 490–496 (PDF; 132 kB).
  15. ↑ Hubertus Knabe : The perpetrators are among us. About the glossing over of the SED dictatorship. Berlin 2008, p. 44.
  16. ↑ Media reports. In: Stasiopfer.de , accessed on June 15, 2009; Hubertus Knabe : The perpetrators are among us. About the glossing over of the SED dictatorship. Berlin 2008, p. 284.
  17. ↑ Jürgen Schreiber : Trained, lifelong. ( Memento from October 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) In: Der Tagesspiegel , May 15, 2002.
  18. ↑ Elisabeth Martin: "I only adhered to the applicable law". Origin, working method and mentality of the guards and interrogators at the Stasi remand prison in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2014, p. 31.
  19. ↑ Eckhard Jesse : Facts and realizations, no myths and legends
  20. ^ Lothar Heinke : New exhibition from autumn: Restoration in the former Stasi prison. In: Der Tagesspiegel , May 23, 2013.
  21. ^ Hubertus Knabe: How the Stasi triumphed late - and the perpetrators got away , Berliner Morgenpost, November 9, 2019.


personal data
SURNAME Rataizick, Siegfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German secret service agent, head of the Hohenschönhausen remand prison
DATE OF BIRTH May 29, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Halle (Saale)