Sylvester Murau

Sylvester Murau (* 1907 in Mewe ; † May 16, 1956 in Dresden ) was a German major of the MfS who, after fleeing to the West, was kidnapped back to the GDR with the help of his own daughter, sentenced to death there and executed by guillotine .

Life

The butcher's son attended middle school and learned to be a butcher. He worked as a cattle dealer, coal loader and engine heater. In 1944 he was due to poaching and illegal weapons possession to six years in prison convicted and sat in Celle in custody. After the war, he brought his divorced wife with the children to Wismar , where he worked for the People's Police . In November 1949 he was taken over by the Schwerin Stasi , where he was promoted to vice head of department. His release in April 1951 was justified by the fact that he had kept quiet about his alleged time in self-defense in Poland . Murau's own version of the reason for his dismissal was different: After the murders on Usedom, he saw the district chief E. and the SED chief C. as perpetrators. This is the real reason for his release.

Escape and kidnapping

In 1954 Murau fled via West Berlin to West Germany to the small town of Heubach near Darmstadt . In October of the same year, his then 21-year-old daughter Brigitte (later "IM Honett") offered the Stasi her help in writing. The Stasi started the operational process "Lump".

The daughter enjoyed the trust of the father and was received by him in Heubach for a meeting during which the father and daughter apparently accidentally meet two men in Heubach. On July 24, 1955, this trio, the two male Stasi agents and the daughter, succeeded in bringing the drunk Murau across the inner-German border into the GDR.

Sentencing and execution

On February 22, 1956 Sylvester Murau was sentenced to death by the district court Cottbus by the judge Lucie von Ehrenwall . In the early hours of May 16 1956, he was the executioner in the detention center George-Bähr-Straße 5 in Dresden with the guillotine beheaded . On May 18, 1956, the registry office recorded the "death 121/56" with the cause of death " myocardial infarction ". The men involved in the kidnapping were caught by West German authorities and sentenced to twelve and ten years in prison , which they served in Moabit Prison. The daughter Brigitte continued to work as a hairdresser in the GDR undisturbed and married the planner of the kidnapping, Stasi Colonel Albert Schubert .

Web links

• The Stasi is alive - chronicle of a family tragedy
• The power of the working class extends across all borders.
• Committed to the truth: texts from five decades on the history of the GDR, by Karl Wilhelm Fricke