Till Meyer

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Till Eberhard Meyer (born March 31, 1944 in Luckenwalde ) is a former member of the terrorist group Movement June 2nd . He was instrumental in the kidnapping of the then top candidate of the CDU for the Senate election Peter Lorenz in 1975 in Berlin and was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment in 1978 and released in 1986. In 1992 he was exposed as an unofficial employee of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

Life

Meyer's mother and his five older siblings were evacuated from their apartment in the Berlin district of Friedenau to Sernow (at that time the Jüterbog-Luckenwalde district ) in autumn 1943 . His father, who was drafted into the Wehrmacht in October 1944 , was killed in the Ardennes offensive on December 26th . After the end of the war, the family moved back to their partially destroyed Friedenau apartment. After nine school years Meyer finished the high school practical branch and began training as a sailor , which he broke off again. He then worked as a day laborer in Berlin. At the age of 17, he was sentenced to three months of permanent arrest for continuing to violate compulsory schooling . Shortly before his 18th birthday he moved to Trier . There he met his future wife Christa, whom he married on May 11, 1964 in Berlin. Their son was born three months later.

In Trier, Meyer came into contact with the Extra-Parliamentary Opposition (APO) and in the summer of 1968 was involved in founding the "Socialist Base Group Trier". On November 2, 1968, he joined the German Communist Party (DKP). Also in Trier he was - according to his own statements - involved in the arson attack with Molotov cocktails on the secretariat of the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium .

On January 22, 1969, Meyer presented to the Stasi. The internal report of January 29th speaks of Meyer being “a West German citizen who makes a progressive impression. A discussion with him could be worthwhile. ”The meeting with Lieutenant Lüder was, however, clouded by Meyer's praise for the Chinese Maoists and his criticism of the Soviet Union for making common cause with the USA.

In 1969 the family moved back to Berlin. In the course of an anti-election campaign in Trier, he was prosecuted for resisting state power , which was discontinued in 1969 as part of the amnesty for demonstration crimes. According to his own statements, he participated in the establishment of the terrorist group Movement June 2nd from the summer of 1971. In this context, he gave their son, whom he had raised alone since separating from his wife in 1969, to his wife.

On February 28, 1972 Meyer was arrested in Bielefeld and sentenced to three years in prison without parole. He was acquitted of the allegation of attempted murder because of an exchange of fire during his arrest. At his wife's request, he divorced while in custody. Faced with the threat of further proceedings as a result of the testimony of the key witness Heinz Brockmann , he fled the Castrop-Rauxel penal institution on November 11, 1973, a few weeks before his regular release, and rejoined the June 2 movement. According to his own statement, he played a leading role in the kidnapping of the Berlin CDU chairman and top candidate for the parliamentary elections, Peter Lorenz, in early 1975. In exchange for Lorenz, five imprisoned terrorists were released.

When he was arrested again on June 6, 1975 in Berlin, Meyer was shot. On April 10, 1978, the Lorenz Drenkmann trial against Till Meyer, Ronald Fritzsch , Gerald Klöpper , Fritz Teufel , Andreas Vogel and Ralf Reinders began at the Berlin Supreme Court . In addition to membership in the June 2 Movement, the accused were accused of kidnapping Peter Lorenz, the murder of the Berlin Supreme Court President Günter von Drenkmann and various bank robberies.

While the trial was still ongoing, Meyer was liberated from the prison in Berlin-Moabit by force of arms on May 27, 1978 . The Berlin Justice Senator Jürgen Baumann ( FDP ) drew political consequences from the flight and resigned from his office. On June 21, 1978, Meyer, Gabriele Rollnik , Gudrun Stürmer and Angelika Goder were recognized by German detectives in Burgas, Bulgaria , and arrested by the Bulgarian police. The following day they were delivered to the Federal Republic of Germany. Meyer was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment in October 1980 for membership in a criminal organization and involvement in the kidnapping of Peter Lorenz . The attempted kidnapping of Drenkmann could not be proven to any of the accused.

At the beginning of 1982 Meyer was transferred from the high-security wing of the Moabit prison to the normal execution of the Tegel correctional facility after he had declared that he would not resume the armed struggle after his release. In November 1983 Meyer married a social worker at the correctional facility, with whom he had had a secret relationship for a year while still in custody. From November 1985 he was released, completed training as a printer and was released from prison on November 2, 1986.

He then worked as an editor for the daily newspaper ( taz ). In 1992 he was exposed as an unofficial employee of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) of the GDR, Main Department XXII (Terrorism Defense). Among other things, he spied on his colleagues at taz and the left-wing scene in Berlin.

In 1996 his autobiography Staatsfeind was published by Spiegel-Verlag . A new edition was published in 2008 by Rotbuch Verlag . Only limited source value is ascribed to the book, since Meyer, as he himself writes, "in order not to complete the files of the prosecuting authorities afterwards", intentionally changed places, times and actors or left them out entirely. Together with Roland Mayer , Knut Folkerts , Karl-Heinz Dellwo and Gabriele Rollnik , he spoke in 1997 at a congress of left-wing groups on the “History of armed struggles in Europe” in Zurich.

Meyer works as a journalist and was at times the Frankfurt correspondent for the daily newspaper Junge Welt . He lives in Berlin and has remarried.

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Individual evidence

  1. ^ Report on Till Meyer's entry into the GDR | Media library of the Stasi records archive. Retrieved January 29, 2020 .
  2. ↑ In the course of the trial, the court no longer regarded the murder characteristics as given and only spoke of an “attempted kidnapping with a fatal outcome”. Compare: Till Meyer: Public enemy. Memories. Rotbuch Verlag 2008, 1st edition of the new edition, p. 413.
  3. ↑ All previous information based on the autobiography Till Meyer: Staatsfeind. Memories. Rotbuch Verlag 2008, 1st edition of the new edition.
  4. ↑ Till Meyer: Journalist with an IM past . Spiegel Online, December 2, 2008
  5. ^ Matthias Dahlke: "Only limited readiness for crisis". The state reaction to the kidnapping of the CDU politician Peter Lorenz in 1975. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 55, issue 4, (2007), p. 643 f.
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Gast: fruitless frontal teaching . taz, May 24, 1997
  7. ^ Norbert Kröcher : Critical review of the book "Staatsfeind"
personal data
SURNAME Meyer, Till
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meyer, Till Eberhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German terrorist of the Movement June 2nd, agent of the GDR State Security
DATE OF BIRTH March 31, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Luckenwalde