Wilhelm Zaisser

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Wilhelm Zaisser at the 12th Volkskammer meeting, February 22, 1950

Wilhelm Zaisser (born June 20, 1893 in Rotthausen near Gelsenkirchen , † March 3, 1958 in East Berlin ) was a functionary in the KPD and the CPSU , a member of the International Brigades and the first Minister for State Security in the GDR .

Life

Youth, officer and KPD member

Wilhelm Zaisser, son of a gendarmerie guard , attended elementary school, a preparatory institute and then an evangelical teachers' seminar from 1899 to 1913 . In 1913/1914 he did his military service and then became an elementary school teacher in Essen . During the First World War , Zaisser served in the Prussian army from 1914 to 1919, and from 1916 as a lieutenant in the reserve. In 1918 he joined the USPD and in 1919 became a member of the newly founded KPD. During the defense of the Kapp Putsch in the Ruhr uprising , Zaisser was one of the military leaders of the Red Ruhr Army . He was active in the Essen combat management. In 1921 he was arrested as a member of the senior management of the KPD's illegal combat organization. He was released from school after four months in prison. In 1921 and 1922 he worked as a newspaper editor. From 1923 to 1926 he was a member of the KPD district leadership in the Ruhr area and in the upper district leadership West in the function of the Communist Party Head of the Upper Military District West. From March to June 1924 Zaisser took part in a course at the Comintern School of Military Politics (KI) in Moscow. Since 1926 he was responsible for military-political training as an employee of the Central Committee of the KPD. In 1927 he became an employee of the Comintern in Moscow and was from 1927 to 1930 military advisor to the Kuomintang in Manchuria . Zaisser then stayed in Prague from 1930 to 1932 . Since about this time, Zaisser, as a confidante to Soviet agencies, had an independent connection that was not transparent to the KPD leadership.

Soviet Union, CPSU and Spanish Civil War

In 1932 Zaisser became a member of the CPSU (B) and until 1936 headed the Military Political School in Babowka near Moscow. From 1936 to 1938 he participated in the Spanish Civil War, initially as a military policy advisor, and from November 1936 as commander of the XIII. International Brigade . In 1937 he commanded the base of the International Brigades in Albacete . His code name was "General Gómez". In 1938 and 1939 he was an employee of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (EKKI) in Moscow.

From 1939 to 1943 he worked as editor-in-chief of the German section at the publishing house for foreign language literature in Moscow. In 1943 he became a teacher at Antifa -Schulen and head of the German sector for anti-fascist training of prisoners of war and remained there until the 1946th

Return to Germany and SED career

In February 1947, Zaisser returned to Germany with his wife Elisabeth and joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). Until 1948 he was police chief of the state authority of the Saxony-Anhalt police in Halle (Saale) . In 1948 and 1949 he became Minister of the Interior of the State of Saxony and from 1949 to 1950 headed the administration for training of the German Administration of the Interior and the main training administration of the Ministry of the Interior . Zaisser was apparently intended for a career in the proto-military land forces of the Soviet occupation zone , from which the barracked people's police should emerge. Zaisser had no part in the secret establishment of the later Ministry for State Security (MfS), triggered by a decision by the Politburo of the CPSU in December 1948 . Nevertheless, at the beginning of February 1950, the Soviet decision-makers appointed Zaisser as Minister for State Security, but not his incumbent founding chief Erich Mielke . This was downgraded to one of Zaisser's deputies. According to Zaisser, the appointment as minister took place against his will. The main reason for Zaisser's appointment was that the Soviets mistrusted Mielke as a "Western emigrant" during the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War, while Zaisser had already lived in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and again from 1938 and was loyal to the party positions there was reliably known. After his appointment as minister, the Politburo of the SED Zaisser co-opted into the party executive on February 8, 1950 and proposed to the executive committee that he be elected as a candidate for the Politburo.

The attempt to overthrow Ulbricht

After the uprising of June 17, 1953 , Zaisser and the editor-in-chief of New Germany , Rudolf Herrnstadt , tried to overthrow the Central Committee Chairman Walter Ulbricht . They had the head of the Soviet secret service, interior minister and deputy prime minister Lavrenti Beria on their side, who after Stalin's death appeared to be the coming strong man of the USSR. Zaisser and Herrnstadt openly criticized the bureaucratic and dictatorial style of leadership Ulbricht and Hermann Matern , who as chairman of the Central Party Control Commission was responsible for internal party discipline. This and the forced building of socialism , which the Second Party Conference of the SED had decided after the failure of the Stalin notes in July 1952, are responsible for the crisis because under their leadership the SED no longer represented the interests of the working class. They did not want to affect the leading role of the party in state and society. The Politburo met on the night of July 7th to 8th, 1953. Zaisser spoke out in favor of a replacement of Ulbricht and the establishment of a collective top party leadership under Herrnstadt as “1. Secretary ”. Zaisser agreed with Friedrich Ebert , Heinrich Rau and Elli Schmidt , only Matern and Erich Honecker spoke for Ulbricht . Ulbricht accused Zaisser and Herrnstadt of “forming factions ” and “ social democracy ”. Since the SED had changed into a new type of party in 1948/1949, both allegations were considered a serious violation of party discipline . The following day he left for Moscow, where Beria had been overthrown in the meantime. Nikita Sergejewitsch Khrushchev , the secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU , and Prime Minister Georgi Malenkov supported Ulbricht.

Political Fall and Death

With Malenkov's backing, Ulbricht appeared before the SED Central Committee plenum on July 24, 1953 and presented a text that had not been discussed with the Politburo. As the cause of the “ fascist putsch ” (the GDR's official name for the popular uprising in the GDR of June 17, 1953 ), he cited the more liberal New Course that the SED had announced in June 1953. He accused the “Herrnstadt-Zaisser faction” of a “capitulant attitude” and constructed a direct connection with the overthrown Beria, whose allegedly “capitulant attitude [...] should have led to the restoration of capitalism .” Therefore, the other Politburo Members did not protest, the other Central Committee members thought the text had been agreed. After the plenary session, a journalistic campaign orchestrated by Ulbricht's colleague Karl Schirdewan began against Herrnstadt and Zaisser, who were publicly described as “ Trotskyists ” and “enemies of the German people and the party of the working class”. Zaisser himself had made himself vulnerable because his secret service had not foreseen the uprising.

In July 1953 he was expelled from the Politburo and the Central Committee of the SED and deposed as Minister for State Security. The Ministry was downgraded to a State Secretariat (SfS) and subordinated to the Interior Ministry of the GDR. Ernst Wollweber became State Secretary, and , like Zaisser before, a confidante of Soviet services. In January 1954 Zaisser was expelled from the party and lost his seat in the People's Chamber , which he had held since 1949. His wife also lost her position as Minister for Popular Education , which she had held since 1952 . Zaisser worked as a translator until his death .

Zaisser died of a stroke on March 3, 1958 in Berlin-Buch . He was buried in the family circle at the Evangelical Cemetery in Berlin-Friedrichshagen . His death was reported only by an unsigned short article in Neues Deutschland , which recalled the "legendary commander General Gómez". The PDS (more precisely: the Federal Arbitration Commission of the PDS) rehabilitated Wilhelm Zaisser on April 25, 1993.

literature

Web links

Commons : Wilhelm Zaisser  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erhard Lucas: March Revolution 1920. Volume III, p. 459.
  2. ↑ Erhard Lucas: March Revolution 1920. Volume III, p. 459.
  3. ^ A b Peter Erler: "Moscow cadre" of the KPD in the Soviet Zone . In: Manfred Wilke (ed.): Anatomy of the party headquarters: the KPD / SED on the way to power . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1998 (cited below as “Erler”), pp. 229–291, here p. 234 and footnote 35.
  4. ↑ On the circumstances of Zaisser's appointment, see Jens Gieseke: The full-time employees of the State Security. Personnel structure and living environment 1950–1989 / 90 . Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2000, pp. 62-64.
  5. ↑ Jens Gieseke: The Mielke Group: The history of the Stasi 1945-1990. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 2006 ISBN 978-3-4210-5952-9 p. 45ff.
  6. ↑ Also on the following: Klaus Schroeder: Der SED-Staat. History and structures of the GDR . Bavarian State Center for Political Education, Munich 1998, p. 126 ff.
  7. ^ Dierk Hoffmann, Karl-Heinz Schmidt, Peter Skyba (eds.): The GDR before the Wall was built. Documents on the history of the other Germany 1949–1961. Munich 1993, p. 174 ff.
  8. ↑ Nadja Stulz-Herrnstadt (ed.): The Herrnstadt-Dokument. The SED Politburo and the history of June 17, 1953 . Reinbek 1990, p. 140.
  9. ↑ Nadja Stulz-Herrnstadt (ed.): The Herrnstadt-Dokument. The SED Politburo and the history of June 17, 1953 . Reinbek 1990, p. 190.
  10. ↑ Cf. Jens Gieseke: The GDR State Security - shield and sword of the party . Bonn 2000, pp. 21-24.
  11. ↑ The New York Times of July 28, 1953 saw the dismissal of Zaisser by Ulbricht as a direct consequence of the uprising of June 17 and assumed at that time in the correct conclusion that behind it ("looming in the background") the dismissal of Beria in the Soviet Union stuck.
  12. ^ Helmut Müller-Enbergs : Wilhelm Zaisser (1893-1958). From royal Prussian reserve officer to first chief of the MfS. In: Dieter Krüger, Armin Wagner (ed.): Conspiracy as a profession. German intelligence chiefs in the Cold War. Ch. Links, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-86153-287-5 , pp. 237–263, here p. 59 (confusing Friedrichshain / Friedrichshagen).
  13. ↑ neues-deutschland.de: The unity and purity of the party . March 16, 2013 : “She [decided] to lift Zaisser's exclusion from the SED without evaluating his work in state functions. The accusation [...] that Zaisser had threatened the unity, purity and cohesion of the party through anti-party factional activity was not only absurd, it was extremely unfounded. "
  14. ↑ sachsen.de SMI.sachsen
  15. ↑ Review


personal data
SURNAME Zaisser, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (KPD, SED), MdV, Minister for State Security in the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH June 20, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Rotthausen near Gelsenkirchen
DATE OF DEATH March 3, 1958
Place of death Berlin