Willi Seifert
Willi Seifert (born October 1, 1915 in Plauen ; † January 30, 1986 ) was a German communist and resistance fighter . He was Lieutenant General and for many years Deputy Minister of the Interior (MdI) of the GDR .
Life
Seifert was the youngest son of a construction worker who was a KPD member. At the age of twelve he began to work for the KPD. He distributed leaflets, collected solidarity pennies and took part in the marches and rallies. As a schoolboy he joined the Young Spartakusbund and had encounters with the leading KPD functionaries Wenzel Verner and Ernst Schneller . After attending primary school, he learned the trade of bricklayer from 1929 to 1932 . At the age of 15 he became a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) on April 28, 1931 and worked as a KPD sub-district secretary. After he became unemployed in 1933 and continued to work illegally in the party, he was arrested in 1934. A court sentenced him to a prison sentence for preparing to commit high treason , which he served in Waldheim prison from 1935 to 1938 . From 1938 to 1945 he was a political prisoner in the Buchenwald concentration camp and had been a Kapo in the labor statistics there since 1941 .
After the liberation from Nazi rule in 1945, he became city treasurer of Plauen. On October 3, 1945 - two days after his 30th birthday - he was appointed Deputy Chief of the Saxon Police (deputy of Artur Hofmann ) and President of the State Criminal Police Office. After the formation of the German Administration of the Interior (DVdI) in 1946, he was appointed General Inspector alongside Erich Mielke and Kurt Wagner as Vice President of the DVdI and was responsible for the administration, the traffic police and the fire brigade. After the founding of the GDR and the transformation of the DVdI into the Ministry of the Interior (MdI), he was deputy head of the DVP from October 1949 to 1956 . From 1950 to 1953 he completed a correspondence course at the Karl Marx party college with a degree in social science. He later took a course at the Friedrich Engels Military Academy .
On June 17, 1953, he and the People's Police President of Berlin, Chief Inspector Waldemar Schmidt , led a management staff for the police forces of the main administration of the German People's Police (HVDVP) in the Presidium of the DVP in Berlin-Mitte. The conduct of the operation was chaotic, and although they were prepared for protests in Berlin, they did not expect such a massive outbreak of dissatisfaction among the population.
Since its formation in 1956, he has been a member of the SED district leadership of the MdI. From 1957 to March 1983 he was deputy minister of the interior of the GDR and head of the main inspection or after renaming readiness / combat groups, initially with the rank of major general . As such, he was responsible for the armed organs from 1957 to 1964 (riot police, fire brigade and combat groups), from 1964 to 1968 Chief of Staff (successor to Colonel VP Horst Ende ) and from 1968 to March 1983 head of the main inspection. In August 1961, as a member of the staff of the National Defense Council of the GDR, he was operationally responsible for the construction of the Berlin Wall . In 1962 he was promoted to lieutenant general.
Seifert was buried in the central cemetery in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde on Pergolenweg.
Awards
- 1958 medal for fighters against fascism 1933 to 1945
- 1964 Patriotic Order of Merit in silver and 1974 in gold
- 1965 and 1983 Order Banners of Labor
- 1969 Scharnhorst Order
- 1975 Karl Marx Order
- 1980 Gold Medal for the Patriotic Order of Merit
- 1985 Gold Star of Friendship of Nations
literature
- Helmut Müller-Enbergs : Seifert, Willi . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
- Publication of the MdI: Life and Struggle in the Service of the People , 1984, Volume 1, pp. 119–157
- Torsten Diedrich, Hans Ehlert u. Rüdiger Wenzke, In the service of the party - Handbook of the armed organs of the GDR, Links Verlag, 1998, ISBN 3-86153-160-7 , p. 709
- Hans Ehlert, Armin Wagner : Comrade General! The GDR military elite in biographical sketches. Christoph-Links Verlag, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-86153-312-X , p. 344.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Our fire protection (Journal of the People's Police) No. 7/1981
- ↑ Heinz Koch, Udo Wohlfeld: The German beech forest committee. The period from 1945 to 1958 . Weimar 2010, ISBN 3-935275-14-5 , p. 190.
- ↑ Hans Ehlert, Armin Wagner: Comrade General! The GDR military elite in biographical sketches , p. 344
- ↑ Our fire protection (Journal of the People's Police) No. 7/1981
- ^ New Germany of June 30, 1962
- ^ New Germany of February 10, 1986
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Seifert, Willi |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German political concentration camp prisoner, resistance fighter against the Nazi regime and general of the People's Police |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 1, 1915 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Plauen |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 30, 1986 |