Wolfgang Schwanitz

The title of this article is ambiguous. For the historian, see Wolfgang G. Schwanitz .

Wolfgang Schwanitz (1989)

Wolfgang Schwanitz (born June 26, 1930 in Berlin ; † February 1, 2022 there ) was a general in the Ministry for State Security (MfS) of the GDR , where he was deputy minister from 1986 to 1989 and then from 1989 to 1990 head of the Office for National Security , the successor organization to the MfS. Since German reunification he has worked as a historical revisionist author.

Life

Born the son of a bank clerk, he attended high school and left without a degree when the war ended. He had spent most of his childhood in the home because his father had died young. He then completed an apprenticeship as a wholesale merchant from 1949 to 1951 . From the beginning, since the founding of the GDR, Schwanitz was a member of the FDJ and the FDGB . From 1950 he was also a member of the DSF and from 1953 a member of the SED and was involved in the "Circle of Stalin Biographies ". In 1951 he became a member of the Ministry for State Security (MfS), and from 1954 he was, among other things, the head of district offices in Berlin-Pankow and Berlin-Weißensee. In 1956 he became deputy head and in 1958 head of Department II (counterintelligence) of the Greater Berlin administration. From 1960 to 1966, he completed correspondence courses at the Humboldt University in Berlin , majoring in law (graduating with a degree in law), and received his doctorate in 1973. legal at the MfS Law School in Potsdam with a thesis on combating hostile phenomena among young people .

In February 1974 he was appointed head of the MfS district administration in Berlin, succeeding Major General Erich Wichert . He held this position until 1986. In 1984 he was promoted to lieutenant general of the Stasi and in 1986 he was transferred to the ministry. He worked there as deputy minister until November 1989, responsible for operational safety and technology. In this capacity he fought GDR civil rights activists such as Bärbel Bohley , Vera Lengsfeld and Rainer Eppelmann . In October 1983 he had their protest action against nuclear armament prevented by "supplying" them to the police. For the occupation of West Berlin , he developed detailed plans for the establishment of twelve Stasi district offices that were to organize "the arrest, isolation and internment of the enemy forces on the basis of the available documents".

In the Modrow government , he was appointed on November 18, 1989 as head of the Office for National Security, the successor organization to the MfS. He was also a member of the GDR Council of Ministers . At the end of November, he explained in a secret meeting that it was the task of the Stasi to "effectively support the government and party leadership in stopping the dangerous developments in our society for the time being". He therefore ordered the civil movement to be infiltrated with IM . On December 14, 1989 he was suspended and on January 11, 1990 the People's Chamber dismissed him as a member of the Council of Ministers.

Schwanitz was a candidate from 1971 to 1974, a member of the SED district leadership in Berlin from 1974 to 1986 and a candidate for the Central Committee of the SED from 1986 until the Extraordinary Party Congress in 1989 . In 1963 Schwanitz received the Patriotic Order of Merit in bronze. Until his death, Schwanitz was one of the protagonists of the historical revisionist Society for Legal and Humanitarian Support and author of Edition Ost . The work Die Sicherheit published there by Schwanitz. Karl Wilhelm Fricke classifies the defense work of the MfS , which describes the internal suppression apparatus, as part of the historical revisionism of Stasi cadres.

He is interviewed in detail in the documentary The Ministry for State Security - Everyday life of an authority together with eight other former MfS employees.

Functional areas within the MfS

Wolfgang Schwanitz was most recently responsible for the following areas

• Hauptabteilung III ( radio reconnaissance , radio defence)
• Operational Technical Sector (OTS)
• Intelligence Department (Dept. N)
• Department XI (ciphering)
• Armament and Chemical Service Division (BCD Division)
• Department 26 ( telephone monitoring )

writings

• with Reinhard Grimmer, Werner Irmler , Willi Opitz (ed.): The security. To the defense work of the MfS , 2 volumes. Edition Ost, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-360-01044-2 .
• with Werner Großmann (ed.): Questions to the MfS. Information about an authority . Edition East, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-360-01813-7 .
• with Werner Großmann (ed.): Questions to the MfS. Information about an authority . (Reprint) edition ost, Berlin 2021. ISBN 978-3-360-01898-4 .

literature

• Jens Gieseke :  Schwanitz, Wolfgang . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Hubertus Knabe : The perpetrators are among us. About the whitewashing of the SED dictatorship. Propylaea, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-549-07302-5 .
• Roger Engelmann , Bernd Florath , Helge Heidemeyer , Daniela Münkel , Arno Polzin, Walter Sweet : The MfS encyclopedia. 3rd updated edition, Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86153-900-1 , p. 292.

web links

• Literature by and about Wolfgang Schwanitz in the German National Library catalogue
• Walter sweet: Stasi encyclopedia: Schwanitz, Wolfgang. In: stasi-dokumente-archiv.de. 
• Peter Wensierski : Stasi: The revenge of the pensioners . In: The Mirror . No. 13 , 2006, p. 44 ( online - 27 March 2006).
• Matthias Geyer : Stasi: The life of the other. In: The Mirror. 33/2006, August 14, 2006, pp. 58–63 . 

itemizations

1. ↑ Former Stasi general and Mielke successor Schwanitz died. In: rbb24 . February 2, 2022, retrieved February 2, 2022 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Karl Wilhelm Fricke : Historical revisionism from the MfS perspective: Former Stasi cadres want to reinterpret their history. (pdf; 129 kB) In: stiftung-hsh.de, forum. 2006, pp. 490–496 , here p. 493 , archived from the original on 2013-06-27 ; retrieved 3 February 2022 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b} Eckhard Jesse : Facts and insights, not myths and legends. In : bpb.de. October 10, 2011, retrieved February 3, 2022 . 
4. ↑ Hubertus Knabe: The perpetrators are among us. p. 281
5. ↑ ^{a b} Hubertus Knabe: The perpetrators are among us. p. 283.
6. ↑ Hubertus Knabe: The perpetrators are among us. p. 280ff.
7. ↑ New Germany of November 20, 1989.
8. ↑ The State Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR: Exhibition of the State Commissioner for the Stasi Records. In: berlin.de. Archived from the original on March 28, 2007 ; retrieved 3 February 2022 . 
9. ↑ Helmut Müller-Enbergs : Review of: R. Grimmer et al. (Ed.): Security. In: H-Soz-Kult . October 10, 2002, retrieved February 3, 2022 .