Erich Mielke

Erich Fritz Emil Mielke
Erich Mielke in his DDR prime
Minister of State Security of the German Democratic Republic
In office 11 December 1957 – 18 November 1989
President	Wilhelm Pieck (1957–1960) Walter Ulbricht (1960–1973) Friedrich Ebert (1973) Willi Stoph (1973–1976) Erich Honecker (1976–1989)
Prime Minister	Otto Grotewohl (1957–1964) Willi Stoph (1964–1973) Horst Sindermann (1973–1976) Willi Stoph (1976–1989) Hans Modrow (1989)
Lieutenant	Walter Ulbricht (1957–1971) Erich Honecker (1971–1989)
Preceded by	Ernst Wollweber
Succeeded by	Wolfgang Schwanitz
Born	28 December 1907(1907-12-28) Berlin, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire
Died	21 May 2000 (aged 92) Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany
Political party	Socialist Unity Party of Germany
Occupation	Executioner, Government Minister, Armeegeneral, Chairman of SV Dynamo.
Religion	None (Atheist)

Erich Fritz Emil Mielke (28 December 1907 – 21 May 2000) was a German communist politician and Minister of State Security—and as such head of the Stasi of the German Democratic Republic between 1957 and 1989. Mielke had spent more than a decade as an operative of the NKVD during the rule of Joseph Stalin and was an important operative in the Great Purge as well as the Stalinist decimation of the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War.

Following the surrender of Germany in May 1945, Mielke subsequently returned to Germany and had a major role in organizing what became the German Democratic Republic into a communist dictatorship under the Socialist Unity Party. For nearly fifty years, he held the military rank of Armeegeneral.

After German reunification (1990/1), he was tried and convicted of murdering police officers Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenck in 1931.

Life

Communist leaders Ernst Thälmann (left) and Willy Leow (right) in front of parading troops of Rotfrontkämpferbund during their national meeting in Berlin, June 1927.

The funeral of the murdered policemen Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenck was attended by thousands of Berliners

In handwritten biographies written for Stalin's secret police, Mielke described his background as follows:

"I, Erich Mielke, was born on December 28, 1907, in Berlin, (Prussia). My father was a poor, uneducated woodworker, and my mother died in 1911. Both were members of the SPD and my father joined the KPD when it was formed in 1918 [sic - It was formed in 1919]. My stepmother was a seamstress and she also belonged to the KPD. My younger brother Kurt and two sisters were Communist sympathisers."

It is said that in fact Mielke became a member of the Communist Party of Germany in 1920, and worked as a reporter for the communist newspaper Rote Fahne (Red Flag) from 1928 to 1931. He then joined the Parteiselbstschutz ("Party Self Defense Unit").

According to Koehler,

The Selbstschutz men were thugs who served as bouncers at Party meetings and specialized in cracking heads during street battles with political enemies such as the National Socialists and other radical nationalist parties. They always carried a Stahlrute, two steel springs that telescoped into a tube seven inches long, which when extended became a deadly, fourteen inch weapon. Not to be outdone by the NS, these street-fighters were often armed with pistols as well.

Murders of Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenck

On August 2, 1931, KPD Members of the Reichstag Heinz Neumann and Hans Kippenberger received a dressing down from Walter Ulbricht, the Party's leader in the Berlin-Brandenburg region. Enraged by police interference, Ulbricht snarled, "At home in Saxony we would have done something about the police a long time ago. Here in Berlin we will not fool around much longer. Soon we will hit the police in the head."

Enraged by Ulbricht's words, Kippenberger and Neumann decided to target Captain Paul Anlauf, the forty-two-year-old commander of the Seventh Precinct. Captain Anlauf, a widower with three daughters, had been nicknamed Schweinebacke, or "Pig Face" by the KPD. According to John Koehler,

Of all the policemen in strife-torn Berlin, the reds hated Anlauf the most. His precinct included the area around KPD headquarters, which made it the most dangerous in the city. The captain almost always led the riot squads that broke up illegal rallies of the Communist Party.

On the morning of Sunday August 9, 1931, Kippenberger and Neumann gave a last briefing to the hit-team in a room at the Lassant beer hall. Mielke and Erich Ziemer were selected as the shooters. During the meeting, Max Matern gave a Luger pistol to a fellow lookout and said, "Now we're getting serious... We're going to give Schweinebacke something to remember us by."

Kippenberger then asked Mielke and Ziemer, "Are you sure that you are ready to shoot Schweinebacke?" Mielke responded that he had seen Captain Anlauf many times during police searches of Party Headquarters. Kippenberger then instructed them to wait at a nearby beer hall which would permit them to overlook the entire Bülow-Platz. He further reminded them that Captain Anlauf was accompanied everywhere by Senior Sergeant Max Willig, who the KPD had nicknamed, "Hussar."

Kippenberger concluded, "When you spot Schweinebacke and Hussar, you take care of them." After the assassinations were completed, Mielke and Ziemer were informed that a diversion would assist in their escape. They were then to return to their homes and await further instructions.

That evening, Captain Anlauf was lured to Bülow-Platz by a violent rally demanding the dissolution of the Prussian Parliament. According to John Koehler,

As was often the case when it came to battling the dominant SPD, the KPD and the Nazis had combined forces during the pre-plebiscite campaign. At one point in this particular campaign, Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels even shared a speaker's platform with KPD agitator Walter Ulbricht. Both parties wanted the parliament dissolved because they were hoping that new elections would oust the SPD, the sworn enemy of all radicals. That fact explained why the atmosphere was particularly volatile this Sunday.

At eight o'clock that evening, Mielke and Ziemer, spotted Captain Anlauf, Sergeant Willig, and Captain Franz Lenck walking in front of the Babylon Cinema, which was located at the corner of Bülow-platz and Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße. As they reached the door of the movie house, the policemen heard someone scream, "Schweinebacke!"

As Captain Anlauf turned towards the sound, Mielke and Ziemer opened fire at point blank range. Sergeant Willig was wounded in the left arm and the stomach. However, he managed to draw his Luger and fired a full magazine at the assailants. Captain Franz Lenck was shot in the chest and fell dead in front of the entrance. Willig crawled over to Captain Anlauf, who had taken two bullets in the neck. As his life drained away, the Captain gasped, "Wiedersehen... Gruss..." ("So Long... Goodbye...") Meanwhile, Mielke and Ziemer made their escape.

After the murders, the act was celebrated at the Lichtenberger Hof, a favorite with the Rotfrontkämpferbund, where Mielke boasted: "Today we're here to celebrate a trick I pulled." (German: Heute wird ein Ding gefeiert, das ich gedreht habe!).

According to John Koehler,

Kippenberger was alarmed when word reached him that Sergeant Willig had survived the shooting. Not knowing whether the sergeant could talk and identify the attackers, Kippenberger was taking no chances. He directed a runner to summon Mielke and Ziemer to his apartment at 74 Bellermannstrasse, only a few minutes walk from where the two lived. When the assassins arrived, Kippenberger told them the news and ordered them to leave Berlin at once. The parliamentarian's wife Thea, an unemployed schoolteacher and as staunch a Communist Party member as her husband, shepherded the young murderers to the Belgian border. Agents of the Communist International (Comintern) in the port city of Antwerp supplied them with money and forged passports. Aboard a merchant ship, they sailed for Leningrad. When their ship docked, they were met by another Comintern representative, who escorted them to Moscow.

Mielke would later claim falsely that he had been convicted of the murders in absentia in a German court. Three other German communists were arrested for these murders, convicted, and received the death penalty, among them Max Matern.

In the aftermath, Captain Anlauf's oldest daughter was forced to drastically rush her planned wedding in order to keep her sisters out of an orphanage. Max Matern was subsequently glorified as a martyr by KPD and East German propaganda. Ziemer was officially killed in action while fighting for the Second Spanish Republic. Mielke, however, would not face trial for the murders until 1993.

Working for the Soviet Union

Partial view of a plaque with photos of victims of the Great Purge who were shot in the NKVD's Butovo firing range, Moscow.

Arriving in Leningrad and with fluent Russian he was sent to Ukraine as a member of a grain-collecting unit, helping to requisition the last grain reserves that desperate villagers had concealed from the authorities, so that Party officials and their guards would not go hungry even if the local peasants starved. His reward was admission to the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow in 1932. Later he also attended the Lenin School and was subsequently recruited into the NKVD. Although Moscow's German Communist community was decimated during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, Mielke, who had "informed" on many of his comrades, survived and was promoted. In a handwritten biography prepared after World War II, Mielke recalled,

"During my stay in the S.U. (Soviet Union), I participated in all Party discussions of the K.P.D. and also in the problems concerning the establishment of 'socialism' and in the trials against the traitors and enemies of the S.U."

Among the German communists executed during the Great Purge were Mielke's former mentors Heinz Neumann and Hans Kippenberger.

Spanish Civil War

From 1936 to 1939 Mielke served in Spain as an NKVD operative of the Servicio Investigación Militar, the political police of the Second Spanish Republic. While attached to the staff of future Stasi minister Wilhelm Zaisser, Mielke used the alias 'Fritz Leissner'. As an NKVD major and political commissar for front and rear-line units, Mielke had his hands full purging the International Brigades of anti-Stalinist "Fascists" (meaning anarchists, Socialists, Trotskyites, and so forth.)

At the time, the S.I.M. was heavily staffed by agents of the Soviet NKVD, whose Spanish rezident was General Aleksandr Mikhailovich Orlov. According to author Donald Rayfield,

"Stalin, Yezhov, and Beria distrusted Soviet participants in the Spanish war. Military advisors like Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, journalists like Koltsov were open to infection by the heresies, especially Trotsky's, prevalent among the Republic's supporters. The defeat of the Republic, in Stalin's eyes, was caused not by the NKVD's diversionary efforts, but by the treachery of the heretics."

Walter Janka, a German communist and company commander in the International Brigade, was repeatedly interrogated by Mielke, who falsely accused him of spying for the Falangists. In an interview years later, Janka recalled:

"While I was fighting at the front, shooting at the Fascists, Mielke served in the rear, shooting Trotskyites and Anarchists."

After the defeat of the Spanish Republic, Mielke fled to France and was interned with thousands of his comrades. However, he soon escaped and returned to the Soviet Union.

World War II

During World War II, Mielke worked for the Red Army's espionage department. In a biography written after the war, he claimed to have infiltrated Organisation Todt under the alias Richard Hebel. Historian of the Stasi, John Koehler, considers this very unlikely, especially as this organisation was an engineering and building outfit.

Koehler admits, however,

"Mielke's exploits must have been substantial. By war's end, he had been decorated with the Order of the Red Banner, the Order of the Great Patriotic War First Class, and twice with the Order of Lenin. It is likely that he served again as an NKVD agent, at least part of the time with guerrilla units behind German lines, for he knew all the partisan songs by heart and sang them in faultless Russian."

Post-war criminal investigation

The Kammergericht

In January 1947, however, two Weimar-era policemen recognized Mielke at an official function. Informing the head of the criminal police in West Berlin, the policemen demanded that Mielke be arrested and prosecuted for the murders of Captains Anlauf and Lenck. Prosecutor Wilhelm Kühnast of the Kammergericht was immediately informed and ordered a search of the archives. To his astonishment, the files of the 1931 murders had survived the wartime bombing of Germany. Finding ample evidence of Mielke's involvement, Kühnast ordered the arrest of the communist policeman.

According to John Koehler,

"At that time, the city administration, including the police, was under the control of the Allied Control Commission, which consisted of U.S., British, French, and Soviet military officers. All actions by city officials, including the judiciary, were to be reported to the Commission. The Soviet representative alerted the MGB. Action was swift. Marshal Vasily Sokolovsky, who had replaced Zhukov, protested, and his representatives at the Commission launched a vicious campaign to discredit Kühnast."

The Soviet representatives falsely claimed that Kühnast, a longtime anti-Nazi, had been an official of Roland Freisler's People's Court. As a result, the Western Allies agreed to remove Kühnast from his position and placed him under house arrest. During the Berlin airlift, Kühnast escaped from his home in the Soviet Zone and was granted political asylum in the west.

Meanwhile, the Soviet authorities confiscated all documents relating to the murders of Captains Anlauf and Lenck. These were handed over to Mielke, who subsequently kept them in his personal safe.

Building East Germany

Mielke with Erich Honecker and Walter Ulbricht

In 1945, Mielke was returned to Germany by the Soviet authorities as a police inspector, with a mandate to build up a security force which would ensure the dominance of the Communist Party in what would become the German Democratic Republic, or what Germans called "Middle Germany", eastern German provinces falling fully under Soviet and subsequently Polish occupation. Mielke was a protege of NKGB General Ivan Serov, who was headquartered at the Berlin suburb of Karlshorst. On August 16, 1947, Serov ordered the creation of Kommissariat 5, the first German political police since the defeat of National Socialist Germany. Wilhelm Zaisser was appointed the organization's head and Mielke as installed as his deputy. According to John Koehler,

"The K-5 was essentially an arm of the Soviet secret police. Its agents were carefully selected veteran German communists who had survived the former German era in Soviet exile or in concentration camps and prisons. Their task was to track down "Nazis" and anti-communists, including hundreds of members of the SPD. Mielke and his fellow bloodhounds performed this task with ruthless precision. The number of arrests became so great that the regular prisons could not hold them. Thus, Serov ordered the establishment or re-opening eleven concentration camps, including the former Nazi death camps of Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen."

Erich Mielke was also a fitness enthusiast, a non-smoker and drank very little. He was a keen hunter and owned a large area of ground where he would hunt animals with other top East German and Soviet officials.

Stasi

Stasi Isolation Cell, Berlin-Hohenschönhausen

Mielke was a member of the Central Committee of the communist Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) from 1950 until his forced retirement at the end of 1989. From July 1946 to October 1949 he served as Vice-president of the Administration of the Interior. From October 1949 to February 1950, Mielke served as head of the Main Administration for the 'Protection of the People's Economy', the forerunner of the Ministry of State Security (MfS or Stasi) which was raised to top eschelon status and moved into the huge headquarters the Soviet NKVD had just vacated. From 1950–1953 he was promoted to State Secretary in the MfS, given the rank of Lieutenant-General, later serving as full State Secretary from 1953–1955. From 1955–1957 he was Deputy Minister of State Security.

Mielke had been taken completely by surprise by the workers' revolt of June 1953 but his reaction was brutal. In a couple of weeks his agents rounded up more than a thousand "ringleaders" who were jailed as "agents of the imperialist powers". Three years later when the Hungarian uprising threatened to touch of a second revolt in the DDR, and there was major industrial unrest at the Leuna chemical works near Merseburg in Saxony, Walter Ulbricht chose Mielke to be the man to "restore order". A ridiculous conspiracy theory was worked up saying that agents of I.G.Farben had infiltrated the works. Mielke soon 'unearthed' half a dozen hapless and helpless "I.G.Farben agents" who were promptly jailed. Further strikes and other anti-Party activities ceased. Meilke was rewarded with a new appointment as Minister of State Security in November 1957.

Mielke receives award from Erich Honecker

Mielke headed the Stasi until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. His network of 85,000 full-time domestic spies and 170,000 'voluntary' informers kept tabs on millions of people. So many people collaborated with the Stasi that when the records were opened, it was discovered that in every public building, at least one of its members kept the Stasi informed about everything that happened within it. On his orders, and with his full knowledge, Stasi officers also engaged in arbitrary arrest, kidnapping, brutal harassment of political dissidents, and the inhumane imprisonment of tens of thousands of citizens. On his personal responsibility the MfS launched the counter attacks by the Stasi against the dissident Rudolf Bahro and his book Die Alternative: Zur Kritik des 'real existierenden Sozialismus' and those who supported, discussed and published his work. Mielke was one of the most powerful – and most hated – men in East Germany, feared even by members of his own ministry.

According to John O. Koehler,

"Mielke was the longest serving secret police chief in the Eastern Bloc. He was on the most intimate of terms with eleven Soviet secret police chiefs, and he survived them all. Subservient to a fault while they were in power, Mielke switched loyalties without a beat when they were fired. His allegiance was not to a person but to the joint KGB/Stasi venture in the quest of maintaining and expanding the powers of communism."

Mielke the football fan

Mielke served as chairman of Sportvereinigung Dynamo, the sports club of the country's security forces. He acted as the powerful patron of football club Berliner FC Dynamo helping his favourite side by manipulating the outcome of the team's games through various means to ensure its dominance of the first division DDR-Oberliga. The team won ten consecutive titles from 1979 to 1988 assisted by crooked referees, unfair player transfers from other teams and assorted other unsportsmanlike practices. Dynamo was reviled by many of the citizens of Berlin and the cheating was so blatant that it incurred the unofficially expressed displeasure of the country's ruling Politburo.

The Peaceful Revolution

Plainclothes police officers arrest demonstrators 17 October 1989

A demonstration on 30 October 1989

East Germans invading the Stasi headquarters on 16 January 1990. The sign says that the Stasi and the Socialist Unity Party of Germany are Nazistic dictators.

Increasingly concerned over the growing popular opposition, Stasi Minister Mielke early in 1989 ordered the creation of a special elite unit for crushing disturbances. Its personnel were carefully selected members of the counterespionage and counter-terrorism directorate. They were equipped with special batons similar to electric cattle prods but much more powerful. In a secret speech to top-ranking Stasi officers on June 29, Mielke warned that, "hostile opposing forces and groups have already achieved a measure of power and are using all methods to achieve a change in the balance of power." Former Stasi Colonel Rainer Wiegand told me he was horrified when Mielke compared the situation with that of China two months earlier. Chinese students in Beijing had begun massive protests in April and in May, culminating in the now infamous student demonstration in Tiananmen Square, where security troops had opened fire on them killing hundreds. "Mielke said our situation was comparable and we had to be ready to counter it with all means and methods," Wiegand recalled. "Mielke said that the [Red] Chinese leadership had succeeded in smothering the protests before the situation got out of hand."

Despite Mielke's attempts to squelch them, East Germany's protesters grew more emboldened with every arrest.

Despite the unrest, the regime celebrated its fortieth anniversary with a huge, pompous ceremony in Berlin on October 7, while tens of thousands of jeering citizens stood outside the ornate building of the State Council. The People's Police cordons were utterly ineffectual. As Stasi Minister Erich Mielke drove up and was greeted by General Günther Kratsch, the counter-intelligence chief, Mielke screamed at police: "Club those pigs into submission!" The police, however, ignored Mielke's rant.

However, just days later, Mielke became part of the conspiracy that toppled Erich Honecker as party leader of the SED. Suspecting that Honecker's personal bodyguards might try to arrest the members of the Politburo when it met to vote Honecker out in favour of Egon Krenz, Mielke saw to it that reliable Stasi men were stationed near the meeting room.

On 7 November 1989, Mielke resigned, along with all of the other members of the DDR government (the Council of Ministers of the DDR), in response to the changing political and social situation. Six days later, on November 13, Mielke was at the center of one of the most famous televised incidents in German history. When Mielke addressed the members of the DDR parliament, or (Volkskammer), as "Comrades", angry non-SED members demanded that he refrain from calling them that. The shattered Mielke first tried to justify his wording, "That is a question of formality" and then apologized, declaring: "But I love – I love all – all people..." (German: „Ich liebe doch alle Menschen!“). This was met with jeers and laughter from the assembly.

On November 18, following the Volkskammer's decision a day earlier to rename the MfS as the Amt für Nationale Sicherheit (AfNS - Office for National Security), Mielke's tenure in office finally ended when Lieutenant-General Wolfgang Schwanitz was elected by the Volkskammer as the new Director of the AfNS.

On December 3, Mielke was expelled from membership of the SED and four days later he was arrested and placed in "investigative custody", or (Untersuchungshaft) charged with, amazingly, "damaging the national economy" (Schädigung der Volkswirtschaft).

Trial and conviction

After German reunification in October 1990, Mielke was arrested by the Federal Police and charged with the 1931 murders of police Captains Anlauf and Lenck. Much of the evidence used at his trial was taken from the files of the original investigation, which were, ironically, found in Mielke's personal safe after the dissolution of the Stasi.

According to John Koehler,

"Defenders of Mielke would later claim that confessions had been obtained under torture by the Gestapo. However, all suspects were in the custody of the regular Berlin city criminal investigation bureau, most of whose detectives were SPD members. Some of the suspects had been nabbed by National Socialist SA men and probably beaten before they were turned over to police. In the 1993 trial of Mielke, the court gave the defense the benefit of the doubt and threw out a number of suspect confessions."

After twenty months of one-and-a-half-hour daily sessions, Erich Mielke was convicted on two counts of murder and one of attempted murder. On 26 October 1993, a panel of three judges and two jurors sentenced him to six years' imprisonment. At his sentencing, Mielke started to cry. In pronouncing sentence, Judge Theodor Seidel, told Mielke that "you will go down in history as one of the most fearsome dictators and police ministers of the 20th century." Apparently suffering from dementia he was paroled after less than two.

Mielke was nevertheless then put on trial for Schießbefehl - ordering the shootings of East Germans who were trying to escape the DDR and defect to the West. In November 1994, the presiding judge adjourned the proceedings, ruling that Mielke was not mentally competent to stand trial. In 1998 all further legal action against him was ended on the grounds of his poor health.

Death

Mielke died on 21 May 2000 aged 92 from senile dementia in a Berlin nursing home. An estimated 100 people reportedly attended the funeral. His remains are buried in the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde in Berlin. Mielke's unmarked grave is outside the memorial section established at the entrance in 1951 by East German leaders for communist heroes.

East German jokes about Mielke

• Honecker and Mielke are discussing their hobbies.
  Honecker: "I collect all the jokes about me that are in circulation."
  Mielke: "Then we have almost the same hobby. I collect the ones who put them there."

Honours and awards (excerpt)

Mielke received a large number of awards and commemorative medals from organisations within the German Democratic Republic and from allied states. A more complete list is available (in German) at Liste der Orden und Ehrenzeichen des Erich Mielke.

Awards of the German Democratic Republic

• Patriotic Order of Merit in gold (7 October 1954)
• Six Orders of Karl Marx (28 December 1957, 20 November 1973, 1 December 1975, 28 December 1977, 28 June 1982, 28 December 1982)
• Twice Hero of Labour of the GDR (5 October 1964, 24 February 1968)
• Twice Hero of the GDR (1 December 1975, 28 December 1982)
• Banner of Labour (8 May 1960)
• Medal for Exemplary Border Service (26 April 1956)
• Medal for Faithful Service in the National People's Army;
  • Bronze (7 October 1957)
  • Silver (8 February 1959)
  • Gold (1 July 1960)
  • Gold for 20 years service (8 February 1965)
• Medal for Fighters Against Fascism (6 September 1958)
• Gold Medal of Merit of the National People's Army (1 March 1957)
• Scharnhorst Order, twice (25 September 1979, 7 October 1984)

Awards of the Soviet Union

• Hero of the Soviet Union (25 December 1987)
• Four Orders of Lenin (12 June 1973, 28 December 1982, 1 April 1985, 28 December 1987)
• Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class (6 May 1970)
• Four Orders of the Red Banner (23 October 1958, 5 February 1968, 28 December 1977, February 1980)
• Jubilee Medal "50 Years of the Soviet Militia" (20 December 1967)
• Jubilee Medal "In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary since the Birth of Vladimir Il'ich Lenin" (1970)
• Medal "For Distinction in Guarding the State Border of the USSR" (6 January 1970)
• Order of the October Revolution (February 1975)

Other states

• Order of Georgi Dimitrov (Bulgaria, 28 December 1982)
• Order of Friendship (Czechoslovakia) (28 December 1982)
• Order of the Red Star (Czechoslovakia) (16 November 1970)

Further reading

• Koehler, John O. (1999). Stasi:The Inside Story of the East German Secret Police. West View Press. 
• Kerr, Philip (2011). Field Grey. Quercus. ISBN 978-1-84916-414-6. 
• Kießling, Wolfgang (1998). Leistner ist Mielke. Schatten einer gefälschten Biographie. Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag. ISBN 3-7466-8036-0.  (German)
• Pickard, Ralph (2007). STASI Decorations and Memorabilia, A Collector's Guide. Frontline Historical Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9797199-0-5
• Pickard, Ralph (2012). STASI Decorations and Memorabilia Volume II. Frontline Historical Publication. ISBN 978-0-9797199-2-9