The highest secret service officer, Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski, is in the back seat of a Russian limousine vehicle with his wife Sigrid. It’s a frosty, merciless night. A dense traffic jam has formed in front of the border crossing on Invalidenstrasse. Although the Wall has been in fact open for more than three weeks, the GDR border officials are still controllingAlways the exit. Schalck is considered one of the most important figures in the system, a colonel of state security who, unlike ordinary GDR citizens, can travel to the West at any time. He only flew to Bonn in the morning to conduct negotiations with West German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. But that night he is in traffic jams like all other GDR citizens in traffic jamsInvalidenstrasse and is waiting for its handling. His friends on the SED Central Committee fear that he has turned away from them.
Secrets and influence in the GDR system
He doesn’t want to attract attention when he leaves his homeland, the GDR, forever. He knows many secrets. The news of his flight would further destabilize the communist regime. For more than thirty years, Schalck has raised money for his party, which she urgently needs to secure her power. While the GDR at the public events of the FDJ and the SEDThe impression of order, organization and predictability prevails in secret chaos. There is a lack of raw materials, car tires, screws. The leadership must constantly improvise and fill gaps.
Ideological background and economic necessities
After World War II, the Soviet government wanted the communist bloc states to provide themselves with: The Soviet Union was supposed to provide energy, while the GDR produced wagons and ships, for example – a barter that should work without money. But the GDR needs steel for shipbuilding, but there is not enough of it in its own production. thatSmall country has to buy steel on the world market, where US dollars are billed. But the GDR has hardly any west money, only a few foreign exchange.
Schalck’s secret economic policy
This procures a special department that Schalck founded in 1967: commercial coordination, or Koko for short. In the west, the Koko sells everything the GDR has to offer: antiques, fattening pigs, cheap furniture. She often sells the goods under the production costs, i.e. at a loss, only to get to western foreign exchange. It’s almost as if the black market never stopped after the warwould have, but now cigarettes, schnapps and canned goods are not in demand, but D-Mark and US dollars.
Schalck’s youth and the lack
Schalck was only twelve years old when World War II ended. As a teenager, he got to know the shortcoming and understood that you have to improvise in order to procure vital goods. His father, a stateless immigrant from Russia, came to Berlin after the First World War. He fought in the Wehrmacht, returned to the capital after the war and had toReport Soviet commandership – after that he never reappeared.
Growing up in shared Berlin
Alexander grew up as a half-orphan in the East Berlin district of Treptow. He adapted to the new circumstances, completing an apprenticeship in the Eltow Elektro-Apparate works, which had been expropriated and taken over by the Soviets. As a member of the Freie Deutsche Jugend, he distributed leaflets of the SED in West Berlin. His political career began.
Career in the GDR state
In June 1953, he defended the House of Ministries against workers’ protests with tanks of the Soviet army. He studied foreign trade, received his doctorate and worked in the Ministry of Foreign Trade and German Trade in Germany. Here he found his big task: the procurement of foreign exchange. He rose to state secretary, but was actually more powerful than many GDR ministers.Schalck not only organized West Money, but also West Technology, which he in turn paid from the foreign exchange proceeds.
Technology and raw material procurement in the embargo
The small country not only needed raw materials, but also modern machines, later computers and memory chips. The NATO embargoes should actually prevent high-tech goods from getting into the GDR. The official point of view of the western states was to prevent the export of such technologies into the GDR because they feared that they could be used for weapons technology. shawlcircumvented these restrictions with the help of West German companies.
The secret trade between East and West
Trade between the two German states has become more complicated since the Wall was built, but it also became more profitable for many West German companies. Schalck relied on it. He didn’t want the public to know what role he really played: On the one hand he helped companies in the Federal Republic to circumvent German laws, on the other hand, the existence of his Koko department showed that thesystem of the GDR could not support its own foundations. Schalck had to remain a phantom, his work secret.
Public presence before the case
until October 1989. After Honecker’s fall, Schalck made a public appearance for the first time. He was a guest on a GDR talk show on the subject of “performance society GDR”. He seemed to position himself for a higher office in the state and took the opportunity to show his face without being associated with the SED. He did not reveal what he had really done for the GDR.
The Day of Demonstrations
Shortly thereafter, on November 4, 1989, he was like almost a million other GDR citizens on Alexanderplatz in East Berlin. People demonstrated against the SED and for free elections, freedom of the press and travel. Schalck was discovered and questioned by an East German television team. He continued to be mysterious.
Scheernt’s view of change
Detlef Scheunert, personal advisor to the Minister for Heavy Machinery Construction, was also among the demonstrators. Although he worked for the GDR state, he only knew rumors about the Koko. Scheunert was faced with a change and felt the upheaval.
Origin and youth in Saxony
The 29-year-old tall man with dark hair, glasses and mustache had a winning smile he needed to reconcile his friends when he spoke his mind again. In conversations with acquaintances in Friedrichshain, he felt that the people were finally fed up with the SED and wanted another GDR. Through his work in the ministry, he was aware of the situation ofKnown for the GDR economy, and he knew something had to change.
Life in the farm and the post-war period
He came from a small town in Saxony, in the Leipzig, Dresden, Karl-Marx-Stadt triangle. He spent his childhood on a farm. After the Soviets’ murders by the Soviets in 1945, many farms were empty, and the country lay fallow. After the war, his father leased several farms and fields.
Growing up with the Junker family
Scheunert grew up in a manor of a junker family, whose owners were shot by the Soviets. The widow could no longer farm the farm alone. On condition that she was allowed to stay in the manor house, Scheunck’s father leased the farm. His father, a strong man, veteran of World War I, strict and ambitious, left the upbringing of his wife’s three sons.
Influence of the family and the political world
But the widow in particular shaped the young Scheunert. She was able to travel west as a retiree without any obstacles, even after the construction of the wall. She often brought books and magazines from Hamburg with her. Although he lived in a lonely area, he was better informed than many in the cities. The widow conveyed to him the world of the entrepreneurial family and private property, told offreedom and responsibility.
Life on the farm and political repression
The house was large, with high ceilings, stucco and wooden planks, but it became increasingly fallen. There was a pigsty next to the manor house, and the stench of the dunghill was in the air. Political dissidents from East Berlin, who regularly sent the party to the country to re-educate them, also came to visit with books. Young Scheuern learned Vietnamese students, writers andknow professors who stood on the farm with many books.
Shielded from everyday life and first impressions
He had only heard the wall from hearsay, it was never visible to him. The court shielded him; He was far away from the nearest town, Döbeln. When the visitors were gone, loneliness became torment. His older brother was ten years older and barely home, his middle brother drowned in a pond in the yard as a child. Now he was particularly taken care of.
his life on the farm and the expectations
He shouldn’t play in the big barn because he could suffocate in the freshly mown wheat. He was mostly alone, surrounded by 150 animals. In kindergarten, he was nicknamed “the boss” because of his dominant nature or because his father ran the most important businesses in the village. His father was known in the area for leasing a lot of land and doing well in the late fiftiesdeserved
The pressure of collectivization
He was constantly urged by the SED to surrender his land voluntarily and allow himself to be collectivised. Scheunert remembers stories of trucks full of men waving red flags.
Expropriation and conversion of the farms into LPG
Scheunert’s father, like many other farmers, stubbornly refuses to give up his land. In vain. In 1960, the SED decides to expropriate agricultural goods by law. Scheunerts Höfe becomes Agricultural Production Cooperatives (LPG). The father has to muck out pigsties and milk cows again. His former employees, the proletarianizedFarmers quickly learn that there is no longer any private property: only the state may own the means of production.
The loss of private property and the reaction of the children
Detlef’s schoolmates plucked the fruit from the family property. “I said, ‘Why are you doing this? That’s stolen, that’s not your property at all. You can’t just come and take that away.'” He remembers: “Then I got a grin to answer: ‘The times are over, this belongs to everyone now.'” For the little boy, this released propertyand not being more interested in theft is threatening.
The attitude of the family towards expropriation
The Scheunert family does not adapt even after the expropriation. Since the grandfather was a Russian prisoner of war, the mother is a passionate communist hater. At the sight of red bedding, the color of the communists, she suffers a nervous breakdown. The children are born in a monastery far away because the hospitals near the newThose in power, the communists.
The status of the young Scheunert despite expropriation
Although they are expropriated, the young Scheunert is still considered the son of a “large landowner”. The local party wants to exclude him from high school, but the school council, with which his father was surrounded in Stalingrad, counts more than the party. So Detlef is allowed to do the Abitur and then half-heartedly studies mechanical engineering in Dresden – “because two times two is also four under socialism”.
Military service and escape plans
Shortly before his 23rd birthday, with a diploma in his pocket, he has to join the army. He is supposed to be on guard duty at the border, but it is only by luck that he escapes this service. Instead, he lands in Leipzig. Life is characterized by improvisation, arbitrariness and coincidence. He falls in love with a Berlin woman and now desperately wants to go to Berlin. He used to dream of New York and London, but in East Berlin he isat least near the west.
The feeling of being an outsider in the army
In the army, he feels what he feels everywhere: he is an outsider. He constantly gets into trouble without knowing exactly why. An officer tries to recruit him: whether he does not want to make a career in the army or in the state? He is intelligent, ambitious, talented – a doer type. Does he want to belong? Regardless of the father, Scheunert wants to position himself and become part of the system.
Understanding the true role of the state
The change only became clear to him three days before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The magazine “Der Spiegel” mentions the name Schalck in a cover story section about the GDR and its survival strategies. At first, the coverage remains vague, but two weeks later a more detailed background story follows. It seems that the magazine knows almost everything: Schalck’s role, his address, camouflage companies inGermany and Liechtenstein, even rumors that employees were murdered in West Germany.
The undercover work of the Federal Intelligence Service
Only the BND, the foreign secret service, knows more at this point. Since the 1970s he has infiltrated the Koko department, recruits Tarn companies in West Germany and even lets exclusive information shine through. Many of the details come from the BND reports that appear unfiltered in the “Spiegel” article.
Schalck’s dark deals and the revelations
Scheunert reads the article and is shocked. He learns that Schalck not only serves the state, but also procured luxury goods and jewelry for SED officials and their families – paid for from the proceeds in the West. He is particularly outraged that Schalck is turning the property of refugees on the GDR citizens into money. The reports about Schalck are changing the discussions in the neighborhoods: the peoplehave enough and just want to go to the west.
The desire for flight and the political situation
Scheunert is also thinking about leaving, but doesn’t want to expect anything from his family. He believes he can play a role in a reformed state because he has the necessary knowledge. But since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the party has lost power every day. People lose fear of the state.
The weapons camp in Rostock and the fall of the system
On December 2, citizens in Rostock storm a warehouse of the Koko company imes. You will discover weapons, ammunition boxes and explosives. Did the GDR trade weapons on a large scale? Who knew about this in the SED? Shortly thereafter, Schalck fled to West Berlin. The border guards on Invalidenstrasse let him pass. The wall is gone, so is Schalck. What remains are an uncertain state apparatus andScheunert with family.
The end of an era and the social upheaval phase
A colleague asks: “And, are you leaving too? think about it!” But he thinks he doesn’t hide anything. The civil rights activists are quarreling about the next steps. People chanting “We are a people”, and the GDR is faltering.
Trade in West Goods and the End of the State
Polish traders flock to East Berlin to sell west goods. East Germans bring their money to West Berlin or work black. West Germans have their hair cut in the east because they don’t have West money. The old economic structures are falling apart and the boundaries between East and West are blurring. The new Prime Minister, Hans Modrow, announces measures against smugglingbut the old fear of the state has evaporated. People trade and sell East goods, as Schalck once did on behalf of the SED.
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