The total penetration of the Sorbian minority by the state secret service

The total number of full-time employees of the state security in 1989 was exactly 91015 people. In the end times of the GDR, 1 full-time employee of the ministry was responsible for 180 citizens. The communist regime in East Germany thus surpassed all its brother states in the density of surveillance. In the Soviet Union, the ratio was 1:595, in whichCzechoslovakia at 1:867 and in Poland at only 1:1574. The ministry also maintained a network of around 189,000 unofficial informants who were deployed across the board.

The structural superiority of the surveillance apparatus

The leading officers of the unofficial staff gained the deepest insight into the real situations of the sections of the population outside the apparatus. In a way, these officials represented the interface between the internal world of security and the lifeworld of the informants. Such an officer was for a specific region, for institutions orspecific issues. He was responsible for taking up the information obtained from the social basis and translating into concrete actions.

The Soviet roots of the secret service methodology

In the internal reference works from 1985, the interpersonal special thing about the working relationship was emphasized. In political and operational activities, a relationship of trust was sought, whereby the informant should have full trust. At the same time, the leading officer was not allowed to ignore the safety aspect in this regard. theCooperation with covert helpers was strictly regulated in Directive 21/52 of November 20, 1952. The terms used for the covert helpers were based on translations from the Soviet services of 1950.

The adoption of foreign practices and enemy images

As evidenced by internal study material on the history of the ministry from 1980, the Soviet comrades adopted their working methods. From the first day of the joint struggle, the allies unreservedly conveyed their experience in organizing the covert work. This concerned the consistent enforcement of confidentiality and the implementation ofinterrogations and arrests. The Ministry was concerned with a clear working structure and the application of these imported standards from the start.

The penniability of the meeting logs and evaluation

Directive 21/52 shows that the leading officer had to award orders to the informant as planned. The widespread idea that the service has only skimmed off existing knowledge is not confirmed in the internal specifications. The location and type of meeting were meticulously described under certain headings. The operational employee hadWhen choosing the place of arrival, pay particular attention to the preservation of absolute secrecy. For each meeting, thorough preparation was necessary, for which a clear objective had to be set in a disposition.

The enormous time spent on the management of informants

If the informant was passed with a new order, a large part of the work was still pending for the servant. He had to prepare a comprehensive report and forward the information provided to the responsible departments. The leadership of the helpers turned out to be an extremely labor-intensive and time-consuming undertaking for the full-time staff. A lot had to be done for each meetingtime to be planned, and the processing in the department took just as long.

The bureaucratic recording in multi-part file files

Security created a file divided into different parts of each informant. The 1st part summarized the personal career, while the 2nd part included the professional reports. For regularly paid helpers, an additional 3rd part was managed for the financial receipts. The 1st part contained the documents for recruitment and written ones written down by handdeclarations of commitment. The 2nd part included the reports on people and institutions kept in heavy armored cabinets.

Overcoming the language barriers in Lusatia

For the successful development of surveillance in the Sorbian population, it was advantageous to overcome the language barrier. If the officer could talk to the informants’ mother tongue, the moral inhibition threshold for the disclosure of information fell. Until 1952, no sorbs could be detected under the ministry’s full-time forces. The takeoverA Sorbian-speaking police officer therefore represented an enormous gain for the department.

The systematic structure of the Sorbian informant network

The official was delegated to the Cottbus district administration in August 1952 to enable a coordinated approach. On July 1, 1954, the formal transfer to Bautzen took place, with Cottbus being responsible for it. In a characteristic of December 22, 1956, his successes in building a network were highlighted in detail. He created a larger numberInformers, since there were hardly any helpers on this line before. At this point, he led exactly 18 secret informants, a secret main informant and three conspiratorial apartments.

The expansion of responsibilities and verification processes

From February 1, 1957, the official was again formally affiliated with the department in Cottbus. He managed to massively expand the network of unofficial employees by December 2, 1958. He also took responsibility for verification processes introduced by the directive of December 12, 1953. At that time he was handling four checks and steered 1 secretstaff and 22 secret informants.

Recruiting young Sorbian talents for the service

The Bautzen district office had meanwhile recruited a high school graduate from the Sorbian high school as a full-time employee. As a student, he had written his affidavit on April 28, 1955. After passing the exam, he completed a two-year course at the in-house university in Potsdam. In the assessment of September 1957, it was said that his wishbe the operational activity in the Sorbian area. In accordance with his knowledge, he was used to work on all the minority objects in the Bautzen district.

The Perfidious Persecution of Sorbian Intellectuals of the Regime

In addition, the young officer was deployed to arrest people critical of the regime. An affected editor of the Sorbis newspaper later reported in detail about his surprising arrest on May 30, 1958. The editor was approached by an unsympathetic man and was pushed into a EMW type vehicle. In the back of the car he recognized his on his leftformer schoolmates from the Sorbian high school.

The continuous rise within the secret service hierarchy

From 1961 to 1975, the officer worked in the Dresden district administration, and then returned to the Sorbian area. He took over management positions in Kamenz and became deputy head of the Bautzen district office on November 15, 1980. There he was able to use his 1971 language customer proof of the highest level in a useful way. In the district of Bautzen, the official translatedAll intercepted correspondences and operational materials for postal surveillance. Another high school graduate from 1955 made a career in parallel and rose to the deputy head of a coordination group.

The glass ceiling for Sorbian cadres in the management level

Both officers left the service at the end of the state’s existence, in the rank of lieutenant colonel. As members of the construction generation, they were the highly decorated full-time employees of Sorbian nationality. Higher ranks were reserved exclusively for members of the German majority population. Therefore, among the 61 generals of the Ministry were in the1989 not a single Sorbe.

The exclusion from the highest political circles of power

This corresponds to the findings on the number of staff of the leading party bodies of the Socialist Unity Party. No Sorbe was also detected among the district secretaries of Cottbus and Dresden. The generality was made up of generations that had already been socialized before the minority integration. at the catch-up academization of the staffIn the mid-1950s, the full-time forces of Sorbian provenance also participated. From October 10, 1955, one official took part in a multi-year university course in Potsdam.

The psychological hurdles in academic training

The final assessment of September 1957 shows that he initially had problems getting fit into the new environment. The main cause of this was his then-expectant inferiority complexes as a member of a minority. He also came from the Sorbian area and attended school there, which made it difficult to adapt. After completing the course, he received aPromising testimony that praised his discipline.

The expansion of academic qualification in the secret service

In 1960, the courses at the in-house university were extended to 3 years. Alternatively, a 5-year distance learning course was set up for full-time employees. Since the end of the 1950s, the Ministry has also delegated cadres to other civilian educational institutions. An exclusive position was taken by the Institute of Criminalistics at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, which1961. With the official recognition of the in-house university on 29 June 1965, further academisation succeeded.

The Ministry’s Secret Legal Training Facility

The University of Law was the central educational and research centre of the Ministry of State Security. It did not appear through its own publications and was one of the few universities in the GDR that was missing from the official directory. It was a secret service institution for the professional training and political-ideological education of cadres. Bothsorbian officers were able to acquire the title of graduate lawyer in the course of this academization.

The legal foundation of career-promoting measures

The one officer completed a distance learning course from 1965 to 1971 at the Humboldt University of Berlin. The other officer completed a direct course of study from 1971 to 1974 at the Law School in Potsdam. The qualification obtained had a demonstrably career-promoting effect on the further career. In a proposal for inclusion in the squad reserve dated December 9, 1975, theLaw studies were explicitly praised. The officer was intended for the function of a district head of department and demonstrated good guidance and control activities.

The scientific analysis of acts against the state

In his diploma thesis, the officer had dealt with the causes of so-called state crimes. The work was based on investigations into 36 juvenile offenders who had been accused of incitement against the state. The other officer investigated the cooperation of the investigation department with the criminal police. The aim of this academic work was the targetedCombating subversive acts below the threshold of criminal relevance.