Erich Mielke

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Erich Fritz Emil Mielke (December 28, 1907 - May 21, 2000 in Berlin), was a German Communist. He was the head of the intelligence and secret police force in East Germany from 1957 to 1989.

Mielke became a member of the German Communist Party during the 1920s and worked as a reporter for a communist newspaper from 1928-1931. He took part in street battles against the Nazis, and on August 9 1931 (according to his later trial) he and Erich Ziemer, at the urging of Walter Ulbricht, and planned by Heinz Neumann and Hans Kippenberger, assassinated two Berlin police officers, Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenck. Fleeing arrest for that crime, he escaped to the Soviet Union where he joined numerous other German Communist exiles in Moscow. He was convicted of the murders in absentia by the new Nazi regime in 1934, apparently using evidence extracted under torture. Three other German communists were arrested for these murders, convicted and sentenced to death. Among them was communist martyr, Max Matern.

In 1932 Mielke attended the Comintern's Military Political school and later the Lenin School. Due to his record as a reliable Stalinist, Mielke survived Stalin's purges, which decimated the exiled German community.

From 1936 to 1939 he was sent to fight in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side; during World War II he found himself caught in France, interned as an enemy alien by the Vichy regime. However Mielke's activities during World War Two are disputed, for he was often heard singing Soviet Partisan songs with fellow Stasi officials and hence it is possible that Mielke fought as a partisan behind German lines on the Eastern Front.

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 the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, where he was a member of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) Central committee from 1950 until his forced retirement in 1989. From July of 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 Stasi. From 1950-1953 he was state secretary in the Stasi, later serving as full State Secretary from 1953-1955. From 1955-1957 he was deputy minister of state security.

Erich Mielke was also a fitness enthusiast, he was a non-smoker and he drank very little. It was his insistence of sport in the German Democratic Republic that East Germany won so many medals at the Olympics. East Germany participated heavily is using steroids to improve the performance of its athletes.He was a keen hunter and owned a large area of ground where he would hunt animals with other top GDR officials.

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Tenure as Stasi head

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Mielke headed the Stasi from 1957 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 on all the activities within it. At 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. He was one of the most powerful – and most hated – men in East Germany, feared even by members of his own Stasi.

In 1989 Mielke was responsible for one of the most famous TV incidents of East Germany: When he addressed the members of the Volkskammer as "comrades", as he was accustomed to doing, some angry non-SED members asked him to 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 people..." (Laughter in the crowd).

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mielke was arrested by the new German authorities and charged with the murder of the police officers. Coincidentally, this trial took place in the same courtroom as the Nazi one. Sentenced in October 1993 to six years, he was paroled after less than two, and in 1998 all further legal action against him was ended on the grounds of his poor health.

Mielke died on May 21 2000 aged 92 in a Berlin nursing home. About 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.

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