“Enemies” and “spies”
Warning against enemies and spies, FDGB, circa 1950.
“Enemies” and “spies”
In a totalitarian system such as the GDR, who was to be defined as an “enemy” was subject to the power of definition of the SED leadership and its security organs. Constructed enemy stereotypes, vague ideological guidelines and “rubber paragraphs” in criminal law enabled the MGB, with the support of the MfS, to arbitrarily persecute alleged or actual critics of the SED regime.
With the general accusation of “espionage” based on Soviet criminal law, critics of the poor living and working conditions could be prosecuted in the same way as agents of Western secret services. It did not depend on the objectively established guilt of the individual; even an arbitrary allegation could mean the death sentence for those affected.
The communist secret services also investigated people who had already been persecuted by the National Socialists. However, their fate did not protect them from renewed repression. The alleged “spies” also included people who had been involved in Nazi crimes, but this played no or only a minor role in their conviction by the SMT.
Ernst Reuter, Mayor of West Berlin, at the protest against the kidnapping of Walter Linse, at which around 20,000 people gathered in front of Berlin-Schöneberg City Hall on July 10, 1952. / Landesarchiv Berlin / Gert Schütz
Walter Linse’s kidnapper: Kurt Knobloch
The identity card issued by the MfS to Kurt Knobloch, one of Walter Linse’s kidnappers. After Linse’s arrest, the Stasi gave Knobloch, whom they had previously recruited for this crime, a new identity as “Kurt Müller”. However, Knobloch was exposed by the Western authorities, arrested in West Berlin in March 1953 and sentenced to ten years in prison. Landesarchiv Berlin
After the kidnapping of Walter Linse, the West Berlin police stepped up surveillance of the sector border, here in Berlin-Lichterfelde, July 1952. / Landesarchiv Berlin / Bert Sass
Index cards for Walter Linse from the Central Index Card Index (ZNK) of the GRC Search Service
Supplementary map to the 1938 census of the Silberstein family with information on “racial origin”. The cards of “Jews” were evaluated separately and served as a data basis for the persecution.
A group led by steelworker Horst Mucke is said to have delivered reports on troop transports and steel production in Riesa to the KgU in West Berlin. Siegfried Silberstein is said to have acted as a courier. Mucke was sentenced to death in Berlin-Lichtenberg on May 31, 1951 and shot in Moscow on August 6, 1951. / Municipal Center for History & Art, Riesa
Headquarters of SMT Thuringia and prison in Weimar, Carl-von-Ossietzky-Straße, 2005 / T&G Films Berlin / Thomas Henkel