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Staatssicherheitsdienst
The Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the (),An abbreviation of . was the state security service of the East Germany from 1950 to 1990. The Stasi's function was similar to the KGB, serving as a means of maintaining state authority, i.e., the "Sword and Shield of the Party" (). This was accomplished primarily through the use of a network of civilian informants. This organization contributed to the arrest of approximately 250,000 people in East Germany. The Stasi also conducted espionage and other clandestine operations abroad through its subordinate foreign intelligence service, the Office of Enlightenment, or Head Office A (german: Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung). They also maintained contacts and occasionally cooperated with West German terrorists. The Stasi was headquartered in East Berlin, with an extensive complex in Berlin-Lichtenberg and several smaller facilities throughout the city. Erich Mielke was the Stasi's longest-serving chief, in power for 32 of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stasi Records Agency
, commonly known as the ) , dissolved = June 17, 2021 , superseding1 = , agency_type = Former Secret Police Archive , jurisdiction = , status = Dissolved, now part of the German Federal Archives , headquarters = Karl-Liebknecht-Straße31/33Berlin-Lichtenberg, Germany , coordinates = , motto = , employees = 1,313 () , budget = , chief1_name = Roland Jahn , chief1_position = Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records , parent_department = , parent_agency = , website = (in English) , agency_id = , map = , map_size = , map_caption = Location on a map of Berlin. , map_alt = , footnotes = , embed = The Stasi Records Agency (german: Stasi-Unterlagen-Behörde) was the organisation that administered the archives of Ministry of State Secu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Markus Wolf
Markus Johannes Wolf (19 January 1923 – 9 November 2006), also known as Mischa, was head of the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance (), the foreign intelligence division of East Germany's Ministry for State Security (, abbreviated MfS, commonly known as the ). He was the Stasi's number two for 34 years, which spanned most of the Cold War. He is often regarded as one of the best-known spymasters during the Cold War. In the West he was known as "the man without a face" due to his elusiveness. Life and career Early life and education Wolf was born 19 January 1923, in Hechingen, Province of Hohenzollern (now Baden-Württemberg), to a Jewish father and a non-Jewish German mother. His father was the writer, communist activist and physician Friedrich Wolf (1888–1953) and his mother was the nursery teacher Else Wolf ( Dreibholz; 1898–1973). He had one brother, the film director Konrad Wolf (1925–1982). His father was a member of the Communist Party of Germany, and after the a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stasi Museum
The Stasi Museum (also known in German as the ''Forschungs- und Gedenkstätte Normannenstraße'') is a research and memorial centre concerning the political system of the former East Germany. It is located in the Lichtenberg locality of Berlin, in the former headquarters of the Stasi (officially the ''Ministerium für Staatssicherheit''), on Ruschestraße, near Frankfurter Allee and U-Bahn station Magdalenenstraße. History The centrepiece of the exhibition is the office and working quarters of the former Minister of State Security – i.e. head of the Stasi – Erich Mielke. The museum is operated by the ''Antistalinistische Aktion Berlin-Normannenstraße'' (ASTAK), which was founded by civil rights activists in Berlin in 1990.Trägerverein ASTAK e.V. From the home page. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walter Ulbricht
Walter Ernst Paul Ulbricht (; 30 June 18931 August 1973) was a German communist politician. Ulbricht played a leading role in the creation of the Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and later (after spending the years of Nazi rule in exile in France and the Soviet Union) in the early development and establishment of the German Democratic Republic. As the First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1950 to 1971, he was the chief decision-maker in East Germany. From President Wilhelm Pieck's death in 1960 on, he was also the East German head of state until his own death in 1973. As the leader of a significant Communist satellite, Ulbricht had a degree of bargaining power with the Kremlin that he used effectively. For example, he demanded the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 when the Kremlin was reluctant. Ulbricht began his political life during the German Empire, when he joined first the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1912, the anti-World War I In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Willy Brandt
Willy Brandt (; born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm; 18 December 1913 – 8 October 1992) was a German politician and statesman who was leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 1964 to 1987 and served as the chancellor of West Germany from 1969 to 1974. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971 for his efforts to strengthen cooperation in western Europe through the EEC and to achieve reconciliation between West Germany and the countries of Eastern Europe. He was the first Social Democrat chancellor since 1930. Fleeing to Norway and then Sweden during the Nazi regime and working as a left-wing journalist, he took the name Willy Brandt as a pseudonym to avoid detection by Nazi agents, and then formally adopted the name in 1948. Brandt was originally considered one of the leaders of the right wing of the SPD, and earned initial fame as Governing Mayor of West Berlin. He served as the foreign minister and as the vice-chancellor in Kurt Georg Kiesinger's cabi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chancellor Of Germany (Federal Republic)
The chancellor of Germany, officially the federal chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany,; often shortened to ''Bundeskanzler''/''Bundeskanzlerin'', / is the head of the federal government of Germany and the commander in chief of the German Armed Forces during wartime. The chancellor is the chief executive of the Federal Cabinet and heads the executive branch. The chancellor is elected by the Bundestag on the proposal of the federal president and without debate (Article 63 of the German Constitution). The current officeholder is Olaf Scholz of the SPD, who was elected in December 2021, succeeding Angela Merkel. He was elected after the SPD entered into a coalition agreement with Alliance 90/The Greens and the FDP. History of the office The office of Chancellor has a long history, stemming back to the Holy Roman Empire, when the office of German archchancellor was usually held by archbishops of Mainz. The title was, at times, used in several states of German-spea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Günter Guillaume
Günter Guillaume (1 February 1927 – 10 April 1995) was a German spy who gathered intelligence as an agent for East Germany's secret service, the Stasi, in West Germany. Guillaume became West German chancellor Willy Brandt's secretary, and his discovery as a spy in 1973 led to Brandt's downfall in the Guillaume affair. Early life Günter Karl Heinz Guillaume was born on 1 February 1927, at 31 Choriner Straße in Prenzlauer Berg, then a working-class district of Berlin. He was the only child of Karl Ernst Guillaume, a pianist who played in bars and theatres, where he provided background music for silent films, and Johanna Old Pauline (), a hairdresser. His parents, who had married four months before Günter's birth, were both native to Berlin. Due to the combination of the Great Depression and the introduction of sound films, the Guillaumes suffered financial hardship. These experiences made the extremist policies being presented by Adolf Hitler and Nazi Party attractive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 October 1990. During the Cold War, the western portion of Germany and the associated territory of West Berlin were parts of the Western Bloc. West Germany was formed as a political entity during the Allied occupation of Germany after World War II, established from eleven states formed in the three Allied zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. The FRG's provisional capital was the city of Bonn, and the Cold War era country is retrospectively designated as the Bonn Republic. At the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided between the Western and Eastern blocs. Germany was divided into the two countries. Initially, West Germany claimed an exclusive mandate for all of Germany, representing itself as t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
General Reconnaissance Administration
The Main Directorate for Reconnaissance (german: ; german: , ) was the foreign intelligence service of the Ministry of State Security (''Stasi''), the main security agency of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), from 1955 to 1990. The HVA was an integral part of the Stasi, responsible for operations outside of East Germany such as espionage, active measures, foreign intelligence gathering, and counterintelligence against NATO-aligned countries and their intelligence agencies. The Stasi was disbanded in January 1990 and the HVA's mode of operation was revealed to the public, including its internal structure, methods, and employees. The HVA became the subject of broad interest and intensive research under the responsibilities of the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records. The HVA is regarded by some as the most effective foreign intelligence service during the Cold War and the second largest after Soviet Union's intelligence forces. It provided up to 80 percent o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erich Honecker
Erich Ernst Paul Honecker (; 25 August 1912 – 29 May 1994) was a German communist politician who led the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) from 1971 until shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. He held the posts of General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and Chairman of the National Defence Council; in 1976, he replaced Willi Stoph as Chairman of the State Council, the official head of state. As the leader of East Germany, Honecker had close ties to the Soviet Union, which maintained a large army in the country. Honecker's political career began in the 1930s when he became an official of the Communist Party of Germany, a position for which he was imprisoned by the Nazis. Following World War II, he was freed by the Soviet army and relaunched his political activities, founding the SED's youth organisation, the Free German Youth, in 1946 and serving as the group's chairman until 1955. As the Security Secretary of the SED C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Göttingen
Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, the population was 118,911. General information The origins of Göttingen lay in a village called ''Gutingi, ''first mentioned in a document in 953 AD. The city was founded northwest of this village, between 1150 and 1200 AD, and adopted its name. In Middle Ages, medieval times the city was a member of the Hanseatic League and hence a wealthy town. Today, Göttingen is famous for its old university (''Georgia Augusta'', or University of Göttingen, "Georg-August-Universität"), which was founded in 1734 (first classes in 1737) and became the most visited university of Europe. In 1837, seven professors protested against the absolute sovereignty of the House of Hanover, kings of Kingdom of Hanover, Hanover; they lost their positions, but be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Berghahn Books
Berghahn Books is a New York and Oxford-based publisher Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ... of scholarly books and academic journals in the humanities and social sciences, with a special focus on Social anthropology, social & cultural anthropology, European history, politics, and Film studies, film & media studies. It was founded in 1994 by Marion Berghahn. Books division Berghahn Books publishes ca 140 new titles and some 80 paperback editions each year and has a backlist of nearly 2,500 titles in print. New titles are published in both print and online, with the select digitization of the backlist currently being undertaken as part of the Berghahn Books Online platform. Many Berghahn titles have been reviewed on ''Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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