![Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1988-0317-312, Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-1988-0317-312%2C_Alexander_Schalck-Golodkowski.jpg)
Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski (3 July 1932 – 21 June 2015) was a politician and trader in the
German Democratic Republic
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
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**Ger ...
. He was director of a main department ('Hauptverwaltungsleiter') in the ''Ministry for Foreign Trade and German Domestic Trade'' (1956–62), the Deputy Minister for External Trade (1967–75), and head of the GDR's ''
Kommerzielle Koordinierung Kommerzielle Koordinierung ( en, Commercial Coordination) was a secret commercial enterprise in East Germany, run by the Stasi officer Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski and called "KoKo" (short for ''Kommerzielle Koordinierung'').
Origins and developm ...
'' (KoKo, 1966–86).
Early life
He was born in
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
to a stateless ethnic
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...
n father and adopted by the Schalcks when he was eight years old. His biological father served as a
Tsarist
Tsarist autocracy (russian: царское самодержавие, transcr. ''tsarskoye samoderzhaviye''), also called Tsarism, was a form of autocracy (later absolute monarchy) specific to the Grand Duchy of Moscow and its successor states ...
officer in
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
and became the head of the
Wehrmacht
The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previous ...
's Russian language interpreter school in
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
; he did not return from
Soviet captivity. His maternal grandfather worked for
Stinnes in
St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
.
munzinger.de
biography
Schalck-Golodkowsky joined the Free German Youth
The Free German Youth (german: Freie Deutsche Jugend; FDJ) is a youth movement in Germany. Formerly, it was the official youth movement of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.
The organization was meant ...
in 1951 and the Socialist Unity Party of Germany
The Socialist Unity Party of Germany (german: Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, ; SED, ), often known in English as the East German Communist Party, was the founding and ruling party of the German Democratic Republic (GDR; East German ...
(''Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands'', SED) in 1955.
Career in East Germany
In 1966 he was appointed head of KoKo (at that time a newly formed department of the Ministry for Foreign Trade, ten years later it would formally become a powerful independent government agency in its own right) and in 1967 was also appointed a special officer of the Ministry of State Security.
In 1983 he led the negotiations with Bavaria
Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...
n leader Franz Josef Strauß
Franz Josef Strauss ( ; 6 September 1915 – 3 October 1988) was a German politician. He was the long-time chairman of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) from 1961 until 1988, member of the federal cabinet in different positions between ...
to obtain a billion Deutschmarks loan from the West German
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 O ...
government.
He was appointed to the central committee of the SED in 1986 and, under suspicion of misusing his powers at KoKo he fled to West Berlin in December 1989. He was briefly imprisoned before settling in Bavaria.
Post-reunification activities
Following reunification
A political union is a type of political entity which is composed of, or created from, smaller polities, or the process which achieves this. These smaller polities are usually called federated states and federal territories in a federal governm ...
, the actions of KoKo and of Schalck-Golodkowski head were investigated on suspicions of espionage activities, tax evasion, fraud, breaking embargo regulations and offences against Allied military law. He was prosecuted in 1996 for breaking Allied law and sentenced to a year's probation; other charges were withdrawn due to his ill-health—he had operations to remove cancers in 1987 and 1997.
He had been married twice and had two children.
See also
*Heinrich Rau
Heinrich Gottlob "Heiner" Rau (2 April 1899 – 23 March 1961) was a German communist politician during the time of the Weimar Republic; subsequently, during the Spanish Civil War, he was a leading member of the International Brigades and afte ...
References
1932 births
2015 deaths
Politicians from Berlin
Socialist Unity Party of Germany politicians
East German civil servants
Stasi officers
Stasi officers convicted of crimes
German people convicted of tax crimes
German people of Russian descent
Recipients of the Patriotic Order of Merit
{{Germany-SED-politician-stub