Rüdiger Bernhardt (born 8 September 1940) is a German

Germanist German studies is the field of humanities that researches, documents and disseminates German language and literature in both its historic and present forms. Academic departments of German studies often include classes on German culture, German hi ...

and Scandinavist. Born in

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth larg ...

, Bernhardt was a Germanist at the

Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (german: Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg), also referred to as MLU, is a public, research-oriented university in the cities of Halle and Wittenberg and the largest and oldest university i ...

until 1993. Among other things he dealt with works by , among them with the '. As

unofficial collaborator An unofficial collaborator or IM (; both from German ''inoffizieller Mitarbeiter''), or euphemistically informal collaborator (''informeller Mitarbeiter''), was an informant in the German Democratic Republic, German Democratic Republic (East German ...

(IME) under the code name "Faust", he provided the

Stasi The Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the (),An abbreviation of . was the Intelligence agency, 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 maint ...

with expert opinions on manuscripts by authors for many years; he thus influenced of the

censorship in East Germany As with many Soviet-allied countries prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the government of the former German Democratic Republic (German: ''Deutsche Demokratische Republik'') applied censorship during its existence from 1949 to 1990. The censor ...

. As a result of an evaluation of a text by by the Stasi secret expert, the Opitz text was not printed and led to State

reprisal A reprisal is a limited and deliberate violation of international law to punish another sovereign state that has already broken them. Since the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions (AP 1), reprisals in the laws of war are extremel ...

s. Bernhardt worked as a Stasi-IM from 1976 to 1989. The files contain 13 typewritten reports, 41 tape copies, 49 oral reports and 60 meeting reports of the

agent handling In intelligence organizations, agent handling is the management of so-called agents (called secret agents or spies in common parlance), principal agents, and agent networks (called "assets") by intelligence officers typically known as case o ...

by him. In addition to his expert reports, he reported on the German Studies/Art Studies Section at the University of Halle and on more than 30 persons. Joachim Walther: ''Security Area Literature. Writer and State Security in the Deutschen Demokratischen Republik'' (

Ullstein Verlag The ''Ullstein Verlag'' was founded by Leopold Ullstein in 1877 at Berlin and is one of the largest publishing companies of Germany. It published newspapers like '' B.Z.'' and ''Berliner Morgenpost'' and books through its subsidiaries ''Ullstein B ...

. Nr. 26553), Berlin 1999, , . Bernhardt is a member of the

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Jahrestag der Bücherverbrennung "Er ist ein Mann vom Fach"
7 May 2003 {{DEFAULTSORT:Bernhardt, Rudiger 1940 births Living people Writers from Dresden Germanists Old Norse studies scholars Academic staff of the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg

Further reading

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External links