Rüdiger Bernhardt (born 8 September 1940) is a German

Germanist German studies is an academic field that researches, documents and disseminates German language, German literature, literature, and culture in its historic and present forms. Academic departments of German studies therefore often focus on Culture ...

and Scandinavist. Born in

Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...

, Bernhardt was a Germanist at the

Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (), also referred to as MLU, is a public university, public research university in the cities of Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, Halle and Wittenberg. It is the largest and oldest university in the German State o ...

until 1993. Among other things he dealt with works by Peter Hille, 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 (East Germany) who delivered privat ...

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

Stasi The Ministry for State Security (, ; abbreviated MfS), commonly known as the (, an abbreviation of ), was the Intelligence agency, state security service and secret police of East Germany from 1950 to 1990. It was one of the most repressive pol ...

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 cens ...

. 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 of ...

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 ''Ullstei ...

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

Leibniz-Sozietät der Wissenschaften zu Berlin The Leibniz-Sozietät der Wissenschaften zu Berlin is a German-speaking association of scientists founded in Berlin in 1993 in the legal form of a registered association. It is dedicated to interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary exchange and 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 German Germanists Old Norse studies scholars Academic staff of the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg

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