71 Facts About Erich Mielke

Erich Fritz Emil Mielke was a German communist official who served as head of the East German Ministry for State Security, better known as the Stasi, from 1957 until shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Erich Mielke was one of the key figures in the decimation of Moscow's German Communists during the Great Purge as well as in the Stalinist witch-hunt for ideological dissent within the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War.

The Stasi under Erich Mielke has been called by historian Edward Peterson the "most pervasive police state apparatus ever to exist on German soil".

Erich Mielke oversaw the establishment of pro-Soviet police states and paramilitary insurgencies in Western Europe, Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.

Erich Mielke was born in a tenement in Berlin-Wedding, Brandenburg, on 28 December 1907.

Erich Mielke's precinct included the area around KPD headquarters, which made it the most dangerous in the city.

Erich Mielke further reminded them that Anlauf was accompanied everywhere by Senior Sergeant Max Willig, whom the KPD had nicknamed, "Hussar".

Erich Mielke directed a runner to summon Mielke and Ziemer to his apartment at 74 Bellermannstrasse, only a few minutes walk from where the two lived.

Erich Mielke later graduated from the Lenin School shortly before being recruited into the OGPU.

Erich Mielke had to wait six more months before the details of the police action against his Berlin comrades reached Moscow.

Erich Mielke began an equally permanent habit of calling himself a Chekist.

Erich Mielke stands at the head of the battle to strengthen the power of our workers' and peasants' state.

From 1936 to 1939, Erich Mielke served in Spain as an operative of the Servicio de Investigacion Militar, the political police of the Second Spanish Republic.

Erich Mielke demanded to know why Janka had voluntarily traveled to Spain rather than being assigned there by the Party.

When he told Erich Mielke to get lost, the SIM demoted Janka to the ranks and then expelled him from the International Brigade.

Erich Mielke managed to send a message to exiled KPD members and, in May 1939, he escaped to Belgium.

On 25 April 1945, Erich Mielke returned to the Soviet Zone of Occupied Germany aboard a special Soviet aircraft that carried fellow German Communists Walter Ulbricht, Wilhelm Zaisser, Ernst Wollweber, and many of the future leaders of the East Germany.

On 15 July 1945, Erich Mielke walked into the KPD's headquarters and volunteered his services.

Furthermore, Erich Mielke concealed his past and contemporaneous involvement with the NKVD, NKGB, and the Nazi Organisation Todt.

Wilhelm Zaisser, who had been Erich Mielke's commanding officer in Republican Spain, was appointed the K-5's head.

In 1948, Erich Mielke was appointed as security chief of the German Economic Commission, the precursor to the future East German government.

Erich Mielke's task was to investigate the theft and sale of state property on the black market.

Erich Mielke was charged with intercepting the growing number of refugees fleeing to the French, British, and American Zones.

Erich Mielke was appointed to his staff with the rank of State Secretary.

Erich Mielke was granted a seat in the SED's ruling Politburo.

All the while, Erich Mielke remained untouched and continued to serve as the deputy secret police chief.

Erich Mielke's survival reinforced the belief that he had spent the war years in the Soviet Union instead of France and Belgium as he had claimed in the 1945 questionnaire.

Erich Mielke personally interrogated her and, at one point, offered Mrs Wallach immediate release if she named the members of her fictitious spy network.

Erich Mielke was condemned to death by a Soviet military tribunal in East Berlin and shipped to the Lubianka prison in Moscow for her execution.

Erich Mielke was released during the Khrushchev thaw in October 1955.

Erich Mielke did not say how many were victims of official lynching.

Erich Mielke conferred with Stasi Minister Wilhelm Zaisser and with Mielke, his deputy, both of whom he had known since the early 1930s.

Erich Mielke was sentenced to death and shot by Red Army Colonel-General Pavel Batitsky on 23 December 1953.

Wilhelm Zaisser was replaced as head of the Stasi by Ernst Wollweber and Erich Mielke remained on staff as his deputy.

Erich Mielke headed the Stasi from 1957 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

When Wiegand showed him a detailed report, Erich Mielke informed the SED's Politburo, which ordered the Colonel to continue surveillance but not interfere with the plans of the Libyans.

Erich Mielke had come to tell them that it was over, to convince the leadership to adopt his reformist policies.

Erich Mielke had spoken openly about the danger of not 'responding to reality.

However, when Erich Mielke sent the orders, codenamed "Shield", to each local Stasi precinct to begin the planned arrests, he was not obeyed.

Erich Mielke responded by putting the last nail into Honecker's coffin.

Erich Mielke announced that the MfS had a file on the now-ousted leader.

On 7 November 1989, Erich Mielke resigned, along with eleven out of eighteen members of the SED's Council of Ministers, in response to the increasing disintegration of the GDR.

On 13 November 1989, Erich Mielke was summoned to deliver a briefing about the protests to the GDR parliament, or Volkskammer.

Erich Mielke continued, speaking of the "triumph" of the socialist economy, continuing all the while to address the members of the Volkskammer as "Comrades".

Erich Mielke then stormed off the podium, angrily throwing his speech to the floor and stomping on the papers while swearing at everyone in German.

Erich Mielke was later transferred to the Soviet military hospital at Wunsdorf, where he was sedated and treated under guard.

On 7 December 1989, Erich Mielke was brutally beaten, arrested and thrown into solitary confinement for embezzlement of public funds in order to improve his hunting estate.

Erich Mielke was charged with "Damaging the People's Economy".

Erich Mielke was initially imprisoned in the Hohenschonhausen Prison Complex and investigated by the East German military prosecutor's office.

Erich Mielke was released on 9 March 1990 for being unfit for imprisonment.

Erich Mielke was now indicted for ordering the shootings of defectors at the Berlin Wall.

Erich Mielke spent time at the Rummelsburg prison and then at the Plotzensee Prison, before he was sent to the Moabit Prison, where he would remain for a longer time.

In February 1992, Erich Mielke was put on trial for the 1931 first degree murders of Berlin Police Captains Anlauf and Lenck as well as the attempted murder of Senior Sergeant Willig.

The evidence for Erich Mielke's guilt was drawn from the original police files, the transcripts from the 1934 trial of his co-conspirators, and a handwritten memoir in which Erich Mielke revealed that his role in, "the Bulowplatz Affair," had been his reason for fleeing to Moscow from the Weimar Republic in 1931.

Opinion was divided whether Erich Mielke was suffering from senile dementia or was pretending in order to evade prosecution.

Erich Mielke was then put on trial for ordering the shootings of East Germans who were trying to defect to the West.

In November 1994, the presiding judge adjourned the proceedings, ruling that Erich Mielke was not mentally competent to stand trial.

In 1995, parole officers and Erich Mielke's attorneys argued that he was "totally confused" and obtained his release.

At 87 years of age, Erich Mielke was Germany's oldest prison inmate and had been incarcerated for 1,904 days.

Days before his release, the Public Prosecutor of Berlin announced that he was "not interested in chasing an 87-year-old man anymore" and that all further prosecution of Erich Mielke had been indefinitely suspended.

Erich Mielke died on 21 May 2000, aged 92, in a Berlin nursing home.

Erich Mielke's grave is outside the memorial section established at the entrance in 1951 by East German leaders for communist heroes.

Erich Mielke was the president of sports association SV Dynamo from its founding in 1953 until 1989.

Erich Mielke was elected honorary president at the club's founding in 1966 and barely missed a home match of the team.

However, ice hockey enthusiast Erich Mielke intevened against this development to ensure that the sport could continue.

Erich Mielke worked to preserve ice hockey in East Germany and defended the sport on several occasions against the President of the German Gymnastics and Sports Federation Manfred Ewald.

Erich Mielke was a fitness enthusiast, a non-smoker, and drank very little.

Erich Mielke was a keen hunter and owned a large area of ground where he would hunt animals with other East German and visiting Soviet officials.

Erich Mielke ultimately became a captain in the Stasi and married a Stasi Lieutenant named Norbert Knappe.

Erich Mielke has appeared as a character in both films and novels set in the GDR.

Erich Mielke received a large number of awards and commemorative medals from organisations within the German Democratic Republic and from allied states.