For him, Eastern agents in the West were “peace scouts”. Even decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the last head of East German foreign espionage saw no injustice. Now Werner Grossmann has died.
Werner Grossmann, a former Deputy Stasi Minister, on March 21, 2017 in Berlin.
(dpa) The last head of East German foreign espionage, Werner Grossmann, is dead. The former Deputy Minister for State Security died on Friday at the age of 92, as his daughter confirmed to the German Press Agency in Berlin. Again and again his public appearances after the fall of communism triggered protests. Grossmann, once one of the deputies of Stasi chief Erich Mielke, had justified the work of the GDR Ministry for State Security (MfS) to the end. The East agents in the West were “peace scouts”.
In 1995, the federal prosecutor general withdrew charges against the ex-Stasi colonel general for treason and bribery. The Federal Constitutional Court had previously classified the criminal prosecution of full-time Stasi spy workers as unconstitutional. After his arrest on October 3, 1990, Grossmann had only been in prison for one day.
Grossmann, who in 1986 succeeded Markus Wolf, who had been in charge of espionage for many years, remained head of the main intelligence administration until the Stasi Ministry was dissolved in 1990. When Wolf died in November 2006, Grossmann was also present at the urn burial in the central cemetery in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde, where the “Socialist Memorial” is also located.
Controversial, but at peace with himself
After the end of the GDR, the trained bricklayer from Saxony gathered like-minded people around him and whitewashed the past. “We didn’t carry out coups, murders or kidnappings like other secret services,” the man with the white hair said at a meeting with former Stasi officers in Denmark in 2007. The meeting of ex-Stasi figures was met with severe criticism from victims’ associations. Elsewhere, Grossmann said the MfS employees acted in accordance with the law. In general, there have been no human rights violations, but there may be individual issues.
There were also protests in March 2006, when Grossmann appeared with other Stasi officers at a discussion at the Hohenschönhausen Memorial, the former state security detention center, and defamed former prisoners. Grossmann noted with regret that the GDR secret service only realized the full extent of the internal crisis in the GDR in 1989.
In 2017, he presented his conversation book “The Conviction Offender” and expanded on the inner workings of the Stasi apparatus. “I have nothing to regret, I have not harmed anyone, I have not committed a crime,” said the former colonel general. “I’m completely at peace with myself.” Like thousands of GDR citizens, he helped keep peace in Europe. “I’m proud of that.” He described his arrest after the fall of the Berlin Wall as “a distinction and recognition of my work”.
The political retiree summarized his former work as follows: Every step taken by relevant people was checked. Consequently, what was done was “what every state does today that wants to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks”. And further: “We clarified all planned locations for US missiles in Germany, we received information from the NATO headquarters in Brussels”. The main administration for reconnaissance had all political parties in the Federal Republic in view.