Erich Fritz Emil Mielke (December 28, 1907 – May 21, 2000 in Berlin) was a German Communist politician and Minister of State Security of the German Democratic Republic from 1957 to 1989. A hard-line stalinist, he spent several years in the Soviet Union. Mielke held the military rank of Armeegeneral. In 1993, he was convicted of the murders of police officers Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenck in 1931.
In handwritten biographies written for Stalin's secr...
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Erich Fritz Emil Mielke (December 28, 1907 – May 21, 2000 in Berlin) was a German Communist politician and Minister of State Security of the German Democratic Republic from 1957 to 1989. A hard-line stalinist, he spent several years in the Soviet Union. Mielke held the military rank of Armeegeneral. In 1993, he was convicted of the murders of police officers Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenck in 1931.
In handwritten biographies written for Stalin's secret police, Mielke described his background as follows,
"I, Erich Mielke, was born on December 28, 1907, in Berlin, (Prussia). My father was a poor, uneducated woodworker, and my mother died in 1911. Both were members of the SPD and joined the KPD when it was formed in 1918. My stepmother was a seamstress and she also belonged to the KPD. My younger brother Kurt and two sisters were Communist sympathisers."
Mielke became a member of the German Communist Party during the 1920s and worked as a reporter for a communist newspaper from 1928–1931. He...
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