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Erich Fritz Emil Mielke (28 December 1907 – 21 May 2000) was a GDR government official and a longtime head of the GDR Secret Police, the Stasi. A native of Berlin and second generation member of the Communist Party of Germany, Mielke was one of two triggermen in the 1931 murders of Berlin Police Captains Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenck. After learning that a witness had survived, Mielke escaped prosecution by fleeing to the USSR and was recruited into the NKVD. He was one of the perpetrators of the Great Purge as well as the Stalinist decimation of the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. Following the end of World War II, Mielke returned to the Soviet Zone of Occupied Germany, which he helped organize into a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship under the Socialist Unity Party (SED). Between 1957 and 1989, Mielke headed East Germany's Ministry for State Security (MfS or Stasi) and, according to John Koehler, "the longest serving secret police chief in the Soviet Bloc,"〔Koehler (1999), page 72.〕 The Stasi under Mielke has been called the "most pervasive police state apparatus ever to exist on German soil."〔Peterson (2002), page 24.〕 In a 1993 interview, Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal has said that, if one considers only the oppression of their own people, the Stasi under Mielke, "was much, much worse than the Gestapo."〔Koehler (1999), page 8.〕 During the 1950s and '60's, Mielke masterminded the forced collectivization of East Germany's family-owned farms, which sent a flood of refugees to West Germany. In response, Mielke oversaw the construction of the Berlin Wall and co-signed orders to shoot all East Germans who were attempting to defect. He also oversaw the creation of Pro-Soviet secret police and terrorist insurgencies in Western Europe, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. In addition to his role as head of the Stasi, Mielke was also a General in the East German Army and member of the SED's ruling Politburo. Dubbed, "The Master of Fear,"〔("The Economist," June 1, 2000 )〕 ((ドイツ語:der Meister der Angst)) by the West German press, Erich Mielke was one of the most powerful and most hated men in East Germany.〔("The Guardian," May 26, 2000 )〕 After German reunification, Erich Mielke was prosecuted, convicted, and incarcerated for the 1931 murders of Captains Anlauf and Lenck. Australian journalist Anna Funder has written of Mielke, "It is said that psychopaths, people utterly untroubled by conscience, make supremely effective generals and politicians, and perhaps he was one."〔Funder (2003), page 57.〕 == Early life == Erich Mielke was born in a tenement in Berlin-Wedding, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire, on 28 December 1907. During the First World War, the neighborhood was known as "Red Wedding" due to many residents' Marxist militancy. In a handwritten biography written for the Soviet secret police, Mielke described his father as "a poor, uneducated woodworker," and said that his mother died in 1911. Both were, he said, members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). After his remarriage to "a seamstress," the elder Mielke and his new wife joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany and remained members when it was renamed the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). His son Erich claimed "My younger brother Kurt and two sisters were Communist sympathisers."〔Koehler (1999), p. 44.〕 Despite his family's poverty, Erich Mielke was academically gifted enough to be awarded a free scholarship in the prestigious Köllnisches Gymnasium, but was expelled on February 19, 1929, for being "unable to meet the great demands of this school."〔Koehler (1999), pages 44-45.〕 While attending the Gymnasium, Mielke joined the Communist Party of Germany in 1925, and worked as a reporter for the communist newspaper ''Rote Fahne'' from 1928 to 1931. He then joined the KPD's paramilitary wing, or ''Parteiselbstschutz'' ("Party Self Defense Unit"). At the time, the ''Parteiselbstschutz'' was overseen by KPD Reichstag Representatives Hans Kippenberger and Heinz Neumann. According to John Koehler, "Mielke was a special protege of Kippenberger's having taken to his paramilitary training with the enthusiasm of a Prussian Junker. World War I veterans taught the novices how to handle pistols, rifles, machine guns, and hand grenades. This clandestine training was conducted in the sparsely populated, pastoral countryside surrounding Berlin. Mielke also pleased Kippenberger by being an exceptional student in classes on the arts of conspiratorial behavior and espionage, taught by comrades who had studied at the secret M-school of the GRU in Moscow."〔Koehler (1999), page 38.〕 According to John Koehler, members of the ''Parteiselbstschutz'' "served as bouncers at Party meetings and specialized in cracking heads during street battles with political enemies."〔 Besides the Berlin Police, their arch-enemies were street-fighters affiliated with the Nazi Party, the Monarchist German National People's Party, and "radical nationalist parties." The SPD, which dominated German politics from 1918-1931 and which the KPD accused of "Social fascism," was their most detested foe. According to Koehler, the KPD's Selbstschutz men "always carried a ''Stahlrute'', two steel springs that telescoped into a tube seven inches long, which when extended became a deadly, fourteen-inch weapon. Not to be outdone by the Nazis, these street-fighters were often armed with pistols as well."〔''The Stasi'', p. 38.〕 In a 1931 biography written for the Cadre Division of the Comintern,〔Koehler (1999), pages 43-44.〕 Mielke recalled, "We took care of all kinds of work; terror acts, protecting illegal demonstrations and meetings, arms-trafficking, etc. The last work, which was accomplished by a Comrade and myself, was the Bülowplatz Affair" ((ドイツ語:"Wir erledigten hier alle möglichen Arbeiten, Terrorakte, Schutz illegaler Demonstrationen und Versammlungen, Waffentransport und reinigung usw. Als letzte Arbeit erledigten ein Genosse und ich die Bülowplatzsache.")).〔("Der Man der alle liebte" ), by ''Die Zeit'', November 15, 2007. (In German).〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Erich Mielke」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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