Awaiting History's Judgment: The GDR's Erich Mielke

摘要

On 10 June 2000, a group of roughly 200 mourners assembled at the Zentralfriedhof Berlin-Friedrichsfelde, the traditional resting place for those belonging to Germany's Communist pantheon beginning with Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. The occasion was the burial of Erich Mielke, the longstanding head of East Germany's Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit (Ministry of State Security; MfS or Stasi) who had died the previous month of natural causes at the age of 92. Willi Opitz, the last rector of the MfS Juristische Hochschule (School of Law), headed the delegation and delivered the main eulogy.