Edgar Braun

Edgar Braun (born 9 June 1939) is a former Major general in the East German Ministry for State Security (MfS / "Stasi"). He was in charge of the service's Central Department for transport, mail and tele-communications (" / Section XIX").

Life Edgar Braun was born in Molbitz, some 30 km (18 miles) south of Jena, in Thuringia. His early years were marked by the war which broke out a few months after his birth, and involved the repeated destructive bombing of Molbitz which was adjacent to a Mineral Oil facility. His father worked as a dispatcher. In May 1945 the war ended and after the invading armies had rearranged themselves the whole of Thuringia became part of the Soviet occupation zone of what had been Germany. While Braun was at school, the occupation zone was transformed into a new separate German state, the German Democratic Republic, formally founded in October 1949. Directly after successful completion of his schooling, in 1957 he enrolled at the local office of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) in Altenburg. There followed a two-year training at the MfS Academy on the edge of Potsdam.

Following German reunification, which formally took place in October 1990, Edgar Braun worked as a real estate agent. However, he continued to defend the interests of those who had served as officers and associates of his former service. In 1992 he was one of several former senior Stasi officers who signed an open letter to the regional prime ministers of the New Federal States (former East Germany), in which the signatories condemned the ongoing "witch-hunt" against former Stasi collaborators and called for "silent solutions, behind closed doors" ("stille Lösungen unter Ausschluss der Öffentlichkeit") in respect of disclosures of past Stasi activities. In 2003 he was one of those behind a two volume compilation entitled "Die Sicherheit, a justification of former Stasi-officers".

Edgar Braun is a member of the Society for legal and humanitarian support, an organisation created in 1993 by former East German government ministers and officials, Stasi officers and border guards to counter threats of legal action following in the wake of the regime change of 1990.

Braun continued to live in Berlin after his retirement.