Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski | |
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 Schalck-Golodkowski in 1988 | |
| Head of theKoKo State Secretary in the Ministry for Foreign Trade[a] | |
| In office 7 December 1966 – 6 December 1989 | |
| Minister |
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| Deputy |
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| Preceded by | Horst Roigk |
| Succeeded by | Karl-Heinz Gerstenberger(acting) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1932-07-03)3 July 1932 |
| Died | 21 June 2015 (2015-06-22) (aged 82) |
| Political party | Socialist Unity Party (1955–1989) |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 2 |
| Alma mater | Hochschule für Außenhandel Juristische Hochschule des MfS |
| Occupation |
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| Awards | |
Central institution membership
Other offices held
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Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski (3 July 1932 – 21 June 2015) was a politician and trader in theGerman Democratic Republic. He was director of a main department ('Hauptverwaltungsleiter') in theMinistry for Foreign Trade and German Domestic Trade (1956–62), the Deputy Minister for External Trade (1967–75), and head of the GDR'sKommerzielle Koordinierung (KoKo, 1966–86).[1]
He was born inBerlin to a stateless ethnicRussian father and adopted by the Schalcks when he was eight years old. His biological father served as aTsarist officer inWorld War I and became the head of theWehrmacht's Russian language interpreter school inWorld War II; he did not return fromSoviet captivity. His maternal grandfather worked forStinnes inSt. Petersburg.[2]
Schalck-Golodkowsky joined theFree German Youth in 1951 and theSocialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) in 1955.
In 1966 he was appointed head of KoKo (at that time a newly formed department of the Ministry for Foreign Trade, ten years later it would formally become a powerful independent government agency in its own right) and in 1967 was also appointed a special officer of theMinistry of State Security. He concurrently held the rank of Deputy Minister for Foreign Trade until 1975, when he was promoted to State Secretary (in the GDR, Deputy Minister was ranked lower than a State Secretary), but was only nominally responsible to the Minister. In reality, he only answered toErich Honecker,Günter Mittag andErich Mielke.[3]
In 1983 he led the negotiations withBavarian leaderFranz Josef Strauß to obtain a billion Deutschmarks loan from theWest German government.
He was appointed to the central committee of the SED in 1986 and, under suspicion of misusing his powers at KoKo he fled to West Berlin in December 1989. He was briefly imprisoned before settling in Bavaria.
Followingreunification, the actions of KoKo and of Schalck-Golodkowski head were investigated on suspicions of espionage activities, tax evasion, fraud, breaking embargo regulations and offences againstAllied military law. He was prosecuted in 1996 for breaking Allied law and sentenced to a year's probation; other charges were withdrawn due to his ill-health—he had operations to remove cancers in 1987 and 1997.
He had been married twice and had two children.
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