Peter-Michael Diestel

Peter-Michael Diestel (born 14 February 1952 in Prora) is a German lawyer and former politician (independent, formerly DSU, CDU).

He completed vocational training in 1972 as a skilled worker for cattle breeding, but was initially not allowed to study for political reasons.

He was therefore active as a swimming instructor, lifeguard and cattle breeder before he studied law at Karl Marx University Leipzig from 1974 to 1978.

As a high school graduate, Diestel said he joined the East German party CDU and left again after a few months.

“They cheered even louder than the SED, and that really.

Irritated me that Christians placed their Christian faith under the dogma of Marxism-Leninism.

That was nothing for me.

He later worked as head of the legal department of the Agricultural Industry Association Delitzsch from 1978 to 1989.

In 1986, he earned his doctorate's degree with a doctoral thesis on LPG law.

In December 1989, Diestel co-founded the German Social Union (Christlich-Soziale Partei Deutschlands or CSPD) and, in January 1990, the German Social Union (DSU), where he was the general secretary until June.

He was the last Interior Minister of East Germany, under Prime Minister Lothar de Maizière (1990).

As such, he represented the DDR in the negotiations on the unification treaty.

From March to October 1990, Diestel was a member of the Volkskammer and from April to October, Deputy Prime Minister and successor to Lothar Ahrendt as Minister of Interior of the GDR.

In June 1990, he left the DSU and was, by 3 August, a member of the CDU.

On 7 June 1990, on the initiative of Diestel, RAF terrorist Susanne Albrecht was arrested, and thereafter, the admission of nine other RAF members into the GDR became known.

On 1 July 1990, together with Wolfgang Schäuble, he signed the contract for the dismantling of the border fortifications between the GDR and the Federal Republic.

In his term in 1990, there was a transfer of Stasi-intercepted files about West German politicians to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Critics accused him during his time as Minister of Interior for the perceived trivial handling of former employees of the Stasi, who remained employed at the Ministry of Interior.

Diestel later explained this decision as follows: "If you command a hundred police officers, you have to have learned that. If you want to lead a thousand police officers or a ministry, then you have to have graduated from an academy, then you have to be qualified for it. And that's why I didn't kick out colonels and generals […] During my term in office not a single politically motivated shot was fired […] there were no upheavals and I'm with these people just the way they were into German unity. And that is a result that I could not have achieved without these Stasi officers, without these police generals, customs generals […]."

In mid-May 1990, the press reported on the plans of the Ministry of Interior, the former head of the foreign intelligence service of the Ministry for State Security, Markus Wolf, to consult on the dismantling of the State Security Service.

Diestel was clearly criticized for this by the federal government and the SPD.

Wolf was not appointed to the GDR government committee, but Diestel announced, according to the press, that he would make use of Wolf's knowledge.

A few days later, the Ministry of the Interior denied that Wolf should have been hired as a consultant.

In the course of May 1990, the parliamentary group in his party called for Diestel's resignation as Minister of the Interior.

Furthermore, many Stasi files were destroyed in his administration, including the destruction of files of the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance.

According to Diestel's own statements, he had nothing to do with the exterminations, which are said to have been carried out before the beginning of his term of office.

Diestel sued journalists and publishers who had reported that he was "the last interior minister in the GDR to be jointly responsible for the destruction of some of the Stasi files".

During the first election of the Landtag of Brandenburg on 14 October 1990, he was vetted as the CDU's top candidate, but was defeated by Manfred Stolpe of the SPD, who formed the first democratic state government of the re-established state of Brandenburg.

He was then a member of the Brandenburg state parliament until 1994.

Diestel's father was a major, first in the armed forces, later in the NVA and lecturer at the Friedrich Engels Military Academy.

Diestel was born in Prora, Kreis Rügen into an East German military family.

Subsequently, Diestel belonged to the Landtag of Brandenburg as a member until 1994.

On 10 July, 1995, the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in Hamburg ruled that Diestel was politically responsible for the destruction of files from the Ministry for State Security during his tenure as Interior Minister of the GDR.

Diestel later explained that he had campaigned politically for the files to be destroyed and had been supported in this regard by Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble.

That’s why I was out there again quickly,” said Diestel in November 2019, looking back.

According to Diestel, he was always a “big fan of Franz-Josef Strauss”.

He saw Strauss as his role mode, he said.

He was honored as a "Honored Milker of the People".

In 2019, he said in retrospect, "The opinion later changed when it was noticed that the files that relate to the actual one's own comrade, namely from the old federal territory were already gone and that the Russians already have alike. The files were sorted out. Before the free, democratic De Maizière government came to power, the state security had six to nine months to remove their own people from these files. That's why you can say that the state security took care of it: Who can survive after the fall of communism and who is killed in the Stasi files? The simple ones were beaten to death."

According to Diestel, he did not give the order for the files to be destroyed; that was illegal during his tenure.