Returning to the German Democratic Republic in 1949 and taking
a position with the People’s Police, Elsner became a member of the
Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS) two years later. His first
assignment was with the Guard Regiment Adlershof, which later be-
came the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guard Regiment. During his long career
with the MfS, Elsner became the commander of the Guard Regiment
in 1972 and was promoted to brigadier general in 1976. He under-
went special training at a military institute in Moscow and then at the
Friedrich Engels Military Academy of the National People’s Army
in Dresden. In 1987, he was appointed an officer for special tasks in
the MfS’s Main Training Division.
The demise of the East German State Security resulted in Elsner’s
dismissal in 1990. He then served as secretary to ISOR (Initiati-
vegemeinschaft zum Schutze der sozialen Rechte der ehemaligen
Angehörigen der bewaffneten Organe und der Zollverwaltung
der DDR), a lobbying group that attempted to secure pension ben-
efits for former members of the GDR armed forces and customs
administration.ELSTER. See GIMPEL, ERICH.
ENGELHARDT, HEINZ (1944– ). The last acting head of the rem-
nants of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), Heinz Engel-
hardt was born in Angerapp (now Ozyorsk, Russia) on 9 February
1944, the son of an electrician. Completing his high school educa-
tion, he entered the MfS in 1962 and eventually became director
of the regional administration in Frankfurt an der Oder. Following
disbandment of the Amt für Nationale Sicherheit on 14 December
1989, the government of Hans Modrow embarked on a new strategy
by separating the state security forces of the German Democratic
Republic into a domestic and foreign branch. The former, dubbed
the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, with a staff of
10,000, was to be headed by Engelhardt. Although this plan was
abandoned on 12 January 1990, he remained an advisor to the com-
mittee charged with the dissolution of the security apparatus until the
following spring. Afterward, Engelhardt found employment as the
branch manager of a travel agency (founded by other MfS officers)
in Berlin-Weissensee.
96 • ELSTER