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ZAISSER, WILHELM (1893–1956). A Soviet intelligence officer
and the first head of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS),
Wilhelm Zaisser was born in Rotthausen (North Rhine-Westphalia)
on 20 June 1893, the son of a policeman and later teacher. Only
months after Zaisser had passed his own qualifying examination and
assumed a teaching position, the outbreak of World War I resulted in
his military duty with an infantry regiment in Lorraine. Transferred
to the eastern front, he was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class. In
November 1918, his German nationalist outlook underwent a major
transformation during an assignment along the Ukrainian-Russian
border. With the collapse of the Hohenzollern monarchy, many war-
weary German soldiers like Zaisser ignored their orders and devel-
oped a camaraderie with members of the Red Army, impressed by
their discipline and organization. The salvation of defeated Germany,
he concluded, lay in revolutionary Bolshevism under the leadership
of the Soviet Union.
Returning to Germany, he resumed his teaching career in March
1919 in a working-class school in Essen and joined the newly formed
Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD) six months later. The
following March, when Essen emerged as the center of the Ruhr
uprising, Zaisser played a leading role as a member of the central
military command. Although the so-called Red Army of 50,000–
80,000 armed men gained control of the region between Dortmund
and Düsseldorf, government forces subdued the uprising by Easter,
and Zaisser took refuge at his parents’ home. Alerted by an informer,
the police arrested Zaisser and several others in January 1920, and
a highly publicized trial—accompanied by the mobilization of KPD
members—commenced the next month in Kassel. While the press
referred to him as “the leader of the Ruhr Red Army,” the court sen-
tenced him to only four months in prison in contrast to nine months
given to one of his associates.
His teaching license revoked, Zaisser began full-time KPD work
as a journalist, first at the Ruhr-Echo in Essen and then at the Ber-
gische Volkstimme in Barmen. By 1923, coinciding with the French
occupation of the Ruhr, he was head of the KPD’s clandestine mili-
tary-political (or M) apparatus for the region. To sharpen their skills,
510 • ZAISSER, WILHELM