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Gert Bastian

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Gert Bastian
Bastian in 1987
Member of the Bundestag
In office
29 March 1983 – 18 February 1987
Personal details
Born(1923-03-26)26 March 1923
Munich, Weimar Republic
DiedOctober 1992 (aged 69)
Bonn, Germany
Political partyChristian Social Union (1950s)
German Green Party (1983–1987)
Military service
Allegiance Nazi Germany (to 1945)
Germany Federal Republic of Germany
Service/branchGerman Army
Bundeswehr
Years of service1941–45; 1956–80
RankGeneralmajor
Unit12th Tank Division
Battles/warsWorld War II

Gert Bastian (26 March 1923 – c. 1 October 1992) was a German military officer and politician with the German Green Party.[1]

Biography

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Born in Munich, Bastian volunteered for the Wehrmacht in 1941, at the age of nineteen.[2] In World War II he served on the Eastern Front, being wounded by a bullet in the right arm and in the head by a grenade fragment. He was also hit by American machine gun fire in France. After the war he started a business which failed, and he rejoined the military. From 1956 to 1980 Bastian served in the Bundeswehr—joining as a first lieutenant, promoted in 1962 to the position of general staff officer/officer in the army command staff, and in 1974 promoted to the rank of Brigadier General, chief of staff in the army office—ending his service as a divisional commander with the rank of Major General.[3] During this period Bastian's politics changed radically. In the 1950s he had been a member of the Christian Social Union in his native Bavaria. Yet Bastian was also an opponent of the planned stationing of medium-range missiles with nuclear warheads in Europe and joined the peace movement.[4] In 1980, he outlined those views in a memorandum to the West German government, asking to retire in the face of what he considered unacceptable military policies; his request was rejected and he resigned.[5] In 1981 he was the joint founder of a group called "Generals for Peace".[6] In the 26 April 1994 edition of The Independent newspaper, Günter Bohnsack, who spent 26 years in the Active Measures Department of the Stasi, claimed that "Generals for Peace was conceived, organised and financed by the Stasi ... This created a real power that was in line with Moscow's ideas ... and we always controlled this through our intelligence services in Moscow and East Berlin."[7]

In the 1980s, Bastian was, together with his partner Petra Kelly, one of the most important West German supporters of the opposition in the German Democratic Republic.[8]

Death and murder of Petra Kelly

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On 19 October 1992, the decomposing bodies of Bastian and Kelly were discovered in the bedroom of their house in Bonn by police officials after they received a call from both Bastian's wife and Kelly's grandmother who reported that they had not heard from either Bastian or Kelly for a few weeks. The police asserted that Kelly was shot dead while sleeping by Bastian, who then killed himself. Police estimated the deaths had most likely occurred on 1 October, but the exact time of death could not be pinpointed due to the delay in finding the bodies and their resultant state of decomposition. Neither Bastian nor Kelly left any written message or other evidence useful to explain the reason of the homicide-suicide. Theories have been put forward that Bastian was afraid of an imminent opening of Stasi files revealing his role as an agent of the East German secret police, but no such evidence has emerged.[9]

Bastian was buried in the Nordfriedhof in Schwabing, Munich.[10]

References

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  1. ^ "Stichtag – WDR". Wdr.de. 26 March 2013. Retrieved 26 April 2017.
  2. ^ "Chronik-Biographie: Gert Bastian". Chronikderwende.de. 7 October 1989. Retrieved 26 April 2017.
  3. ^ "Gert Bastian". Chronik der Wende. Retrieved 18 January 2022.
  4. ^ Quint, Peter E. (2008). Civil Disobedience and the German Courts: The Pershing Missile Protests in Comparative Perspective (1st ed.). Routledge. p. 175. doi:10.4324/9780203933008. ISBN 978-0-415-44285-5. LCCN 2008275356.
  5. ^ Graham, Bradley (27 January 1980). "W. German General Punished for Outspokenness". The Washington Post. Retrieved 17 January 2022.
  6. ^ Banse, Dirk; Behrendt, Michael (28 April 2004). "Der Stasi-Maulwurf von Bonn". Die Welt. Retrieved 26 April 2017.
  7. ^ "Brigadier Michael Harbottle". julianlewis.net. 28 May 1997. Retrieved 6 February 2021.
  8. ^ "Petra Kelly und die Oppositionellen in der DDR: "Die Unterstützung, die wir brauchten"". Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (in German). 29 September 2022. Retrieved 27 December 2023.
  9. ^ Miller, Marjorie (8 November 1994). "Postscript – Lover's Secret Past Seen as Key to Peace Activist's Violent End – A new biography of Greens founder Petra Kelly rules out the 'double suicide' theory". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 17 June 2021. Retrieved 29 August 2009.
  10. ^ "Münchner Stadtgeschichte". stadtgeschichte-muenchen.de (in German). 23 August 2023. Retrieved 27 December 2023.
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Military offices
Preceded by
Generalmajor Paul-Georg Kleffel
 Commander of 12th Panzer Division (Bundeswehr)
1 October 1976 – 21 January 1980 		Succeeded by
Generalmajor Gerd-Helmut Komossa
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