Edgar Braun

 ( Socialist Unity Party Of Germany Members ) 

1959, the year of his twentieth birthday, was the year in which Edgar Braun joined East Germany's ruling SED (party), and it was also when he joined "Section II" of the service (counter-intelligence) in the Stasi's Leipzig district. In 1961 he was transferred to Berlin, still as a member of the counter-intelligence section. In 1977 he was promoted, becoming deputy head of "Section I" (internal security). In this capacity he was charged with hunting down suspected and actual dissenters inside Stasi. It was later reported that three of the dissidents he had identified during this period were executed, the best known of the three in the west being , a naval captain who is believed to have been working for western intelligence.

Braun took a five-year correspondence course with the Karl Marx Party Academy which led in 1980 to a degree in Social Sciences. The Stasi then, in 1982, promoted him to "Section XIX" (transport, mail and tele-communications), of which shortly afterwards he took on the leadership in succession to Helmut Griebner. In 1986 he was raised to the rank of Major general.

November 1989 marked Die Wende for the East German regime, and it was the month in which Edgar Braun became a leading member of the National Security Office. This was a short-lived successor organisation to the Stasi. Braun's role within the AfNS is considered controversial by those who believe he used his position to try and force out the "Citizens' Committees" that had sprung up and were seeking to take over Stasi offices and preserve Stasi records that were likely to incriminate Stasi officers, Stasi collaborators and in some cases Stasi victims. There were also objections and that he tried, at the same time, to ensure amnesties for former Stasi officers and for their many secret collaborators as a quid pro quo for their silence.

Following German reunification, which formally took place in October 1990, Edgar Braun worked as a real estate agent. However, he continued to defend the interests of those who had served as officers and associates of his former service. In 1992 he was one of several former senior Stasi officers who signed an open letter to the regional prime ministers of the New Federal States (former East Germany), in which the signatories condemned the ongoing "witch-hunt" against former Stasi collaborators and called for "silent solutions, behind closed doors" ( "stille Lösungen unter Ausschluss der Öffentlichkeit") in respect of disclosures of past Stasi activities. In 2003 he was one of those behind a two volume compilation entitled "Die Sicherheit, a justification of former Stasi-officers".