Edgar Braun

Edgar Braun
Born	9 June 1939 (Rositz), Thuringia, Germany
Occupation	Senior Intelligence Officer (Stasi) Estate agent
Political party	SED

Edgar Braun (born 9 June 1939) is a former Major general in the East German Ministry for State Security (MfS / "Stasi"). He was in charge of the service's Central Department for transport, mail and tele-communications ("Hauptabteilung / Section XIX").

Edgar Braun was born in Molbitz, some 30 km (18 miles) south of Jena, in Thuringia. His early years were marked by the war which broke out a few months after his birth, and involved the repeated destructive bombing of Molbitz which was adjacent to a Mineral Oil facility. His father worked as a dispatcher. In May 1945 the war ended and after the invading armies had rearranged themselves the whole of Thuringia became part of the Soviet occupation zone of what had been Germany. While Braun was at school, the occupation zone was transformed into a new separate German state, the German Democratic Republic, formally founded in October 1949. Directly after successful completion of his schooling, in 1957 he enrolled at the local office of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) in Altenburg. There followed a two year training at the on the edge of Potsdam.

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 The Service. 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 Winfried Baumann (), a naval captain who is believed to have been working for western intelligence.

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