Police Union Official Resigns Amidst DDR Past Allegations
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Police Union Official Resigns Amidst DDR Past Allegations
- Sven Hüber, deputy federal chairman of Germany's largest police union, the Gewerkschaft der Polizei (GdP), resigned on August 26, 2026, following media reports detailing serious accusations about his past as a political officer in the East German border troops.
- These allegations, reported by Apollo News on August 25, 2026, included claims from a sworn statement by former conscript Axel Krause, who accused Hüber of mistreating an escapee in 1988 and promoting the shoot-to-kill order at the inner-German border.
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Sven Hüber, born in 1964 in Görlitz, served as a political officer and deputy company commander in Border Regiment 33 in Berlin-Treptow from 1987 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. His role involved the political indoctrination of conscripts. A sworn statement from Axel Krause, a former East German conscript under Hüber, published by Apollo News on August 25, 2026, alleged that Hüber personally mistreated a would-be escapee in the spring of 1988, including forcing a pistol into the man’s mouth and kicking him in the face. Krause also claimed Hüber continued to use the term “annihilate” regarding border escapees even after official wording was altered in 1988, and publicly humiliated a soldier who missed shots at fleeing escapees. Historian Hubertus Knabe has evaluated Krause’s statements as credible, noting that details matched Stasi archives.
Following German reunification, Hüber continued his career in the Federal Border Police, which later became the Federal Police, and rose to influential positions within German police unionism. He has chaired the Federal Police’s main staff council since 2000 and served as a GdP deputy federal chairman since September 2022.
The allegations regarding Hüber’s past gained significant attention in August 2026, particularly after he published an article in the GdP union magazine titled “Saying no properly.” In this article, Hüber argued that police officers’ oath to the Basic Law makes supporting the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party incompatible with their duty, coining the phrase “No-Go with the AfD.” He also described a potential AfD victory as a “Machtergreifung,” a term used for the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, and warned of a possible “internal state of emergency” if an AfD-led government were to undermine constitutional order. Hüber suggested that federal and riot police might need to be prepared to restore constitutional order in such a scenario.
Several regional branches of the GdP, including North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria, and Berlin, publicly distanced themselves from Hüber’s wording and legal conclusions, emphasizing that the official oath does not remove officers’ right to vote and that the union should not engage in party-political instruction. On August 26, 2026, Hüber announced his immediate resignation from his position as deputy federal chairman of the GdP, stating he wanted to shield the union from the “defamatory and reputation-damaging” media accusations he is pursuing legal action against. Hüber has rejected the new allegations through his lawyer.