ABSTRACT
The law on the Ministry of State Security was terse and deliberately uninformative, its two short paragraphs amounting to little more than an announcement of the formation of the new body. On the other hand, the Minister of the Interior, Karl Steinhoff, was a little more forthcoming when he told the Volkskammer, on 8 February 1950, that the ministry's main task was: 'to protect the people's own enterprises and works, transport and the people's own property against the plots of criminal elements as well as against all attacks, to conduct a decisive fight against the activity of enemy agents, subversives, saboteurs and spies, to conduct an energetic fight against bandits, to protect our democratic development and to ensure uninterrupted fulfilment of the economic plans of our peace economy'. 1
