Career
He served as First Deputy Minister of State Security in the administrations of Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker. Born into a working family Berlin on 5 February 1914, Beater received vocational instruction in the 1920s and 1930s, taking part in the Young Communist League of Germany while growing up in the pre-Hitler era of Weimar German republic. He kept a low apolitical profile after Hitler"s initiation of the Nazis" wide-scale persecution of German communists following his arrival at the helm of power in 1933.
His main source of employment during the 1930s consisted of work as a carpenter.
First drafted into the Wehrmacht during peacetime in 1936 and once more upon the outbreak of World World War II, Beater defected to the Soviet side in 1944, at first doing work with the National Committee for a Free Germany to support the Soviet Union"s war effort against the Nazi forces, then joining the Soviet Army, taking part in the campaign against Breslau (now Wrocław) during the last months of the war in 1945. Beater participated as an instructor in a de-Nazification program from May to October 1945.
Beater joined the newly created Stasi"s Berlin service in April 1950. His activity in this line of work would included the organization of a "special operations group" for work in the West following a plan worked out with Josef Kiefel and Erich Mielke.
Beater enthusiastically supported the development of electronic intelligence gathering in the late 1960s.
Beater was awarded the Karl Marx Order, East Germany"s highest decoration, in 1974. He reached the rank of Generaloberst in 1980. Beater died after a long period of illness in 1982.