[2] Coburger was born in a very small village roughly 10 km (6 miles) south of Sonneberg in rural Thuringia, a couple of weeks before a stock market crash in New York heralded a decade of economic challenges on both sides of the Atlantic.
Between 1946 and 1948 Coburger attended the Economics Senior School in Sonneberg, and then, in 1948/49 worked as an informal trainee at the "Plastewerk" factory in the town's Köppelsdorf quarter.
Long before that, in April 1946, the contentious merger between the old Communist Party and the Moderate-left SPD had created the basis for a return to one-party rule in this portion of Germany.
He studied for a year at the prestigious "Walter Ulbricht" National Administration Academy (Deutsche Akademie für Staats- und Rechtswissenschaft) and then, till 1952, took a job as a commercial assistant, while simultaneously progressing his education through evening classes.
This was part of the elaborate approach taken to prepare the high-profile trial of Elli Barczatis, a former chief secretary in the office of Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl.
[1] In 1984 Karli Coburger was promoted to the rank of Major general and appointed to the headship of the service's "Section VIII" (Surveillande, Investigations and Arrests) in succession to Albert Schubert [de].