Helmut Just

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Helmut Just (born July 2, 1933 in Berlin ; † December 30, 1952 ) was a German member of the East Berlin People's Police (VP) who was shot while on duty on the sector border with West Berlin . Neither the perpetrators nor their motive could be determined. The propaganda of the GDR revered Just as a border guard "murdered by Western terrorists".

The memorial stone placed on Just's grave in 1953, Friedrichsfelde central cemetery, 2016

Life

Helmut Just lived with his mother in East Berlin. The family included a married older brother who was a people's police officer and a younger sister who lived in West Berlin. Just had completed an apprenticeship as a painter after attending primary school in 1952 . As a passionate boxer , Just was a member of a company sports community in the East Berlin district of Karlshorst and the boxer group of the West Berlin sports club Tennis Borussia . On August 7, 1952, Just joined the East Berlin VP, where he was assigned to Readiness Command I. In consideration of his training times, he did his duty in a clothing store of the VP in Berlin-Weißensee after the basic training , but later had to return to the standby command. On December 30, 1952, he was VP- Unterwachtmeister there .

assassination

prehistory

On the night of December 25, 1952, Soviet soldiers attempted kidnapping in the Frohnau district of the French sector of Berlin directly on the border with Glienicke / Nordbahn , which resulted in the use of a West Berlin radio patrol car . In the process, Soviet soldiers shot dead a member of its crew, police sergeant Herbert Bauer, on the territory of the French sector . The incident excited the Berlin public to an unusual degree. The mourning rally in front of Schöneberg Town Hall and the drive of the hearse to the “Am Nordgraben” cemetery in Berlin-Tegel on December 30th attracted hundreds of thousands of mourners.

The VP in East Berlin had been put on alert a few days before the day of mourning and had increased the surveillance of the sector border for December 30th. Just had volunteered for the evening of the day of mourning.

Course of events

Just started his service on December 30, 1952 at VP Revier 64 at Schivelbeiner Strasse 11 in Prenzlauer Berg . From 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. he provided post service on the Behm Bridge, which led to the Wedding district of the French sector. He then had a free period, some of which he spent outside Revier 64. At about 8.45 p.m. Just walked from the station in the direction of Schwedter Straße to reach his post at the Gleimtunnel . At 10:50 p.m., passers-by returning from West Berlin made the VP's bridge guard aware of a person lying in Behmstrasse. A police officer found the unresponsive Just with a pool of blood around his head on the sidewalk across from house 65. His service weapon was missing. He was transported to the VP Hospital in Berlin , where his death was determined.

Investigations by the People's Police

Within the next few hours, the leadership of the East Berlin police arrived at the scene and prompted an immediate, intensive and extensive investigation by the fully assembled Murder Investigation Commission (MUK). The houses and apartments on Behmstrasse were searched and their residents questioned. Neither a witness nor any trace of the perpetrator or perpetrators could be found. Based on the position of Just's head on the curb near the Behmbrücke, his injury and the location of the cartridge case, it was possible to reconstruct that Just had struck a fatal pistol shot in the neck from behind from a distance of 0.4 to less than two meters after he had already crossed the central promenade of Behmstrasse. Two people's police officers stationed at the bridge, which is almost 100 meters away, and a GDR customs officer had not noticed the shot because young people had been setting off New Year's Eve fireworks in the area for hours .

On January 2, 1953, VP President Waldemar Schmidt called on all Berliners to help clarify the death of Just. In his request for administrative assistance , which the West Berlin police received on the same day, he claimed that the only “perpetrators or clients” were West Berlin “criminal organizations” such as the eastern offices of the parties , the investigative committee of liberal lawyers and the combat group against inhumanity (KgU ) could be considered, although the MUK had no such knowledge.

The investigation was carried out by a MUK special commission.

The assumption that Helmut Just's murder could also have been a spontaneous act of revenge by East or West Berlin loners for the murder of Herbert Bauer was also part of the MUK's calculation. She followed up clues in the direction of West Berlin, but refrained from investigating Just's personal environment. The special commission came to no conclusion and dissolved in mid-February 1953. A side effect of their investigations was the closure of several restaurants near the border, in which, in their opinion, “anti-social and criminal elements” met and in which “lively agitation against the GDR” as well as “rogue deals” took place. The investigations temporarily gained momentum when, in June 1953, children gave the VP the weapon they had apparently thrown away shortly before and found north of the Gleim tunnel in East Berlin. The Walther pistol cal. 7.65 was stolen from a VP officer in the nearby Prater in 1950 .

Investigations by the West Berlin public prosecutor's office

Just's relatives and friends from East and West Berlin did in the days after the murder matching statements before the criminal Commissariat of Police Inspectorate Wedding of the West Berlin police. The statements concerned Just's unwillingness to be deployed at the sector border, a warning from superiors and a rejected application for dismissal. This is said to have prompted Just to plan an escape to West Berlin. The final report of the West Berlin police to the Berlin public prosecutor on March 6, 1953 stated that the Just case could not be resolved.

Nothing changed in this result when, in January 1954, a refugee people's policeman testified to the KgU that Just had been absent too often in order to be able to train intensively and that the police service had better opportunities to do so, i.e. that he had become a people's policeman for a pragmatic motive. In March 1965, a former people's police officer who had been released through the release of prisoners , alleged to the SPD's East Office , as whose informant he had been convicted, that the Ministry for State Security of the GDR (MfS) was responsible for the murder of Just. His statement was based only on a combination of assumptions.

Investigations by the Ministry of State Security

The MfS first routinely suspected West Berlin organizations of inciting or perpetrating the murder. The accusations against the KgU, the investigative committee of freedom lawyers and the German League for Human Rights were based on an arbitrary interpretation of the report by a secret informator (GI) within the KgU. The informator had captured fragments of an internal conversation between representatives of the KgU and the Berlin Office for the Protection of the Constitution . In the years that followed, the MfS looked for the perpetrator or perpetrators, but was unable to produce any evidence, up to and including the arrest of suspects.

A progress report based on all available documents from June 5, 1967 contained indications of a possible perpetrator of the KgU and an “act of revenge” for the shooting of Baum, but the MfS assessed it as “more likely” that the “perpetrators from the criminal milieu “Came. According to the findings of the Stasi Just had been active before his only five months previously joined VP in "Boxer milieu" and had to " slide circles wrong". The sober assessment of the MfS was not compatible with the hero cult that had been practiced by the SED around Just since 1953 and was therefore not made public.

The Public Prosecutor General of the GDR stopped the last investigation by the Stasi against a suspect in 1987.

Afterlife

Instrumentalization in the GDR

Young pioneers in front of the monument to the border troops in East Berlin, 1986

Immediately after the crime, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) began the propaganda exploitation of the murder. On January 1, 1953, the party organ Neues Deutschland (ND) held the West Berlin Mayor Ernst Reuter directly responsible for the crime. He had instigated the murder with a "hate speech", meaning Reuter's speech at the funeral rally for Herbert Bauer.

After a lying in state in the building of the People's Chamber in Luisenstrasse on January 3, 1953, the funeral of Helmut Just one was on January 5, in the form of state ceremony on the square of the Academy instead. Posthumously Karl Maron , the chief inspector of the VP, awarded the deceased who had been laid out again the badge of honor of the German People's Police . In the announcement published on January 4th in the ND, Maron had underlined that the murderers "... in the fascist murder and terror organizations", directed and financed by "American arsonists and their German henchmen, the Bonn traitors around Adenauer and the West Berliners 'Frontstadt politicians' around Reuter and Schwennicke ”are to be looked for. About one hundred thousand people took part in the event accompanied by speeches, which gave Herbert Bauer the impression of competition to the previous one. After that, the hearse drove to the Central Cemetery Friedrichsfelde where Just near the grave conditioning Pergolenweg the Memorial of the Socialists was buried.

On January 6, the ND claimed that there was a KgU “terror center” near the crime scene, with its “Department II b” specializing in murder such as that of Just.

The family received government support. The mother was waived the funeral expenses. Because her son was officially murdered by fascists, she received "after consultation with Ditmar Danelius ", the chairman of the Association of Persecutees of the Nazi regime , recognition as persecuted by the Nazi regime , which was accompanied by an honorary pension, as well as an entitlement to one Apartment on Stalinallee . Just's brother was also allowed to move into an apartment on Stalinallee with his wife.

On the first anniversary of his death, his grave in the cemetery in Friedrichsfelde was given a memorial stone and the property wall at the place of his death was given a man-high plaque. This reminded us that Just was murdered here “by fascist bandits”. For the festive occasions Paul Dessau composed the funeral march for the people's policeman, Helmut Just, who had been murdered by war instigators, for a large wind orchestra , which the orchestra of the Berlin People's Police under Willi Kaufmann performed. In 1954, Bruno Kleberg remembered in his documentary about the construction of Stalinallee the story of a street of the former apprentice on the construction of the D-South block, who as a people's policeman "[was] murdered by the enemies of our fortune and our successes".

Numerous streets, schools, businesses, sports facilities and leisure facilities bore Just's name in the GDR. In East Berlin, Behmstrasse was named after him from 1960. Since the beginning of the 1970s, the inscription on the monument of the border troops on the corner of Jerusalem and Reinhold-Huhn-Straße was also Just. A memorial stone has been dedicated to Just since 1972 at the Helmut-Just Stadium in Krauschwitz . Until the end of the GDR, celebrations in memory of Helmut Just took place regularly at these locations.

The Marxist-Leninist historiography of the GDR portrayed the murder of Just by two West Berlin terrorists as a result of the rampant pogrom incitement there, always without evidence.

In reunified Germany

After German reunification , the Berlin public prosecutor took up the murder case again on the basis of all the facts now known from the opening of the archives. “Despite intensive investigations” she was not able to locate a suspect “after such a long time”.

The monument to the border troops was removed in 1994 and the memorial plaque in Behmstrasse disappeared in 2001. Helmut-Just-Strasse can still be found in 12 cities: in Aschersleben , Aue , Dahlen , Erfurt , Grimmen , Halle (Saale) , Hohen Neuendorf , Meuselwitz , Neubrandenburg , Niesky , Pirna , Potsdam and Senftenberg (as of 2019).

In the literature and especially in the internet presence of former members of the border troops, the legend is still handed down that Just was shot from behind by two "fascist murderers" as a result of a "West Berlin smear campaign against the GDR" or by the "West Berlin perpetrators", who were deliberately not punished.

The tombstone, which had been relocated during GDR times, returned to its location in spring 2008 and marks the actual grave of Helmut Just again.

literature

  • Michael Stricker: Last deployment. Police officers killed on duty in Berlin from 1918 to 2010 , Verlag für Polizeiwissenschaft, Frankfurt 2010, ISBN 3-86676-141-4 , (= series of publications by the German Society for Police History, Volume 11), pp. 217-239

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerhard Sälter, Johanna Dietrich, Fabian Kuhn: Helmut Just . In: dies .: The forgotten dead. Fatalities of the GDR border regime in Berlin from division to the building of the Wall (1948–1961) . Ch.links, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86153-933-9 , p. 262
  2. ↑ For the Herbert Bauer case, see Michael Stricker: Last Mission. Police officers killed on duty in Berlin from 1918 to 2010 , Verlag für Polizeiwissenschaft, Frankfurt 2010, ISBN 3-86676-141-4 , (= series of publications by the German Society for Police History, Volume 11), pp. 346–384
  3. ↑ Gerhard Sälter, Johanna Dietrich, Fabian Kuhn: The forgotten dead. Fatalities of the GDR border regime in Berlin from division to the building of the Wall (1948–1961) . Ch.links, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86153-933-9 , p. 259.
  4. ↑ Quotes from Annett Gröschner : Small murders among brothers . In this. (Red.): Cross-border commuters. Faith healer. Cobblestones. The history of Gleimstrasse in Berlin . Basisdruck, Berlin 1998, ISBN 978-3-86163-091-3 , p. 334
  5. ↑ Quotes from the MfS report from Gerhard Sälters, Johanna Dietrich, Fabian Kuhn: Helmut Just . In: dies .: The forgotten dead. Fatalities of the GDR border regime in Berlin from division to the building of the Wall (1948–1961) . Ch.links, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86153-933-9 , p. 261 f.
  6. ↑ On the funeral service Gerhard Sälters, Johanna Dietrich, Fabian Kuhn: The forgotten dead. Fatalities of the GDR border regime in Berlin from division to the building of the Wall (1948–1961) . Ch. Links, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86153-933-9 , p. 262 with reference to the illustration by Stricker, last insert (lit.), p. 235–236, there the wording.
  7. ↑ Gerhard Finn: doing nothing is murder. The fighting group against inhumanity . Westkreuz-Verlag, Bad Münstereifel 2000, ISBN 3-929592-54-1 , p. 65 f.
  8. ↑ Quotation from Annett Gröschner : Small murders among brothers . In this. (Red.): Cross-border commuters. Faith healer. Cobblestones. The history of Gleimstrasse in Berlin . Basisdruck, Berlin 1998, ISBN 978-3-86163-091-3 , p. 331
  9. ↑ Fig. Of the memorial plaque for the People's Police Officer Helmut Just , renewed after 1961 , in the object database, German Historical Museum
  10. ^ Matthias Tischer: Composing for and against the state. Paul Dessau in the GDR. Böhlau, Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-412-20459-4 , p. 73
  11. ^ Information on the history of a street (full content, 0:24:40) in the film database of the DEFA Foundation
  12. ^ So Gerhard Keiderling in: Ders. u. Percy Stulz : Berlin 1945–1968. On the history of the capital of the GDR and the independent political unit West Berlin . Dietz, Berlin 1970, p. 308 f.
  13. ↑ Gerhard Sälter, Johanna Dietrich, Fabian Kuhn: The forgotten dead. Fatalities of the GDR border regime in Berlin from division to the building of the Wall (1948–1961) . Ch.links, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86153-933-9 , p. 263
  14. ↑ Helmut-Just-Straße at www.strassen-in-deutschland.de, accessed on May 22, 2019
  15. ↑ Gerhard Sälter, Johanna Dietrich, Fabian Kuhn: The forgotten dead. Fatalities of the GDR border regime in Berlin from division to the building of the Wall (1948–1961) . Ch. Links, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86153-933-9 , p. 263 give as an example of the unbroken cultivation of the legend Kurt Frotscher's book victims of German division. Killed at the border guards (pp. 78–82), published in 2005 by GNN-Verlag ; Stricker, last use (lit.) mentions several websites on p. 238.
personal data
SURNAME Just, Helmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German People's Police Officer and member of the East Berlin People's Police (VP)
DATE OF BIRTH July 2, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH December 30, 1952
Place of death Berlin