Carl-Albert Brüll

Carl-Albert Maria Brüll (born May 5, 1902 in Görlitz , † October 21, 1989 in West Berlin ) was a German lawyer .

Live and act

Brüll was the son of a lawyer and notary and was baptized a Catholic. He studied law in Freiburg im Breisgau, Munich and Breslau until 1929, worked as a trainee lawyer in Görlitz until 1935 and joined the NS-Juristenbund . After passing the 2nd state examination in Berlin, Brüll became a lawyer in Görlitz. The NSDAP he was not a member. From 1940 he served in the Wehrmacht .

Military service and detention in the camp

In the Wehrmacht, Carl-Albert Brüll was used as an interpreter in a POW camp in Görlitz-Moys because of his good knowledge of French . The French composer Olivier Messiaen had been imprisoned there since the winter of 1940/41 . Roar got him music paper, pens and a study room. Messiaen wrote the quartet " Quatuor pour la fin du temps " (Quartet for the end of time) , which premiered on January 15, 1941 in a camp barracks. In 1944 he was taken prisoner by the British.

Trial Meinshausen / Malitz 1948

After his release from British captivity, Brüll returned to Görlitz in early 1947 and continued his work as a lawyer. At the beginning of 1948, a trial against two Görlitz representatives of National Socialism, the former Lord Mayor Hans Meinshausen and the former NSDAP district leader Bruno Malitz , was negotiated in the Görlitz town hall . Brüll was appointed official defender.

Meinshausen was an imperial orator and deputy of the Gauleiter Joseph Goebbels , then in 1933 City School Councilor of Berlin. In 1944 he was transferred to Görlitz as Lord Mayor. Interned by the Americans after the end of the war, the Soviets and the actors of the Saxon SED demanded his extradition from the authorities under General Clay in 1947 . For the trial in Görlitz, the SBZ justice projected a “Nuremberg of the Zone”. The execution in 1948 did not take place because of "the most serious crimes against the population", but because of general complicity in the Nazi system and "as a precautionary measure" to protect against an accomplished propagandist. Brüll dedicated himself to his task with the "necessary objectivity". He had to deal with the disabilities, the risks and politically justified dangers. The case files could not and were not allowed to be viewed beforehand. The summons of defense witnesses was refused. The lawyers were not supposed to be really effective, but at least they were supposed to act in a way that pretended to be the rule of law.

The two lawyers dealt with procedural problems, questions of legal opinion and the obstruction of the defense by preventing access to the files , the failure to summon witnesses and discussions with clients in the presence of third parties. One can only speculate about the risk the lawyers took. Brülls summarized: “The judgment is therefore flawed, incomplete and contradictory in its findings and cannot stand in its legal assessment. I therefore request that the judgment under appeal and the findings on which it is based be set aside and that the matter be referred to another court for a renewed hearing and other decision. ”With their way of working, the lawyers unwillingly contributed to the image of serious and serious GDR case law and contributed her fight for the 1928 Code of Criminal Procedure inadvertently played the game of the day.

June 17, 1953

Brüll reappeared in connection with the events on June 17, 1953 in Görlitz . LOWA locomotive and wagon construction workers had shown solidarity with the rebels in Berlin and advocated higher wages, price cuts and the abolition of standards. Around noon there was a large demonstration on the Obermarkt (then “Leninplatz”). The mayor was “voted out”, a temporary new city administration was formed, binders were distributed for a security service, the local MfS headquarters were taken over, the SED district leadership and the town hall were occupied and the two local prisons were opened. In the afternoon, thirty to forty thousand people from Görlitz and the surrounding area gathered. Towards evening the Barracked People's Police (KVP) and the Soviet Army with tanks dissolved the scene. Brüll had returned to the Obermarkt in the afternoon from a business appointment and came after the Görlitz prisons had opened. 416 people (out of a total of over 1,300 across the country) had been temporarily released. Brüll arranged for the case files to be brought in and then - according to his own statements - took care of the separation of the documents from criminal and political persons and ensured that the papers were secured against loss. He made himself useful in other ways, temporarily taking over a bunch of keys for the locality and taking care of the temporary accommodation of the homeless inmates for hotel owners. The lawyer obviously did not feel threatened and stayed in his town.

Carl-Albert Brüll was arrested on June 24, 1953 and sentenced on August 12, 1953 by the Dresden District Court to five years in prison in the Waldheim prison on the basis of Section 115 (2) StGB for "riot and prisoner release in a leading role (as ringleader )" . The professional license was withdrawn and the office was closed. In 1956 he was released and fled to West Berlin on December 6, 1956. There he found a job with the Berlin judicial administration, and in 1958 he became an administrative judge, responsible for affairs of GDR refugees .

Brüll married in 1956, shortly after he was released from prison in Görlitz. On September 22, 1958, the State Security opened a file on him because he was suspected of engaging in espionage activities through family connections in Görlitz. In the seventies, this uninteresting topic came to an end. The administrative judge Carl-Albert Brüll resigned from active service at the end of the 1960s and devoted himself to selected specialist topics. He was involved in advising those asking questions about East-West problems, for the Federal Government as well as for associations of expellees and private persons with a GDR background. Up to date for so long, he also participated in the investigation committee of freedom lawyers .

literature

• Rolf Hensel: Steps to the scaffold: The Berlin City School Council and Lord Mayor of Görlitz: Hans Meinshausen (=  contemporary historical research . Volume 44 ). Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-428-13690-2 ( limited preview in Google book search).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hannelore Lauerwald: In a foreign country (1939 to 1945). Prisoners of war in Germany using the example of Stalag VIII A Görlitz . Goerlitz 1996; this: Primum vivere. Live first. How prisoners experienced Stalag VIII A Görlitz . Lusatia Verlag, Bautzen 2008.
2. ^ Wolfgang Liebehenschel: Görlitzer town history . In: Bund für Gesamtdeutschland (Ed.): Our German homeland . Issue 98, September – December, 2011 ( bgd1.com ).
3. ↑ Uli Suckert: “French Mozart” behind barbed wire. In: Warning against right-wing extremism. Archived from the original on June 5, 2013 ; Retrieved May 20, 2013 . 
4. ^ The representative for the records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic (BStU) MfS BV Dresden Ast 5969/85, p. 9; SächHStsArchivDresden LRS MdJ RA B 1145.
5. ↑ Rolf Hensel: Steps to the scaffold. The Berlin City School Council and Lord Mayor of Görlitz: Hans Meinshausen . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2012.
6. ^ Heidi Roth: June 17, 1953 in Görlitz . Bautzen 1998; this: On behalf of the party. Criminal law reaction to June 17, 1953 in Saxony , in: From Weimar to the present - Sächsische Justizgeschichte . Series of publications by the Saxon State Ministry of Justice, Vol. 7, Dresden 1998, pp. 76–135.
7. ↑ BStU MfS BV Dresden Ast 5969/85, p. 4. Also archive of the Dresden public prosecutor Ks 500/53, I / 513/53.
8. ↑ Team main camp and penal camp Stalag VIII A in Görlitz-Moys. Initiative for a living culture of remembrance, April 18, 2011, accessed on May 20, 2013 . 
9. ^ Rolf Hensel: Carl-Albert Brüll. An advocate for humanity . Berlin in Past and Present, Yearbook of the Berlin State Archives 2011, pp. 237–254.