Ernst Melsheimer

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Ernst Melsheimer in 1952 in the Burianek trial ; in the foreground the main defendant

Ernst Melsheimer (born April 9, 1897 in Neunkirchen ; † March 25, 1960 in Berlin ) was a German lawyer and the first public prosecutor in the GDR . In particular, Melsheimer advocated penetration of the courts by the “party” ( SED ) and against a separation of the judiciary and the state . He represented the prosecution in numerous political secret and show trials .

Life

Melsheimer was the son of a hut director. The attendance of the grammar school ended in 1914 the registration as a war volunteer at the outbreak of the First World War . Wounded after just eight weeks, he left the army and studied law in Marburg and Bonn. During his studies in 1915 he became a member of the Arminia Marburg fraternity . Afterwards Melsheimer entered the Prussian judicial service in 1918 and became a senior government councilor in 1922 . In 1924 he became district judge , 1933 district court director and 1937 chamber judge in Berlin. From 1928 to 1933 he was a member of the SPD and the Reichsbanner . In the year of the seizure of power in 1933, Melsheimer left the SPD and remained the district court director. In 1936 he got involved in the National Socialist Legal Guardian Association (NSRB), rose to the position of district legal advisor in the National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV) in 1937 and in 1940 received the “Fuhrer's Loyalty Medal, 2nd Class”. Melsheimer was no longer able to take up the position of Reich Judicial Councilor at the Reich Court , to which he was proposed in 1944, because none had become vacant by its dissolution in May 1945. He had succeeded in making a career under the National Socialists without having to seriously prove "loyalty to the National Socialist state" in political criminal proceedings.

Immediately after the end of the Second World War in 1945, Melsheimer joined the KPD and in 1946 (through the forced unification of the SPD and KPD ) into the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). He was one of the few lawyers with Nazi prejudice who were allowed to continue working in the GDR. Melsheimer was initially a public prosecutor in Berlin, where he applied for politically motivated death sentences, among other things, and from 1946 to 1949 he was also vice-president of the (East) German Central Administration for Justice DJV. The DJV was a predecessor organization of the GDR Ministry of Justice installed by the Soviet military administration SMAD .

Melsheimer made a name for himself within the party when, on August 14, 1948, he gave the decisive signature for a purge in the DJV: His boss, the former Weimar Reichstag deputy Eugen Schiffer , a member of the LDPD , was on vacation, and when he returned, it was The top staff of the DJV has been changed in line with the SED. Schiffer immediately submitted his resignation. Melsheimer counted on the successor as the new head of the DJV, but was disappointed. On October 2, SMAD did not appoint Melsheimer, but Max Fechner , by order No. 158 . Melsheimer was also given a second deputy head, Hilde Benjamin .

In December 1949, Ernst Melsheimer accepted the post of the first attorney general and thus also chief prosecutor at the GDR Supreme Court . In this function he demanded the death penalty in show trials against KgU members Johann Burianek and Wolfgang Kaiser, among others . He was also the prosecutor in the show trials against Wolfgang Harich , Walter Janka , Leo Herwegen , Otto Fleischer and Leonhard Moog as well as in numerous secret trials .

Brief report in the New York Times about Melsheimer's unanimous re-election as Attorney General of the GDR (January 13, 1955)

Even before he took office as Attorney General, Melsheimer made his commitment to a strong state that also dominates the courts in January 1948 at the 3rd meeting of the Committee on Legal Issues at the Central Committee of the SED:

“One should take to heart that it is an old revolutionary and democratic principle that one transforms a state when one has two things in hand: the police and the judiciary. The police are in your hands, but not the judiciary. Our goal should be to get hold of it. "

Melsheimer was notorious for his sharp attacks on defendants and other parties involved in the process and thus regularly exceeded the limits of the rule of law. In 1956, he threatened the former State Secretary for Agriculture Paul Merker , who appeared as a witness in the trial against the publisher Walter Janka, with an indictment in order to make him 'compliant':

“Do you even know that you belong in the dock? That only a hair separates you from the traitor Janka. They belong in the seat next to him. And if you are not telling the truth here, you must expect to take the place next to him after all. "

At the beginning of the same trial, he was equally successful in threatening Janka's wife with a charge in the event that she stood as a witness for her husband. He pointed out that in the criminal trial against the editor Wolfgang Harich, which had been negotiated three months earlier, some witnesses could only have left the room as arrested.

Melsheimer received the Patriotic Order of Merit in silver twice for “his services in building socialism in the German Democratic Republic” , the first time on May 6, 1955.

tomb

Ernst Melsheimer remained attorney general until his death in 1960. His successor was Josef Streit . His urn was buried in the memorial of the socialists in the central cemetery Friedrichsfelde in Berlin-Lichtenberg .

literature

Web links

Commons : Ernst Melsheimer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On the biography of Rudi Beckert: The first and last instance. Show and secret trials before the Supreme Court of the GDR. Keip, Goldbach 1995, ISBN 3-8051-0243-7 , p. 41f.
  2. ↑ To this Harry Waibel : Servants of many masters. Former Nazi functionaries in the Soviet Zone / GDR. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-631-63542-1 , p. 216.
  3. ^ So Falco Werkentin: Political criminal justice in the Ulbricht era. Ch.links , Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-86153-069-4 , p. 32, footnote 56.
  4. ↑ The other two leading GDR lawyers with a National Socialist past were Kurt Schumann and Herbert Kröger .
  5. ^ Hermann Wentker: Justice in the Soviet Occupation Zone / GDR 1945–1953. Oldenbourg, Munich, 2001, ISBN 3-486-56544-3 , p. 256.
  6. ↑ Falco Werkentin: Political criminal justice in the Ulbricht era. Ch. Links, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-86153-069-4 , p. 19.
  7. ↑ Walter Janka: Difficulties with the truth. Essay. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 1989, ISBN 3-499-12731-8 , pp. 84 and 102.
  8. ↑ Comrade Melsheimer has died. In: New Germany. March 27, 1960, p. 1.
personal data
SURNAME Melsheimer, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Attorney General of the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH April 9, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Neunkirchen (Saar) , Germany
DATE OF DEATH March 25, 1960
Place of death Berlin