Ewald Ernst

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Ewald Ernst (born June 12, 1921 in Bonn ; † June 24, 2001 Bonn) was a German politician ( CDU ) and parliamentary group leader in the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament . Arrested by the Soviet secret service NKVD on charges of espionage , he spent 82 months in political custody.

Life

Ewald Ernst was born in 1921 as one of three children of an engineer . As the oldest child in the family, he was given the name of his father. Ernst spent his childhood in Bad Godesberg . In 1939 he was drafted as a technical draftsman and, like his father, worked for the Junkers aircraft and engine works in Dessau . In April 1942 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht . Although trained as a radio operator, he continued to work as a draftsman for a company in Kiel . He was sent to only the end of 1944 Hradec Kralove displaced, where he in May 1945 as Funknachrichten- Corporal in Soviet captivity came.

In September 1945 he was dismissed and resumed his work as a technical draftsman for the Junkers factories. Since he preferred to be a Catholic priest as a child, he joined the CDU's “Working Group for Young Catholics” in Dessau. On the other hand, he refused to join the FDJ . As a representative of the youth, he was elected to the board of the CDU Dessau in February 1946 and rose to the position of full-time youth officer of the CDU regional association of Saxony-Anhalt until April. At the party congress at the end of April 1946, Ernst was elected to the party's state executive committee. As a delegate, he took part in the CDU's first party convention in Berlin in June 1946 and from then on represented the Junge Union on the party's executive committee. In the state elections on October 20, 1946, the CDU won 21.8% of the votes despite extensive handicaps and Ewald was the youngest member of the state list to enter the state parliament. There he took over the post of parliamentary group manager and secretary .

In talks with Konrad Cardinal von Preysing and the American junior officer Janssen, Ernst received extensive reports on the persecutions, violations of rights and arrests in the Soviet zone of occupation . In January 1947, Ernst did not receive a travel permit from the Soviet military administration for the first meeting of the Junge Union in Koenigstein . Instead, despite his immunity as a member of the state parliament, he was arrested by the Soviet secret police not far from his home on March 16. He was admitted to the NKVD remand prison in Potsdam- Lindenstrasse, where he met other Christian Democrats who had been arrested . In interrogations lasting several hours with physical torture , Ernst was accused of espionage for the Americans. In April 1947 he was transferred to the central remand prison in Hohenschönhausen . In the so-called “submarine” he was held in strict solitary confinement for 20 months in a 5 m², windowless cell . On December 13, 1948, the trial of Ernst and six other defendants opened in Berlin-Lichtenberg . Ernst was sentenced to 25 years in a labor camp and transferred to Bautzen I prison. After five years in prison he was released on January 18, 1954 as a result of an amnesty in the Federal Republic . There he accepted a position as a consultant in the Hessian Ministry of Social Affairs in 1957 . From 1963 until his retirement he was senior official in the Federal Ministry for Social Affairs in Bonn. In the Federal Republic of Germany he ran for the CDU in the federal election in 1957, unsuccessfully on the Hessian state list. On January 13, 1981, he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon for his commitment to better care for sick and disabled people . In 1994 he was rehabilitated as a "victim of political repression" by the Russian attorney general .

Publications

  • Memories. Bad Godesberg, 1992.
  • A good fight. Facts, dates, memories 1945-1954. Konrad Adenauer Foundation 1998, ISBN 3-89665-116-1 .
  • The silence of a burial chamber. In: Hubertus Knabe (Ed.): Captured in Hohenschönhausen. Berlin 2007, pp. 60-67.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ernst, Ewald . In: Martin Schumacher (Ed.): MdB - The People's Representation 1946–1972. - [Ebbinghaus to Eyrich] (=  KGParl online publications ). Commission for the History of Parliamentarism and Political Parties e. V., Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-00-020703-7 , pp. 276 , urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-2014070812574 ( kgparl.de [PDF; 201 kB ; accessed on June 19, 2017]).
  2. ↑ Information from the Federal President's Office
personal data
SURNAME Ernst, Ewald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (CDU) and victim of political repression in the Soviet occupation zone
DATE OF BIRTH June 12, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Bonn
DATE OF DEATH June 24, 2001
Place of death Bonn