Five Brochure Judgment

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With the five-brochure judgment of April 8, 1952, the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe decided to confiscate five brochures of political content from the GDR . As a result of this decision, mail traffic between the GDR and the FRG was monitored en masse and millions of printed matter sent from the GDR to West German addresses were opened, examined and confiscated.

The verdict was not published and was not known to the public at the time.

Procedure

The proceedings were initiated by the Federal Public Prosecutor Carlo Wiechmann at the urging of the Federal Government . It was a stand-alone trial with no accused or defense counsel. There were five brochures in the dock containing political propaganda :

  • Where do we stand in the struggle for the peaceful reunification of Germany? for a reunification of Germany
  • One on the mouth of the lying freaks against the rearmament of the FRG
  • The need of the hour for a referendum against the rearmament of the FRG and for the conclusion of a peace treaty
  • Attention! Acute danger for the whole nation against Konrad Adenauer's integration into the West
  • The German working class must choose! for supporting the politics of the SED

The aforementioned and similar brochures were printed millions of times on behalf of the SED and sent by post from 1951 , either posted in the GDR or via the KPD and the referendum committees in the FRG. The federal government wanted to fight off this flood of propaganda by means of a model trial in order to be able to ban communist propaganda. The Federal Post Office was therefore instructed to collect specimen copies and illegally remove them from mail. Since this violated postal secrecy , it was illegally acquired evidence.

The Federal Public Prosecutor justified this procedure with § 81 , preparation of a treasonous company. The contents of the brochures clearly show "that this is intended to prepare the revolution in the Federal Republic in order to incorporate it into a state that realizes the dictatorship of the proletariat according to the principles of Marx , Lenin and Stalin ."

The only witness was Ministerialrat Randt from the Federal Post Office, who had selected the brochures. He reported on the large amount of propaganda material that had been seized by German customs authorities and Allied agencies in the last quarter of 1951 and how it had been sent to private individuals and state authorities. Then the brochures and other writings by Stalin, Grotewohl and the New Germany were read aloud.

Grounds for judgment

The court followed the indictment and came to the conclusion that the five brochures were used to prepare a treasonous undertaking against the FRG and should therefore be confiscated.

Since no concrete organizational preparations for high treason could be proven, the court used “ideological high treason”, which was only punishable if it had to prove a certain “preparatory act”. The federal judges argued historically: The central goal of communism was the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat. The Bolsheviks succeeded in doing this by force in 1917 in Russia through the October Revolution , and since then they have continually strived to extend their rule to non-communist countries. Tyranny and the urge to expand are therefore hallmarks of communist rule. The free, democratic social order stands “in the most blatant contradiction”.

By founding the communist-led state of the GDR, the SED followed the same goals, also because it was specifically oriented towards the guidelines of Stalin ( Stalinism ). Despite the lack of concrete evidence of an actually planned attack on the FRG, the leaders in the GDR also strove to establish a Bolshevik tyranny in the territory of the FRG. The means to achieve this goal are the reunification of Germany and the prevention of the integration of West Germany into the defense front of the Western powers.

A realization of this potential plan for high treason is therefore to be expected in the near future. The writings from the GDR were intended to help prepare this plan “mentally” and are therefore to be used as a means of preparing a highly treasonable enterprise.

The reason was very long on 35 pages. However, on the express instructions of Senate President Dagobert Moericke, it was kept under lock and key for numerous other trials despite its explosive nature and the effect of this judgment.

consequences

The verdict had serious consequences in the area of ​​political law enforcement. In numerous final convictions of communists by lower-level courts, it was subsequently stated that it was "generally known" that organizations such as SED, KPD, FDJ and other communist organizations were to be classified as preparers for high treason against the FRG. By referring to the five-brochure judgment, any further justification was omitted.

The ruling had serious consequences in relation to breaches of postal secrecy. Since the judgment was not directed against specific persons, but against the postal traffic from the GDR as a whole, it led to a massive surveillance of the German-German postal traffic in order to be able to find relevant documents. Mail posted in the FRG was also monitored with the justification that it could contain political propaganda from the GDR.

Repeal

In a judgment of the Federal Court against senior officials of the Main Committee for referendum two years later, on 2 August 1954, the accusation of treason was contrary to what the indictment for the first time abandoned.

In a further judgment of October 13, 1954 on the distribution of brochures it was decided that a political functionary of the KPD should not be prevented from doing political advertising for his party as long as it was not forbidden (→ KPD ban ). "It would be incompatible with that if the courts were allowed to confiscate them [the brochures] and confiscate them or render them unusable."

The practice of mass German-German mail surveillance and recovery did not end there.

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