Georg Michael Welzel

Georg Michael Welzel (born April 11, 1944 in Cottbus ; † March 2, 1974 in Tarragona ) was a GDR refugee and one of the last victims of the death penalty in Spain .

He was executed under the name Heinz Ches in Tarragona Detention Center. Around the same time took place in Barcelona the execution of anarchist Puig Antich instead.

Life

Between 1964 and 1970 Welzel was arrested three times for attempting to flee the republic . He spent practically the entire time from 1964 to 1972 in prisons in the GDR . After the Federal Republic of Germany had bought him out, he got a fake passport in the name of Klaus Hermann Rudolf Sackman, with which he traveled to Spain via France and Port Bou in September 1972 . His family stayed in the GDR.

Events in Spain

On December 13, 1972, he shot a member of the Guardia Civil in the port of Barcelona , who was seriously injured. On December 19, 1972, an officer from the Guardia Civil entered a café in Tarragona where Welzel was sitting. Welzel shot him dead with a stolen rifle without warning. During interrogation , he admitted to shooting, but denied any intention to kill.

During the interrogations, Welzel claimed to be Heinz Ches (other spelling: Chez) and to have been born in Stettin in 1939 . Why he concealed his identity remains unclear. Interpol reported Welzel's real identity to the Spanish authorities, but the Spanish judiciary either ignored the information or ignored it. It is assumed that he either feared pressure from the GDR authorities on his family or that he was ashamed of his act. Even the Spaniards had no interest in the publication of the true identity, possibly because diplomatic entanglements with the Federal Republic of Germany were feared. In the proceedings, he was represented by a young defense attorney , who was offered the case in a bar. No one appealed the September 6, 1973 death sentence . The execution took longer than usual because the executioner did not know how to handle the garrotte . From the beginning of the execution until the onset of death, the executioner required several attempts that lasted a total of half an hour.

Later events

Welzel left three children who only found out about his fate after the fall of the Wall .

In 1977 the theater group Els Joglars , directed by Albert Boadella, took on the fall in the play "La Torna". The play was canceled after 40 performances and four members of the group were sentenced by a military court to two years in prison for insulting the military . Boadella himself managed a spectacular escape from the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona and went into exile in France.

In 2004 a Spanish documentary about Welzel's story was released: La muerte de nadie ( Eng .: The death of nobody ) by Joan Dolç.

In 2005, Albert Boadella staged his play from 1977 in a revised version with acting students under the title La Torna de La Torna .

In 2006 Deutschlandfunk broadcast a report on Georg Michael Welzel as part of the Studiozeit series: “Murdered by Franco's Garotte - The fate of the GDR refugee Georg Welzel” by Ute Steinbicker and Hans-Jürgen Schmitt.

In the volume of poems "Balladen vom Kurz Prozess" (1975), the poet Helga M. Novak wrote a small poetic memorial to the executed man in her "Ballad about one after whom no cock crows": "His name was Heinz Chez and he was a Pole".

literature

• Juan Eslava: executioner and torturer
• Raul Riebenbauer: El silencio de Georg. RBA Ediciones, Barcelona, ​​2005. ISBN 84-7871-265-8 .
• Martin Dahms : Last trip to Spain . In: Berliner Zeitung . July 13, 2004.

Web links

• La Muerte de Nadie , documentary (Spanish), accessed May 13, 2012