Legal and Humanitarian Assistance Society

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The Association for Legal and Humanitarian Support e. V. (GRH) is a lobbying organization for members of the armed organs of the GDR and other GDR functionaries. It was founded in 1993 and is based in Berlin. The charitable status, which the association had in 2007 according to its own publications, has been "long" withdrawn from 2012 according to its own information.

Large parts of his work are viewed as playing down GDR injustice. The political scientist Eckhard Jesse states that this organization is concerned with "primitive GDR apology".

founding

Former East German Prime , Stasi - officers and East German border guards formed the GRH May 19, 1993 in Berlin against the backdrop of various criminal proceedings for the regeneration of East German injustice. The initiators were Frank Osterloh and Jürgen Strahl, who had specialized as lawyers in the defense of this group of people since 1990. Legal, financial and political support for the former system supporters should be provided through the GRH. In 2009 the GRH had around 1,400 members, including many former top officials of the SED - (e.g. Egon Krenz ), members of the border troops , system-related scientists and employees of the GDR Ministry for State Security, including the last head of the MfS, Wolfgang Schwanitz .

Self-image

According to its statutes of October 2004, one of the goals of the GRH is to support people who are “exposed to or threatened by criminal prosecution because of (work) within the framework of the constitution and the legal system of the German Democratic Republic”. She pays particular attention to members of the border troops, the Ministry for State Security, the National People's Army and the GDR Interior Ministry . Human rights violations by state security are relativized by society.

The GRH demanded that the trials against former leaders of the SED and the GDR State Security be stopped. During these trials, charges were heard, some of which already violated GDR law . The old cadres of the GRH refer to the processes as “winning justice ”.

The association sees itself as a lobby organization for their group concerns and as a supporter of exposed members. Another concern is those people who were injured in the civil service for the GDR through crimes by third parties.

classification

Marianne Birthler accuses the GRH of glossing over the GDR's history and playing down the activities of the MfS. A report by the Berlin Office for the Protection of the Constitution comments: “A lack of awareness of injustice is already evident in the fact that terms such as Stasi injustice, Western democracy and human rights, crimes of the Stasi and victims of Stalinism and the SED regime (in the association's journal of the GRH) are each put in quotation marks The GRH also defends the targeted shots at GDR refugees .

The Berlin Office for the Protection of the Constitution attests that the association is hostile to the German judiciary, but sees no legal basis for monitoring the Stasi associations GRH and GBM . There are no indications that the GRH wants to eliminate the free and democratic basic order.

Political scientists accuse the association of a primitive GDR apology , misrepresentation of history and historical revisionism .

Hubertus Knabe describes the GRH as an "aid association for state criminals"; it is a solidarity association for officials involved in criminal offenses.

The then Berlin Senator for the Interior Ehrhart Körting compared the GRH 2006 with the friendship associations of the Waffen-SS .

The association agitates against the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen memorial and the coming to terms with GDR history.

organization

The office is located in the Neues Deutschland publishing house , where the former SED central organ Neues Deutschland is also based.

The GRH is organized in “Territorial Action Groups” (TAG) as base units. There are also working groups, for example:

  • AG Sport: deals with the methods of top-class sport in the GDR and especially the subject of doping .
  • AG Grenz: According to its own account, it deals with "the historical truth of the development of the GDR and the safeguarding of its national borders". In the 1990s, activities were directed against attempts by the judiciary to prosecute the crimes on the inner-German border .
  • AG Aufklärer: Acts as a secret control point for former Stasi officers.

The former deputy public prosecutor of the GDR, Hans Bauer , has been the chairman of the association since 2005 . The membership is very old, a majority of the members were over 70 years old in 2007.

The organization is supported by the German Communist Party, among others .

The association is a member of the Society for the Protection of Citizens' Rights and Human Dignity eV and of the Association of East German Kuratoriums of Associations. V.

Controversial actions

The club took a number of controversial actions. In particular, associations of victims of the GDR dictatorship hold up against their historical revisionism and mockery of people who suffered in the GDR from illegal actions by the authorities.

  • Well-known members of the GRH repeatedly disrupted discussion events and memorial hours with massive appearances, ridiculed victims of the GDR justice system and spread obvious falsifications of history.
  • Individual "territorial working groups" try to persuade former GDR opposition members to become inactive.
  • In the style of lobby groups, the GRH sends targeted advertising material to people and institutions who have attracted attention in the media through deviating representations.

There have been reports of intimidating and threatening phone calls to private individuals and to the politician Karin Seidel-Kalmutzki . Club members reviled their previous victims.

literature

  • Hubertus Knabe : The perpetrators are among us. About the glossing over of the SED dictatorship. Berlin 2008.
  • Norman Bock: Post-Communist History Revisionism. The transfiguration of the SED dictatorship. In: Society. Economy. Politics. Vol. 58, No. 3 (2009), pp. 377-386.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.parlament-berlin.de/ados/16/VerfSch/protokoll/vfs16-003-ip.pdf ; March 14, 2007, accessed February 14, 2020
  2. ↑ https://www.die-tagespost.de/politik/aktuell/Keine-harmlosen-Stasi-Opis;art315,68160 ; March 29, 2007, accessed February 14, 2020
  3. ↑ According to a special information published on the Internet for the 10th meeting of representatives on November 10, 2012 in Berlin , where it says: "The non-profit status has long since been denied."
  4. ↑ a b Michael Meyer: The Schönfärber. About attempts to reinterpret GDR history. In: Deutschlandfunk . February 19, 2009, accessed May 1, 2014 .
  5. ↑ a b c d reports in the Committee for the Protection of the Constitution (VSA) of the Berlin House of Representatives. (pdf) In: www.berlin.de. Senate Department for Home Affairs and Sport, April 18, 2007, p. 13 , archived from the original on April 15, 2010 ; accessed on February 2, 2016 .
  6. ↑ Guido Kleinhubbert : Lax handling. In: Der Spiegel . February 2, 2008, accessed May 1, 2014 .
  7. ↑ Marianne Birthler : Ex-Stasi employees torpedo the processing. In: The world . March 21, 2008, accessed May 1, 2014 .
  8. ↑ Stefan Schulz: Stasi associations remain unobserved. In: Berliner Morgenpost . March 14, 2007, accessed May 1, 2014 .
  9. ↑ Eckhard Jesse : Facts and realizations, no myths and legends
  10. ↑ Hubertus Knabe : The perpetrators are among us. About the glossing over of the SED dictatorship. Berlin 2008, pp. 277ff.
  11. ↑ Hubertus Knabe : The perpetrators are among us. About the glossing over of the SED dictatorship. Berlin 2008, p. 298
  12. ↑ Eric Gujer: The death penalty in the GDR and its laborious coming to terms in reunified Germany: A belated act of liberation. 20 years ago the death penalty was abolished in the GDR, which had previously only been carried out in secret. Their processing in the Federal Republic is still controversial today. The history of the GDR still divides society in East Germany. In: nzz.ch. August 16, 2007, accessed August 26, 2015 .
  13. ↑ Timo Hoffmann: Ex-functionaries glorify GDR on the Internet: www.geschichtsklitterung.de. Almost two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a small part of the GDR lives on on the Internet. Ex-employees of the Stasi and border troops are rewriting history in their favor. In: taz.de. December 3, 2008, accessed August 26, 2015 .
  14. ^ Website of the working group on the border
  15. ↑ Hubertus Knabe : The perpetrators are among us. About the glossing over of the SED dictatorship. Berlin 2008, p. 302
  16. ↑ Hubertus Knabe : The perpetrators are among us. About the glossing over of the SED dictatorship. Berlin 2008, p. 280.
  17. ^ Mockery of Stasi victims. In: www.rbb-online.de. May 2, 2006, archived from the original on May 2, 2006 ; accessed on May 2, 2014 .
  18. ↑ Michael Reinsch: The sadism of the clerks. Victim of GDR doping. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . April 3, 2014, accessed May 1, 2014 .
  19. ↑ Peter Wensierski: The revenge of the pensioners. In: Der Spiegel . March 27, 2006, accessed May 1, 2014 .
  20. ↑ Anja Maier : The defensive one. In: taz . March 26, 2009, accessed May 1, 2014 .