Hans-Eberhard Zahn

Hans-Eberhard Zahn (born June 28, 1928 in Stettin ; † August 29, 2013 in Berlin ) was a German psychologist and university professor . He was an innocent political prisoner of the GDR dictatorship for seven years .

Life

Hans-Eberhard Zahn was born in Szczecin in 1928 . After the Second World War he began to study psychology and philosophy at the Free University (FU), which was founded in 1948 as a reaction to the political conformity of the Berlin University Unter den Linden by students and professors in West Berlin .

As AStA consultant, Zahn supported needy relatives of FU students in the Soviet-occupied zone . He gathered a few helpers around him, each of whom made small payments in East Berlin .

arrest

On November 14, 1953, Zahn appeared on his West Motor scooter at the house of a fellow student in the East Berlin district of Johannisthal to bring him money and payment lists. There he was checked by an arrest squad from the Greater Berlin Administration of the State Security , which had recently arrested the friend on suspicion of espionage. It found 67,000 DM East in Zahn's briefcase and a list of East Berlin addresses. The money came from fellow students who wanted to use it to support their relatives in the East and had come together to form a small charity. The money was to be transferred to the addresses of the relatives at an East Berlin post office. The Stasi arrested him in the mistaken belief that they had caught a high-ranking British spy .

Detention and Stasi torture

Zahn was brought to one of the 17 secret GDR remand prisons of the Ministry for State Security, the underground remand prison known as the Hundekeller on Prenzlauer Allee . Here the Stasi officers tried in vain for seven months through sleep deprivation , threats of violence, physical torture, sensory deprivation and psychological torture through decomposition measures to extract a confession and "turn him around" in order to be able to place him in the West Berlin headquarters of the British secret service. He was locked up in a closet-like, locked torture cell for three days, with his hands attached to handcuffs anchored in the brickwork for the first twelve hours ( standing room ). But he couldn't confess anything because he wasn't a top spy, as the Stasi suspected.

Seven years in prison

In September 1953, the Berlin City Court sentenced him to seven years in prison for having published some anti-communist articles in a student magazine that allegedly had "endangered the peace of the German people and the world".

Zahn had to serve the entire sentence in the penitentiaries in Berlin-Rummelsburg , Brandenburg-Görden and Bautzen, as well as in the secret detention labor camp X of the state security in the restricted area in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen . In camp X, a political leader with the rank of major, supported by a group of “pro-communist” prisoners around Bernhard Steinberger , placed great emphasis on re-education and political influencing of the prisoners. On November 21, 1960, Zahn was released after 2,555 days in prison. During the detention period had its West Berlin girlfriend suicide committed by them on the S-Bahn station Jungfernheide jumped in front of an oncoming train. Zahn continued his psychology studies at the Free University of Berlin and wrote essays and books about his experiences in prison and gave lectures about them.

Anti-communist engagement as a university teacher

Zahn graduated from the Free University of Berlin with a degree in psychology , where he worked as a university lecturer until 1993 . In the wake of the student movement , he appeared as a defender of freedom of expression and was involved in the fight against the growing communist student movement. The Notgemeinschaft für eine Free University (NoFU) Berlin, an association of conservative Berlin professors dedicated to the fight against communist infiltration efforts in higher education, elected him to its board in 1983. After the reunification and peaceful revolution in the GDR he was elected chairman, later honorary chairman, of the Federation of Freedom of Science in Berlin-Brandenburg .

Board member of the Friends of the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial

After the fall of the SED regime, Zahn was one of the founders of the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial and was a member of the advisory board there. He worked there from 2001 to 2010 as a contemporary witness in visitor care , led visitor groups through the former central remand prison of the Ministry for State Security and campaigned in the foundation's committees for the further expansion of the memorial. From 2003 to 2005 he was a member of the board of the memorial's friends' association. In 2011 Zahn played in the play "Staatssicherheiten", in which he also described his imprisonment. The piece, staged based on ideas by Lea Rosh at the Hans Otto Theater in Potsdam, received great attention on tours in many cities in Germany.

On February 25, 2011, on behalf of Federal President Christian Wulff , Zahn was presented with the Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon of the Federal Republic of Germany in order to honor the life's work of the former GDR prisoner, contemporary witness and sponsor of the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial.

Hans-Eberhard Zahn died on August 29, 2013, at the age of 85 in Berlin-Steglitz . He left behind a son and his wife who, like him, were imprisoned in various special camps from 1945 to 1950, u. a. also in Hohenschönhausen.

Fonts

• And some are in the dark. In: Frederik Hetmann: Expropriated Years. Young people report from over there. Munich 1961.
• Conditions of detention and production of confessions in the MfS remand prisons. Berlin, the Berlin State Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service, the former. GDR, 1997.
• Conditions of detention and production of confessions in the MfS remand prisons. Berlin, the Berlin State Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service, the former. GDR, 2005, 4th, through. Edition
• The GDR in its purest form or: The secret Stasi prison labor camp, the camp X , in: Gerbergasse 18 (2005) 10, pp. 19–23
• Conditions of detention and production of confessions in the MfS remand prisons. Berlin, the Berlin State Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service, the former. GDR, 2007, 5th edition.
• The prison labor camp (Camp X) of the Ministry for State Security as a model of the German Democratic Republic. In: Peter Erler : The secret prison labor camp of the MfS in Berlin Hohenschönhausen (1952-1972). Facts - documents - people. Research association SED state,

Free University of Berlin, November 1997.

Web links

• Literature by and about Hans-Eberhard Zahn in the catalog of the German National Library
• Hans-Eberhard Zahn: Prison conditions and confession production in the detention centers of the MfS. (= Series of publications by the Berlin State Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR. Volume 5). Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-934085-01-6 . (PDF download; 229 kB)
• Mila Hanke: The methods of the Stasi. Soul murder. (Download PDF)
• Memories of imprisonment. "The labor camp was like a little GDR" by Sven Felix Kellerhoff on Morgenpost.de , June 22, 2010.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ OBITUARY Tomas Kittan: Despite 2,555 days in prison Stasi: Dialogue with Markus Wolf. gedenkbibliothek.de; 2555 days in Stasi detention, 50 years of processing
2. ↑ Matthias Geyer : STASI: The life of the other . In: Der Spiegel . No. 33 , 2006 ( online - Aug. 14, 2006 ).
3. ↑ On the course of the arrest see Hans-Eberhard Zahn: Prison conditions and confession production in the detention centers of the MfS. Series of publications by the Berlin State Commissioner for the records of the State Security Service of the former GDR. Volume 5. Berlin 1999², ISBN 3-934085-01-6 , p. 26
4. ^ ^{A b} Reinhard Fuhrmann: The prison in Prenzlauer Allee (1945–1956) . In: Berlin-Brandenburgische Geschichtswerkstatt (Ed.): Prenzlauer, corner of Fröbelstrasse. Hospital of the Reich capital, place of detention for the secret services, Prenzlauer Berg district office. 1889-1989 . Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-936872-98-9 , pp. 97–120, on Zahn and the “Hundekeller” pp. 110–115
5. ↑ ^{a b} Mila Hanke: The methods of the Stasi. Soul murder. ( Memento of the original from June 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Psychology Today November 2006. 
6. ↑ Peter Erler : "Camp X". The prison labor camp of the Stasi in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. ( Memento of the original from June 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Horch and Guck issue 20/1997, pages 33-42. 
7. ↑ STASI. The other's life Spiegel-online , August 14, 2006.
8. ↑ Biography: Hans-Eberhard Zahn.
9. ↑ In Memoriam ( Memento of the original from June 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. foerderverein-hsh.de  
10. ↑ The Brandenburg State Center for Political Education provides information on the state security theater play
11. ↑ Federal Cross of Merit for Hans-Eberhard Zahn. Press release from February 25, 2011.
12. ↑ An old school freedom fighter has left us. On the death of Hans-Eberhard Zahn. Association June 17, 1953 eV