Harry Seidel

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Harry Seidel (born April 2, 1938 in Berlin ) is a former escape helper and previously a track cyclist in the GDR . After the construction of the Berlin Wall, he helped East Berliners to escape from the GDR to the western part of the city , and he was involved in several escape tunnels . The GDR Supreme Court sentenced him to life imprisonment in a show trial after the state security arrested him at the end of an escape tunnel. After about four years in prison, the Federal Republic of Germany bought him free.

Life

Harry Seidel as a racing cyclist in second position in the “Grand Prix of the Berliner Zeitung” in 1958

Harry Seidel grew up in the Prenzlauer Berg district of East Berlin. Because of the political indoctrination that was becoming unbearable for him, he left school after the tenth grade and completed an apprenticeship as an electrician . He started cycling in his youth. He was active in the Semper Berlin club and later in the SC Einheit Berlin . In addition to the multiple Berlin championships, he won the GDR championship in two-man team driving in 1959 with Rainer Pluskat and third place in the 4000 meter single pursuit . He was a member of the GDR national track cycling team. As a successful athlete, he was often represented in the press and was used by state propaganda. In 1960 he was denied participation in the Summer Olympics in Rome , although he met the necessary qualifications. Seidel reportedly refused to take anabolic steroids . In West Berlin he started cycling again and started for the Grünweiß Berlin club .

The end of his career marked the exit from the SC unit in April 1961. At the same time he quit his job and looked for a new job as a newspaper driver in West Berlin. In this way he wanted to prepare the escape of his wife Rotraut and his young son. On the day the Wall was built , August 13, 1961, Seidel was in East Berlin. He found a job to escape, but returned to his family the same day. That same night he fled again, this time through the Spree . At the beginning of September 1961 he brought his wife and son through a gap in the border fence on Kiefholzstrasse to the west. As a result, his mother and other relatives were arrested for fleeing and harassed by the state security even after they were released.

Escape assistance

Based on his own experience and because of the threats to his family who remained in the east, Seidel decided to get involved in helping people escape. To do this, he cut holes in the border fence and destroyed headlights at the border. In December 1961, security organs of the GDR arrested Seidel at the Brandenburg Gate and interrogated him. By jumping out of a window eight meters up he was able to escape and return to the west.

After the technical security of the border had been continuously improved and made escape more difficult, Seidel tried in January 1962 on a first escape tunnel in the Kiefholzstrasse, which however became unusable by water ingress. While working as a newspaper driver, he met the kiosk owner Fritz Wagner , who worked as a paid escape helper . Seidel joined a tunnel project by Wagner. As a former top athlete, he benefited from his physical condition. In contrast to Wagner, Seidel acted from idealistic motives and did not take any money for his escape aid. In the joint projects, Seidel took on the construction management and Wagner took on organizational tasks. The group consisted of about 20 men.

At the beginning of 1962 Seidel was involved with Fritz Wagner and Heinz Jercha in a tunnel at Heidelberger Strasse 75, through which they smuggled refugees several times in March 1962. Jercha and Seidel met the refugees on the east side and led them to the tunnel entrance. Wagner, Seidel and Jercha acted from different motives and deceived each other. While Seidel and Jercha carried out more people smuggled than Wagner was known, he took more money from the refugees than he said to Seidel. The State Security had known about the tunnel from an East Berlin unofficial employee (IM) who had secured Seidel's trust since March 24, 1962, and had it monitored. The State Security had planned the access for March 27, during which the tunnel was to be destroyed and Seidel to be arrested as the organizer. In the course of the action there was a shootout in which a ricochet hit Heinz Jercha in the chest. Seidel and Jercha made their way back to the west, where Jercha succumbed to his injuries. The number of successful escapes varies between 35 and 59. Most of the time, the refugees were relatives of the tunnel builders.

In May 1962, Seidel and Wagner began to work on another tunnel at Heidelberger Strasse 28/29, which they abandoned after warnings from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

On the weekend of Pentecost - around May 31, 1962 - Seidel and others in Treptow dug a tunnel from the cellar of the Heidelberger Krug restaurant on the West Berlin side to the cellar of a photo shop on Elsenstrasse on the east side. About 55 people fled through this structure on June 11, 1962. Subsequently, the security organs of the GDR discovered the 75-meter-long escape route, making it unusable. Construction workers found parts of the intact tunnel in 2004 during earthworks. A memorial plaque inaugurated in 2006 in the presence of Seidel commemorates the tunnel.

In July 1962, Seidel and Wagner tried again on a tunnel in Kiefholzstrasse. They worked with the group around Hasso Herschel and the Girrmann group , which consisted of students from the Free University of Berlin . An agent from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution arranged contact between the groups. When the tunnel broke through on August 7, 1962, problems arose. The dacha , in which the tunnel was to be entered, was inhabited and the residents were not interested in escaping. An IM with the code name "Hardy" had disclosed the plan in advance to the Stasi, which arrested around 60 people who wanted to flee on the same day. The same IM also revealed the next tunnel project by Seidel and Wagner in Heidelberger Strasse in October 1962. After the breakthrough, in which the Girrmann Group also participated, and the escape of two East Berliners, the state security attacked and seriously injured one of the tunnel builders.

On November 14, 1962, Seidel was ambushed by the Stasi at the end of a 70-meter-long tunnel that he had helped build on behalf of the West Berlin CDU in Kleinmachnow . CDU members of the local association who were in the east were to be helped to escape through the tunnel. He did not use the firearm found on him. Since he did not help build this tunnel from the start, he later speculated: “Maybe it was a trap by the Stasi, I don't know”.

process

Harry Seidel in 1962 during the trial before the Supreme Court of the GDR

Six weeks after Seidel's arrest, the trial began before the First Senate of the GDR Supreme Court under the leadership of Judge Heinrich Toeplitz . A public defender loyal to the system stood by Seidel's side during the three-day negotiation. The western press was not allowed. Instead, the audience consisted of members of the border troops , members of the SED and deserving employees from VEBs . The court found Seidel guilty of continued violation of the “Law for the Protection of Peace” and the Arms Act on December 29, 1962 and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

The MfS conceptualized the trial as a show trial . In an internal “proposal to carry out a process in front of the wider public” of the MfS on November 26, 1962, the aim was described, among other things, to “show the world public the danger of such acts of aggression against the borders of the German Democratic Republic”. The law of 1950, applied for the first time in years at the sentencing, came from the heyday of Stalinism . Due to its general formulations, it could be used against anyone and also included the possibility of the death penalty , which, however, was excluded because of the damage to the reputation of the GDR. Seidel's conviction sparked protests around the world.

In the grounds of the verdict, the court compared Seidel's acts allegedly controlled by the German government with the crimes dealt with in the Nuremberg trials and accused him of having prepared for a war of aggression . The International Commission of Jurists criticized this approach in its 1963 report on the verdict, as it put escape aid on a par with the crimes of National Socialism . Willy Brandt , then Governing Mayor of Berlin , commented on the proceedings: "There is not a single word that would suffice to express the outrage over this shameful judgment of the modern inquisition of an injustice state ."

Detention

Seidel served his custody first in the state security prison in Hohenschönhausen and then in the Brandenburg prison . He described the detention conditions as poor. During his detention, Rotraut Seidel organized protests for the release of her husband at the Wall and other public places in Berlin. On September 14, 1963, the Indian civil rights activist Tapeshwar N. Tutsi took a rowboat to the East Berlin side of the Britz connecting canal . He carried a poster with him demanding freedom for Seidel and other political prisoners of the GDR. Against the accusation of terrorism that was raised in the GDR press after the arrest, Rotraut Seidel replied that her husband's motivation was exclusively private. After Seidel was about four years in prison, he was supported by the German government bailed and released from prison. The trade negotiations were broken off several times.

After imprisonment

Seidel came to West Berlin on September 13, 1966. The Swede Carl-Gustaf Svingel , who was a negotiator for the SPD and the Protestant Church on prisoner issues, initially brought him into his Villa Victoria and then hid him from the German press in Sweden . Seidel later returned to West Berlin and worked for the Senator for the Interior. He was responsible for those who were politically and religiously persecuted by National Socialism.

After his imprisonment he was active in cycling again and won the German championship in team time trial in 1973 together with Burckhard Bremer , Roger Poulain and Peter Lindow .

The television magazine Monitor of the ARD organized a meeting between Seidel and Toeplitz in March 1990 after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the conversation Toeplitz described his judgment as no longer “up-to-date” from a new point of view, without apologizing to Seidel. On December 1, 1992, together with other victims of the GDR dictatorship, he testified in front of the German Bundestag's " Enquete Commission on dealing with the history and consequences of the SED dictatorship in Germany" .

Honors

literature

Marion Detjen: Overcome the wall. Harry Seidel . In: Karl Wilhelm Fricke , Peter Steinbach, Johannes Tuchel: Opposition and resistance in the GDR: political images of life . CH Beck, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-47619-8 , pp. 340-344

Web links

Commons : Harry Seidel  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Marion Detjen 2002: Harry Seidel . In: Karl Wilhelm Fricke , Peter Steinbach, Johannes Tuchel: Opposition and Resistance in the GDR . CH Beck, ISBN 3406476198 , pp. 340f.
  2. ↑ Statistical information on GDR cycling championships: two men , 4000 m individual pursuit
  3. ↑ Preface to Burkhart Veigels work on the border crossing services., 2000
  4. ^ Association of German cyclists (ed.): Radsport . No. 27/1962 . Deutscher Sportverlag Kurt Stoof, Cologne 1962, p. 6 .
  5. ↑ a b c d e Enquete Commission ›Processing the History and Consequences of the SED Dictatorship in Germany‹ 1992: Power Decision Responsibility II, 1 , Suhrkamp, ​​p. 229f.
  6. ↑ a b Christine Brecht 2009: Heinz Jercha . In: Hans-Hermann Hertle : The victims of the Berlin Wall 1961–1989 , Ch. Links Verlag, ISBN 3861535173 , pp. 73ff.
  7. ↑ a b c d e Marion Detjen: A hole in the wall. The history of refugee aid in divided Germany 1961–1989 . Siedler, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-88680-834-3 , p. 134 ff .
  8. ↑ Marion Detjen 2002: Escape helpers after the Wall was built. Cross-border commuters in the German-German relationship network . In: Germany Archive , 35/2002, p. 800.
  9. ↑ Thomas Loy: excavation in 1962 . In Der Tagesspiegel , October 27, 2004
  10. ↑ Annette Kaminsky (Ed.) 2007: Places of Remembrance: Memorial signs, memorials and museums on the dictatorship in the Soviet occupation zone and the GDR . Ch. Links Verlag, ISBN 3861534436 , p. 147.
  11. ^ Karl Wilhelm Fricke , Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk 2000: Committed to the truth: Texts from five decades on the history of the GDR , Ch. Links Verlag, ISBN 3861532085 , p. 319.
  12. ↑ Marion Detjen 2006: The propagandistic orientation of the criminal prosecution of escape helpers in the GDR . In: Klaus Marxen , Annette Weinke 2006: Staging of the right: show trials, media trials and trial films in the GDR . BWV Verlag, ISBN 3830512430 , p. 109.
  13. ↑ Marion Detjen 2006, p. 109ff.
  14. ^ A b Gerhard Mauz : "Sensible area" . In Spiegel special 2/1990 of February 1, 1990, p. 71.
  15. ^ Marc-Dietrich Hose, Detlef Pollack: Dissident group in the GDR . In: Roland Roth : The social movements in Germany since 1945: a manual , Campus Verlag, ISBN 3593383721 , p. 375.
  16. ↑ Der Spiegel: The Secret Ambassador . In: Der Spiegel . No. 13 , 1992, pp. 88-106 ( Online - Mar. 23, 1992 ).
  17. ^ Dietmar Arnold , Sven Felix Kellerhoff : The escape tunnel from Berlin . 2nd Edition. List, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-548-60934-8 , pp. 76 (first edition: 2009).
personal data
SURNAME Seidel, Harry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German cyclist (GDR champion) and escape helper
DATE OF BIRTH April 2, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin