Hilde Benjamin

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Hilde Benjamin, ca.1947
Hilde Benjamin as chairwoman in the show trial against Johann Burianek , Berlin 1952
Hilde Benjamin (right) in conversation with Friedel Malter , Chair of the Committee for the Protection of Human Rights, before the start of the second day of the trial against Hans Globke , Berlin 1963
Hilde Benjamin with GDR youth in Saxony in 1958

Hilde Benjamin , b. Lange (born February 5, 1902 in Bernburg , † April 18, 1989 in East Berlin ), was a German lawyer. After the popular uprising on June 17, 1953 , as Justice Minister of the GDR until her dismissal in 1967 , she played a key role in the reorganization of GDR criminal law in the Stalinist sense. As presiding judge , she passed extremely harsh judgments in a number of political show trials between 1949 and 1953.

childhood and education

Hilde Benjamin grew up as the daughter of Heinz Lange and his wife Adele in Berlin. Her father worked as a commercial clerk for the Solvay works in Bernburg (Saale) before he moved with his family to Berlin, where he became the head of a subsidiary. Sister Ruth hit multiple world records in the shot put and became German champion in 1927, brother Heinz became an engineer in the GDR. The mother, with whom Benjamin maintained a good relationship throughout his life, lived in West Berlin until the end of her life in 1952 .

Benjamin was a student at the Sachsenwald and Fichtenberg School in Berlin-Steglitz and passed the Abitur in 1921. Her interest in classical music and literature, aroused at an early age in a Protestant, culturally interested family, she cultivated throughout her life. She was a member of the Wandervogel movement , which was founded in Steglitz in 1896.

After graduating from high school, she was one of the first women to study law from 1921 to 1924 at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin as well as in Heidelberg and Hamburg . She did not finish a dissertation with Moritz Liepmann on questions of the prison system.

Weimar Republic

After her legal traineeship and assessor exams , she settled in 1928 as a lawyer in the Berlin workers' district of Wedding , where her husband, seven years older than her, Georg Benjamin , whom she married in 1926, was already working as a doctor. She left the SPD and followed her husband into the KPD . Benjamin taught alongside her work in the Marxist workers' school and was involved in the street cell , one of the basic organizations of the KPD. In 1929 she worked part-time on the central board of Red Aid Germany . As a lawyer in a running practice, she represented disputes, mostly divorce cases, rent disputes and libel suits, but also dismissal protection suits before the labor courts and criminal cases of workers due to strike participation. Her defense of the accused landlady in the dispute with the girlfriend and prostitute of the murdered National Socialist Horst Wessel attracted more attention .

Her husband Georg Benjamin was the brother of the writer and philosopher Walter Benjamin and the brother of her friend Dora Benjamin . Their son Michael was born in 1932 .

time of the nationalsocialism

After her husband was banned from working in 1933 and her husband was deported to the Sonnenburg concentration camp immediately after the fire in the Reichstag , Benjamin and her son moved unemployed to live with their parents in Dünther Strasse in Berlin-Steglitz . Any legal activity was forbidden to her in a so-called representation prohibition, which was signed by the later President of the People's Court and then State Secretary of the Prussian Ministry of Justice Roland Freisler . Shortly before Christmas 1933, her husband Georg was released. She managed to find work as a legal advisor to the Soviet trading company in Berlin.

From 1939 to 1945 she was conscripted in the clothing industry. Since her son was considered a Jewish mongrel according to the Nuremberg Race Laws , he was not allowed to attend higher school and was taught by his mother. Her husband was arrested again on May 14, 1936 and sentenced to six years imprisonment in Brandenburg for the translation of foreign press texts by the Berlin Court of Appeal for preparation for high treason . Your brother Walter Benjamin committed suicide in 1940 on the run from the Gestapo on the French-Spanish border suicide . Her husband died in Mauthausen concentration camp in 1942 . Her sister-in-law and childhood friend, Dora Benjamin, who had a doctorate in economics, died in Switzerland in 1946 .

SBZ and GDR

After the Second World War she worked in the Central Justice Department in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ). In 1946 she became a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). From 1949 to 1953 she was Vice-President of the Supreme Court of the GDR , from 1949 to 1967 a member of the People's Chamber and from 1954 to 1989 a member of the Central Committee of the SED . From 1953 to 1967 she was Justice Minister of the GDR.

June 17, 1953

During the popular uprising on June 17, 1953 , demonstrators chanted in chants calling for Benjamin to be removed and imprisoned. After Soviet tanks had stifled the uprising, Benjamin headed an operational staff from June 20 , which, in coordination with the Politburo of the SED, was responsible for monitoring all criminal proceedings in connection with June 17, 1953. Responsible were the criminal senates in the districts of the GDR , which were specially formed under Benjamin's guidance, including the public defenders of lawyers loyal to the SED .

After the uprising, the SED was “ purged ”: many party members representing moderate political views were removed from the SED (many of them were former SPD members and joined the SED as a result of the forced unification of the SPD and KPD ). The SED leadership accused some party functionaries and members of the People's Police of conciliatory and capitulant behavior. The Minister of Justice Max Fechner , who wanted to moderate the criminal justice system after June 17, was relieved of his position on July 14, 1953, excluded from the SED for “anti-party and subversive behavior” and after two years of pre-trial detention in 1955 to eight years in prison sentenced. Benjamin succeeded Fechner on July 15, 1953.

On May 6, 1955, Benjamin was awarded the Silver Patriotic Order of Merit .

After the wall was built in 1961

As a result of a second wave of de-Stalinization initiated by Khrushchev in October 1961 , Benjamin von Ulbricht was accused of "anti-progressive activities". Despite “corrections in principle” there are “still manifestations of dogmatism” in the GDR justice system . Benjamin struggled and warned that, as Der Spiegel snappy wrote in a comment, the "renunciation of Stalinist legal practices" would open the door to the Western class enemy . In 1962/63 there were some easing and reforms. On July 2, 1967, Ulbricht, to her complete surprise, forced her resignation as Justice Minister , ostensibly to rejuvenate the Council of Ministers . Minister of Justice then became Kurt Wünsche . In 1966, through interrogation of the blown CIA agent Gertrud Liebing , the Ministry of State Security learned that Benjamin belonged to a lesbian group.

Activity as a judge

With her concept of the so-called people's judges in the early GDR, Benjamin ensured that jurisdiction, albeit hesitantly and often open to attack, was still possible. She appealed to Andrei Januaryevich Wyschinski , public prosecutor of the Moscow show trials from 1936 to 1938: His speeches would convey “not only fundamental knowledge of the theory of the state and law, but also of state and legal practice”. Benjamin was initially involved in an advisory capacity in the Waldheim trials . She later chaired a total of 13 trials against members of the opposition , social democrats and others. These include the Solvay trial in Bernburg and the Dessau show trial of 1950. Unlike the Federal Republic of Germany, the GDR had not abolished the death penalty by then, and Benjamin imposed two sentences from 1949 to 1953, in addition to prison sentences totaling 550 years and 15 life sentences Death sentences (against Johann Burianek and Wolfgang Kaiser ). That is why it was also called the “Red Guillotine ”, “Rote Hilde” or “Bloody Hilde” in western magazines . In the GDR she was nicknamed Russian , because of her ponytail hairstyle typical for Russian women.

Constitutional and family lawyer

As head of the legislative commission at the State Council of the GDR, Benjamin wrote legal history in the GDR with the Courts Constitution Act, the Juvenile Court Act and the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1952. In 1963 she was chairman of the commission for the drafting of the new penal code . She has been campaigning for equal rights for women since the beginning of her career, for example as a co-founder of the Democratic Women's Association of the GDR . The first draft of a family law in 1965 was based on them, in which the equality of illegitimate children was to be established, the divorce and naming law reformed and the employment of women promoted.

In 1967, until the end of her life, she was head of the chair in the history of the administration of justice at the German Academy for Political Science and Law "Walter Ulbricht" in Potsdam-Babelsberg . According to Rainer Arlt , she was not allowed to teach students .

She campaigned for a further tightening of the political criminal law and the retention of the death penalty and was awarded many awards in the GDR: 1955 and 1962 with the Patriotic Order of Merit , 1967 with the honorary citizenship of the city of Bernburg , 1972 with the honor bar for the Patriotic Order of Merit, 1977 and In 1987 with the Karl Marx Order , in 1979 as Honored Lawyer of the GDR and in 1982 with the Star of Friendship of Nations . In 1952 she received an honorary doctorate from Humboldt University .

Her urn was buried with military honors in the Pergolenweg grave of the Socialist Memorial at Berlin's Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery after a state ceremony in which the members of the Politburo Egon Krenz , Erich Mielke and Alfred Neumann took part .

Grave of Hilde and Georg Benjamin in the central cemetery Friedrichsfelde in Berlin with their son Michael

Ratings

In 1994, the President of the Braunschweig Higher Regional Court, Rudolf Wassermann , equated Hilde Benjamin and Roland Freisler as "exponents of totalitarian justice". Roman Herzog said in his inaugural address as Federal President on July 1, 1994 on the question of the German nation: "You can't set off Hitler against Beethoven or Himmler against Robert Koch or Hilde Benjamin against the constitution and the rule of law." Benjamin is for the judicial murders of Erna Dorn , Manfred Smolka and Ernst Jennrich were responsible, whom she appointed as minister.

Fonts

  • Senior Public Prosecutor , Socialist Unity Party of Germany , seven-page candidate presentation for the 1946 elections
  • What does the SED's draft constitution mean for women? , Berlin, Neuer Weg publishing house, 1947
  • Proposals for the new German family law , Berlin, Deutscher Frauen-Verlag, 1949, library series of German women
  • The main tasks of the judiciary in the implementation of the new course: revised and supplemented shorthand of a speech given to officials of the judiciary on August 29, 1953 , Berlin, Deutscher Zentralverlag, 1953
  • Outline of the Criminal Procedure Law of the German Democratic Republic , Hilde Benjamin (co-author), Berlin, Deutscher Zentralverlag, 1953, 78 pages, Small series of the German Institute for Law
  • Karl Liebknecht on the nature and phenomena of class justice , Verlag Dt. Academy for Political Science and Law, Potsdam-Babelsberg, 1976, 112 pages
  • Georg Benjamin. A biography , Humanisten de Tat series , Leipzig, S. Hirzel Verlag, 1977, ISBN 3-7401-0105-9
  • From speeches and essays , Staatsverlag der DDR, Berlin 1982.
  • On the history of the administration of justice . 3 volumes, Staatsverlag der DDR, Berlin 1976-86 (as head of the collective of authors):
    • Vol. 1: 1945-1949 . 1976.
    • Vol. 2: 1949-1961 . 1980.
    • Vol. 3: 1961-1971 . 1986, ISBN 3-329-00047-3 .
    • Vol. 4 was worked out and should appear in 1990

literature

  • Uwe-Karsten Heye : The Benjamin: A German Family , Construction, Berlin, 2014, ISBN 978-3-351-03562-4 .
  • Bernd-Rainer Barth , Helmut Müller-Enbergs :  Benjamin, Hilde . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Heike Amos: Communist personnel policy in the judicial administration of the Soviet Zone / GDR (1945–1953). From the liberal legal expert Eugen Schiffer to the party functionary Max Fechner to the communist lawyer Hilde Benjamin . In: Gerd Bender: Law in Socialism. Analysis of norm enforcement in post-war Eastern European societies (1944 / 45–1989) . Klostermann, Frankfurt / M. 1999, ISBN 3-465-02797-3 , pp. 109-145.
  • Marianne Brentzel : The power woman. Hilde Benjamin 1902–1989 . Ch. Links, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-86153-139-9 , ( on Google Books ).
  • Andrea Feth: Hilde Benjamin - A biography . Verlag Spitz, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-87061-609-1 . ( Review ; PDF; 68 kB).
  • Andrea Feth: Hilde Benjamin (1902–1989) in: Neue Justiz online edition (PDF; 645 kB) Issue 2/2002, pp. 64–67.
  • Walter Janka : Difficulty with the truth. Essay. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-499-12731-8 , (this describes Benjamin's appearance at a show trial).
  • Holger Schlüter (Red.): Between right and wrong. CVs of German lawyers . Ministry of Justice NRW, Recklinghausen 2004, pp. 144–146.
  • Rolf Steding (Red.): An example of the unity of theory and practice. On the 85th birthday of Prof. Dr. sc. Dr. hc Hilde Benjamin . Academy of Sciences, Potsdam 1987 (Current contributions in political science and law; 345).
  • Heike Wagner: Hilde Benjamin and the Stalinization of the GDR justice system . Shaker, Aachen 1999, ISBN 3-8265-5855-3 , (also dissertation, Humboldt University 1999).

Movies

  • Hilde Benjamin - The executioner of the GDR. From the MDR's "History of Central Germany" series , 2013.

Web links

Commons : Hilde Benjamin  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rudi Beckert: The first and the last instance. Show and secret trials before the Supreme Court of the GDR , Keip Verlag, Goldbach 1995, ISBN 3-8051-0243-7 , p. 42
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Andrea Feth: Hilde Benjamin. 1902-1989. (Article) in the journal Neue Justiz , 2/2002 , p. 64 ff.
  3. ↑ a b c d Uwe-Karsten Heye: The Benjamin. A German Family , Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin, 2014, ISBN 978-3-351-03562-4 , 1st edition
  4. ↑ Volkmar Schöneburg: Hilde Benjamin - A biography in UTOPIE Kreativ No. 85/86, 1997, p. 114.
  5. ↑ Nikolaus Brauns: Difficult remembering - Germany's Red Aid in historiography
  6. ↑ Heinz Knobloch: Poor Epstein: How death came to Horst Wessel. Berlin 1996, pp. 9-48.
  7. ^ Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk: June 17, 1953 - popular uprising in the GDR . Edition Temmen, 2003, ISBN 978-3-86108-385-6 , p. 125
  8. ^ Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk: June 17, 1953 - popular uprising in the GDR . Edition Temmen, 2003, ISBN 978-3-86108-385-6 , pp. 248-250
  9. ↑ Hermann Josef Rupieper: "... and the most important thing is the unity". June 17, 1953 in the districts of Halle and Magdeburg. LIT, Münster 2003, p. 101.
  10. ↑ spiegel.de December 26, 1962: The good in people
  11. ^ Marianne Brentzel: Die Machtfrau: Hilde Benjamin, 1902-1989 , p. 330, p. 333. Brentzel cites (p. 332) as a possible reason party propriety: a representative of the bloc party LDPD should get a ministerial office.
  12. ↑ Reinhard Borgmann, Jochen Staadt: code name Markus. Spionage im ZK , Transit Buchverlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 978-3-88747-126-2 , p. 114.
  13. ↑ Reinhard Borgmann: Agent ring in the center of power: The CIA in the GDR. Kontraste , January 29, 1998, accessed March 26, 2015 .
  14. ↑ https://www.rosalux.de/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/81_2_Hedeler.pdf Wladislaw Hedeler: The scenarios of the Moscow show trials 1936 to 1938
  15. ↑ a b Professor Dr. Hilde Benjamin . Law Faculty of the Humboldt University of Berlin, AKJ 1/2004 (PDF; 358 kB).
  16. ↑ Why so mildly, comrades? , Berliner Zeitung for the 100th birthday, by Volker Müller, February 5, 2002
  17. ↑ The end justifies the means ( Memento from December 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  18. ↑ Marianne Brentzel: Die Machtfrau: Hilde Benjamin 1902-1989 . Links, Ch, December 17, 2013, ISBN 978-3-86284-251-3 , p. 381–.
  19. ^ Marianne Brentzel: The power woman. Hilde Benjamin 1902–1989 . Ch. Links, Berlin 1997. p. 335.
  20. ↑ According to information from the city of Bernburg on January 20, 2014, this honorary citizenship no longer exists.
  21. ↑ Report on Benjamin's funeral in Current Camera , April 27, 1989 ( online , report from 7:10 pm)
  22. ↑ Rudolf Wassermann :, Deutsche Richterzeitung. 1994, p. 285, quoted from Andrea Feth: Hilde Benjamin. 1902-1989. (Article) in the journal Neue Justiz , 2/2002 , p. 64 ff.
  23. ↑ http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/archiv/der-fall-erna-dorn--wie-eine-frau-zur--faschistische-raedelsfuehrerin--erklaert-und-nach-dem-17--juni -1953-was-the-six-lives-of-the-commanders-, 10810590,9139368.html
  24. ↑ Antonia Kleikamp: SED crime: the gardener was a "suitable victim". In: welt.de . March 19, 2014, accessed October 7, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Benjamin, Hilde
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lange, Hilde (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SED), MdV, Justice Minister of the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Bernburg
DATE OF DEATH April 18, 1989
Place of death East Berlin