Hildegard Damerius

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Hildegard Damerius , née Hildegard Fehlig , married Hildegard Heinze (born January 29, 1910 in Duisburg ; † May 3, 2006 in Berlin ) was a German lawyer and politician of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). From 1949 to 1954 she was a member of the German People's Council and a member of the People's Chamber , where she chaired the Petitions Committee . As an employee of the public prosecutor's office in the GDR, she was involved in the Waldheim trials .

Life

Fehlig's father was a businessman and until 1944 director of Thyssen AG in Leipzig . In 1921 the family also moved to Leipzig and Fehlig attended elementary school and the lyceum there , which she graduated from high school in 1929 . Until 1934 she studied law at the universities of Leipzig , Heidelberg and Marburg and received her doctorate in 1938 after a legal traineeship in the Saxon Ministry of Justice . In order to properly complete her judicial training, Fehlig was also a member of the NSRB , the NSV and the DAF . However , she did not join the NSDAP .

1936 to 1945 in the communist resistance

During her legal clerkship in 1936, Fehlig met her future husband Wolfgang Heinze , whom she married in 1939. Hildegard Heinze characterized her husband in a résumé from 1951 as a clear Marxist-Leninist who had a great deal of theoretical knowledge and practical and political experience. After the wedding, Heinze was employed as an employee at the Leipzig employment office, where she worked until she was arrested in 1944. Her husband worked as a company lawyer in the management of the Leipzig Köllmann works. Through his relationship with her husband, Heinze came into contact with communism and was connected to the resistance group around Georg Schumann . On August 3, 1944, she and her husband were arrested after the resistance group was blown up. Although Heinze had tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to dissuade her husband from his work, she was sentenced by the People's Court in November 1944 to a two-year prison sentence for failing to report a high-level and provincial plan and a radio crime, which she served in Dresden and Leipzig-Meusdorf . Heinze's husband, however, was sentenced to death on November 24, 1944 and executed on January 12, 1945.

1945 to 1948 promotion to the SED

After being released from her imprisonment in Leipzig, Heinze became a member of the KPD on July 1, 1945 and resumed her work at the Leipzig employment office, this time with the rank of government councilor. In September 1945 Heinze moved to Dresden to the state administration of Saxony , which was just being undesigned at that time. Heinze first came into the work area of ​​the Vice President for Economy and Labor, Fritz Selbmann , where she headed the social welfare department. In 1946 Heinze was appointed head of the Saxon State Labor Office, which she headed until the spring of 1948.

As part of a major restructuring of the German Central Administration of Justice (DJV) in the spring / summer of 1948, which ultimately led to the resignation of the former President Eugen Schiffer , Hildegard Heinze was already informed on April 28, 1948 in a letter from Max Fechner and Walter Ulbricht proposed to the Central Secretariat of the SED to appoint her as head of the control department of the courts and public prosecutors of the DJV. This appointment was also confirmed in the meeting of the Central Secretariat of the SED on June 21, 1948 and enforced on August 14, 1948 by instructions from the SMAD . By then, Heinze had already made a name for herself across the region by being elected to the 1st German People's Council in March 1948, where she became a member of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs.

From 1948 to 1952 worked in the judiciary

After a structural reform, which took place on the instructions of the German Economic Commission (DWK) in autumn 1948, the 7 departments within the DJV were now divided into 4 departments. Heinze now headed Main Department II, responsible for controls and the penal system, while she continued to be directly responsible for controls and statistics. Even after the DVJ was transferred to a regular Ministry of Justice in October 1949, Heinze initially remained head of the main department, now for the area of ​​justice. In this function, she represented the Ministry of Justice at the Waldheim trials from May to July 1950 as an instructor. Among other things, she was a member of a commission that had to give its consent before the verdict was pronounced if the verdict was to be for less than 5 years' imprisonment. From September 1950 Heinze was seconded to the Supreme Public Prosecutor's Office, from January 1, 1951, she switched to this law enforcement agency as planned. However, the move to the Supreme Prosecutor's Office was preceded by a solid political argument. Knowing her role in the Waldheim trials, the then CDU chairman Otto Nuschke protested vigorously against Heinze's move to the public prosecutor's office. At the instigation of his party friend Helmut Brandt , who was State Secretary in the Ministry of Justice at the time, he sought a review of the Waldheim judgments. The protest went unheard, however, and as a result, Heinze's change was confirmed at the meeting of the provisional GDR government on August 31, 1950. Helmut Brandt, however, was even arrested and sentenced for his insistence. Hildegard Heinze developed past the actual HR manager into the driving force with regard to HR policy in the Supreme Public Prosecutor's Office and played a key role in the establishment of this authority until she was transferred. With her organizational talent, she kept her back free for Attorney General Ernst Melsheimer, who was described as a desk person , for example by using the contacts she had made during her time at the DJV or the Ministry of Justice and the Waldheim trials. Among other things, she organized the transfer of Josef Streit , who later became the Attorney General, from the Ministry of Justice to her authority. In September 1951 she was therefore appointed Deputy Attorney General. However, due to a party review in the spring of 1952, in which the MfS was also involved, some public prosecutors had to leave the Supreme Public Prosecutor's Office because of various misconduct. In this context, Hildegard Heinze was also attested to having carried out a technical and political work that had not always influenced the Public Prosecutor in a positive way.

1952 until the end of his life

She then started working for the Ministry of Labor in May 1952. At the government meeting of November 27, 1952, she was appointed Head of Department in the Labor Department with effect from May 1, 1952. Heinze carried out this activity even after the dissolution of the Ministry of Labor, now in the Committee for Labor and Wages. At the end of the 1950s, Heinze met Helmut Damerius , who had returned from Soviet custody , and whom she married in 1959. This brought Heinze into contact with the arrests and convictions of German communists in the context of the Great Terror . She then worked for the State Planning Commission until 1964 and received a so-called VdN pension in 1964 at the age of 54 .

After the turning point and the peaceful revolution in the GDR , an investigation was conducted against Damerius from 1992 to 1994 because of her involvement in the Waldheim trial, which was discontinued.

MPs

Heinze was a member of the 1st and 2nd German People's Council from 1948 to 1949, where she was a member of the constitutional committee. In 1949 and 1950 she was a member of the SED in the Provisional People's Chamber. From 1950 to 1954, Heinze was a member of the People's Chamber as a member of the VVN and chairman of the Petitions Committee.

Honors

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Hermann Wentker: Justice in the Soviet Zone / GDR 1945–1953. Transformation and role of their central institutions. (= Sources and representations on contemporary history. Volume 51). Oldenbourg, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-486-56544-3 . P. 252
  2. ^ Hermann Wentker: Justice in the Soviet Occupation Zone / GDR 1945–1953. Transformation and role of their central institutions. (= Sources and representations on contemporary history. Volume 51). Oldenbourg, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-486-56544-3 . P. 255
  3. ↑ Neue Zeit of April 17, 1948 p. 1
  4. ^ Hermann Wentker: Justice in the Soviet Occupation Zone / GDR 1945–1953. Transformation and role of their central institutions. (= Sources and representations on contemporary history. Volume 51). Oldenbourg, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-486-56544-3 . P. 262
  5. ↑ Gertrud Milke: Mr. Senior Public Prosecutor, the special case ... In: Der Spiegel . No. 47 , 1950 ( online - Nov. 22, 1950 ).
  6. ^ Hermann Wentker: Justice in the Soviet Occupation Zone / GDR 1945–1953. Transformation and role of their central institutions. (= Sources and representations on contemporary history. Volume 51). Oldenbourg, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-486-56544-3 . P. 276
  7. ^ Hermann Wentker: Justice in the Soviet Occupation Zone / GDR 1945–1953. Transformation and role of their central institutions. (= Sources and representations on contemporary history. Volume 51). Oldenbourg, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-486-56544-3 . P. 458
  8. ↑ Boris Burghardt u. a .: Right flexion, part 2 , Walter de Gruyter, 2007 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  9. ↑ Shuttle services: Our Otto . In: Der Spiegel . No. 32 , 1948 ( online - Aug. 7, 1948 ).
  10. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of May 7, 1965 p. 4
personal data
SURNAME Damerius, Hildegard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fehling, Hildegard (maiden name); Heinze, Hildegard (married name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and politician (SED), member of the People's Chamber of the GDR
DATE OF BIRTH January 29, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Duisburg
DATE OF DEATH May 3, 2006
Place of death Berlin