Horst Hennig (General Physician)

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Horst Hennig

Horst Hennig (born May 28, 1926 in Siersleben ; † May 21, 2020 in Rondorf ) was a German medical officer. Since he and some fellow students at the Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg had stood up against student council elections by unified list in 1950 , he was arrested and sentenced to 25 years in the Gulag by the Soviet occupation authorities .

Life

With Günter Kießling , Hennig passed the entrance exam at the Army Officers' School in Dresden in April 1940. While Kießling (* 1925) stayed there, Hennig, who was younger than him, came to the NCO's pre-school in Marienberg in the Ore Mountains in November 1940 . On February 25, 1945 Hennig came in the room Bitburg in US captivity . On June 1, 1946, he came to Hamburg on the British hospital ship Aba . On March 8, 1948, he passed the final examination in Halle (Saale). For the summer semester 1948 enrolled him at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg for medicine. In the 4th pre-clinical semester he was arrested by the Soviet MWD on March 10, 1950 as a member of an opposition student group . He was denounced by Arno Linke , who later became Walter Ulbricht's personal physician . After two months, in May 1950, a two-day "trial" took place before a Soviet military tribunal in the Red Ox prison . Without a defense attorney and interpreter, Hennig and six other students were sentenced to 25 years of forced labor under Article 58 of the RSFSR's Criminal Code . Since Moscow also wanted a conviction for espionage , Hennig was convicted in September 1950 according to Art. 58-6.

Vorkuta

In 1950 he was deported to the Vorkuta labor camp and then came to the special camp of MWD No. 6 RetschLag . After Josef Stalin's death, the uprising of June 17, 1953 , the disempowerment of Lavrenti Beria and the Vorkuta uprising , the forced laborers demanded that the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union set up a commission of inquiry. Until their appearance, work in the coal pits was stopped. On August 1, 1953, Army General Ivan Ivanovich Maslennikov , a candidate for the Politburo and Deputy Minister Beria , appeared in Camp 10 of Shaft 29 . The detainees demanded to comply with their own laws and human rights, to review the inaccurate judgments and to release the foreigners. Maslennikov then had them shot. The result was 64 dead and 123 seriously injured. The shaft work had to be resumed. After Konrad Adenauer's intervention in Moscow, the prisoners of war and civilian prisoners were returned to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1955/56 .

Homecoming

Hennig reached (West) Berlin on December 15, 1955 . From the summer semester of 1956 he studied medicine again at the University of Cologne . After three semesters, he passed the Physikum in the summer semester of 1957 . He spent the first clinical semester at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg . When he was interested in gliding , he became a member of Akaflieg Freiburg . He met the requirements for the medical state examination as quickly as possible. He was allowed to submit a doctoral thesis under Wilhelm Tönnis and his senior physician Friedrich Loew during his studies. On May 8, 1961 he was promoted to Dr. med. PhD. He was a medical assistant in clinics in the city of Cologne , including with Hans Schulten . Approved on March 31, 1962 , he joined the Bundeswehr medical service on June 1, 1962 . Without the usual briefing at the medical academy of the Bundeswehr , he was assigned to the medical team of the Air Force Technical School 3 in Fassberg as a troop doctor . After the five-month probationary period, he was accepted as an active medical officer and was transferred to the Tactical Air Force Wing 71 "Richthofen" . In 1965 and 1971 he was at the United States Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine in San Antonio . He was deeply familiar with the Lockheed F-104 and its problems (also as a fellow pilot). In 1968 he was invited to Israel as one of the first Bundeswehr officers. After a few years with Jagdbombergeschwader 43 , in October 1973 he was appointed chief doctor in command of the Air Force medical school . On October 1, 1976, he was transferred to the Federal Ministry of Defense . As speaker II 1 he was responsible for the management, planning and deployment of the medical services of the Bundeswehr. After three years he came to the Air Force Office as chief medical officer . On October 1, 1980, he returned to the Ministry of Defense as physician-general and sub-department head. On March 28, 1983, State Secretary Joachim Hiehle said goodbye to his retirement.

Historical reports

with Dr. Demuth and Günter Kießling in front of the University of Halle (2009)

When he attended a military history symposium in Freiburg in September 1992, a delegation from the Russian Federation presented him with an invitation to the Russian State Military Archives (RGWA) in Podolsk . She was followed by two other generals a. D. With the access to the archive, Hennig wanted to find out the reasons for the arrest of the Halle students. From 1993 further visits to the archives in Moscow and Vorkuta were approved. With the help of the Military Prosecutor's Office in Moscow, the wrongly convicted were rehabilitated. From 1992, these contacts resulted in reports from contemporary witnesses in the media and book publications in the Leipzig University Press . He was able to view his trial documents in the NKVD archive in the Lubyanka . He was impressed by the "meticulous order, thoroughness and typography" of the files in the KGB headquarters. The General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation rehabilitated Hennig and his fellow students as early as the next month . In 1993 and 1995 he traveled to Moscow and Vorkuta with former Gulag prisoners. 1995 were among the companions Günter Kießling , Erwin Jöris , Horst Schüler , Reinhard Gramm , Wolfgang Schuller , Wilfriede Otto , Stefan Karner and Maren Köster-Hetzendorf . A memorial event in Vorkuta commemorated the suppression of the strike. The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge inaugurated a memorial for those shot and injured in the uprising of August 1, 1953. Hennig has been publishing contemporary witness reports in books, film and radio since 1992. With his partner, the pediatrician Dr. Eveline Demuth, he lived in Holzkirchen, Rondorf . He died a week before his 94th birthday. After the cremation, the urn was buried on June 27, 2020 in Klostermansfeld . The daughter Dr. Heike Hennig and the son Heinz Weißhaupt, Wladislaw Hedeler , André Gursky , Anna Kaminsky, Gerald Wiemers and Stefan Krikowski, spokesmen for the Vorkuta camp community.

Honorary positions

Works

  • 1994, 1995 and 1996 the Hall I to III forums, funded by the Federal Agency for Civic Education, published in the Germany Archive.
  • with Jan Foitzik (Ed.): Encounters in Vorkuta. Memories, testimonials, documents , 2nd, revised edition. Leipziger Universitätsverlag 2003, ISBN 978-3-936522-26-6 .
  • with Klaus P. Graffius: Between Bautzen and Vorkuta. Totalitarian tyranny and the consequences of imprisonment. Leipziger Universitätsverlag 2004. ISBN 978-3-937209-76-0 .
  • with Wladislaw Hedeler: Black pyramids, red slaves. The strike in Vorkuta in the summer of 1953 . Leipziger Universitätsverlag 2007 (reprint: Federal Agency for Civic Education Volume 686). ISBN 978-3-86583-177-4 .
  • with Sybille Gerstengarbe: Opposition, Resistance and Persecution at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg 1945–1961 - a documentation . Leipziger Universitätsverlag 2009. ISBN 978-3-86583-262-7 .
  • with A. Gursky and G. Wiemers: Documentation: from the KGB to the Stasi (Roter Ochse, Halle) . Font Roter Ochse Halle 2012
  • Gerald Wiemers (ed.) In collaboration with the Vorkuta / GULag camp community: The uprising. On the chronicle of the 1953 general strike in Vorkuta, camp 10, shaft 29. Leipziger Universitätsverlag 2013. ISBN 978-3-86583-780-6
  • with Gerald Wiemers: Sigurd Binski - a critic of dictatorships: memories and documents . Leipziger Universitätsverlag 2018. ISBN 978-3960231608 .

Honors

  • Badge of Senior Flight Surgeon United States Air Force (1975)
  • Decoration of Honor of the German Red Cross (1975)
  • Badge of Honor of the Johanniter Accident Aid (1976)
  • The Army Commendation Medal (1977)
  • Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class (September 8, 1982)
  • Badge of Chief Flight Surgeon United States Air Force (1984)
  • Saxon Order of Merit (by Stanislaw Tillich on June 1, 2016)

See also

literature

  • Jens Blecher and Gerald Wiemers: Student Resistance at Central German Universities 1945 to 1955. Leipziger Universitätsverlag 2005. ISBN 978-3-86583-008-1 .
  • Günther Wagenlehner : The Russian Efforts to Rehabilitate the German Citizens Persecuted 1941–1956: Documentation and Guide . Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Issue 29 (1999), p. 9. [1] .
  • Klaus – Dieter Müller, Jörg Osterloh: The other GDR. A student resistance group and their fate in the mirror of personal memories and Soviet NKVD documents (reports and studies by the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism 4), Dresden 1995, 118 p .; 2nd edition, 1996. ISBN 3-931648-03-6
  • Gerald Wiemers (ed.): Remembering as an obligation. Retired General Doctor Dr. med. Horst Hennig on his 85th birthday . Leipziger Universitätsverlag 2011. ISBN 978-3-86583-556-7 .
  • Gerald Wiemers (ed.): The early resistance in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany SBZ / GDR Leipziger Universitätsverlag 2012. ISBN 978-3-86583-652-6
  • Gerald Wiemers (ed.): Remembering instead of suppressing. Horst Hennig - Experiences in the dictatorships of the 20th century . Leipziger Universitätsverlag 2016. ISBN 978-3-96023-027-4 .

Web links

Commons : Horst Hennig (Generalarzt)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary notice in the FAZ on May 27, 2020
  2. ↑ Horst Hennig's curriculum vitae. In: Vorkuta - Biographies of German GULag prisoners. Retrieved May 30, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Note from the university on the departure: "15.6.1950 deleted due to non-re-registration for the summer semester 1950, according to Reg. Decree Az 6335."
  4. ^ Siberian coal mine in response to criticism . Mitteldeutsche Zeitung of April 27, 2010, p. 58
  5. ↑ Survival at minus 50 degrees only with a stable psyche. Exhibition - As a medical student in Halle, Horst Hennig was sentenced to forced labor in the Gulag Vorkuta in 1950 . Mitteldeutsche Zeitung from April 16, 2009
  6. ^ University of Halle
  7. ↑ Horst Hennig , biography in Memorial.de, online at: gulag.memorial.de / ...
  8. ^ Horst Hennig: As a forced laborer in the Soviet prison camp Vorkuta. Memories of a German inmate of the prisoners' strike of 1953 . Neue Zürcher Zeitung of November 5, 2003, p. 5
  9. ↑ Olive oil for the old man. 50 years ago, Adenauer brought almost 10,000 German prisoners from the Soviet Union. Two former Vorkuta prisoners remember . Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung from September 4, 2005
  10. ↑ Judgment: 25 years of forced labor. Federal Chancellor Adenauer obtained the release of the German prisoners in Moscow in 1955. Exactly 50 years ago the first large-scale transport arrived at the Friedland camp - Horst Hennig was among the returnees . Rheinische Post from October 5, 2005, D 10
  11. ↑ Dissertation: Follow-up results of surgically and conservatively treated myelomeningoceles and meningoceles .
  12. ↑ Come to terms with the past . Mitteldeutsche Zeitung of March 4, 1994
  13. ↑ Photo gallery - Image 11 - Forgotten Gulag uprising: The Vorkuta massacre. In: Spiegel Online photo gallery. August 1, 2013, accessed June 10, 2018 .
  14. ^ Günter Müller-Hellwig
  15. ^ Karl-Heinz Schlarp: Dresden - Moscow - Vorkuta. Journey into a dark past . Universitätsjournal 1/96, p. 3 (TU Dresden)
  16. ↑ Horst Hennig (workuta.de)
  17. ↑ Peter Mees: Saxon Order of Merit for General Physician retired Dr. Hennig . Military medical monthly . Volume 60, Issue 8, August 22, 2016, p. 263
personal data
SURNAME Hennig, Horst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German medical officer
DATE OF BIRTH May 28, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Siersleben
DATE OF DEATH May 21, 2020
Place of death Rondorf