Joseph Scholmer

Joseph Scholmer , actually Joseph Schölmerich (born August 19, 1913 in Obercasbach , Neuwied district , † April 1, 1995 in Bonn ) was a German medical doctor , socialist and non-fiction author . He was a victim of National Socialism and Stalinism .

Live and act

Joseph Schölmerich was born in 1913 in the municipality of Obercasbach, which was part of the Linz mayor's office . He became a member of the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD). Schölmerich studied medicine at the University of Bonn , where in 1933 he belonged to the Socialist Working Group (SAG), an opposition group against National Socialism close to the KPD , which was banned after Hitler came to power . Since the list of members was deposited with the rectorate and Schölmerich expected his arrest, he emigrated to Switzerland for a year in 1933 and continued his studies at the University of Basel . After completing his studies, he worked at the Institute for Radiology and Radiology at the University of Leipzig from 1940 . In August 1944, the Gestapo arrested him for belonging to the anti-fascist underground organization National Committee Free Germany . This was followed by a conviction by the People's Court and imprisonment in Plötzensee prison .

After the end of the Second World War , Schölmerich lived in the Soviet occupation zone (SBZ) and joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). After the forced unification of the SPD and KPD to form the SED , he became a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). He worked as director of the hospital in Döbeln and from October 1945 as ministerial director in the German central administration for the health system formed in the Soviet sector of Berlin . He resigned from the SED in 1948 in protest against the Stalinization of the Soviet occupation zone and the arrest of his superior Paul Konitzer .

In April 1949 Schölmerich was arrested by the Soviet Ministry for State Security (MGB) in East Berlin for his opposition to Stalinism and imprisoned in its central remand prison , the "U-Boot". Hopelessness and permanent sleep deprivation made him admit to being an American, English and a former Gestapo agent. A long-distance judgment of a special security conference (OSO) of the MGB in Moscow sentenced him to 25 years of forced labor for “ espionage ” and “ sabotage ” under Article 58 of the RSFSR's penal code . This was followed in July 1950 by deportation to the Vorkuta labor camp for underground coal mining.

In mid-December 1953 Schölmerich left Vorkuta on a prisoner transport train. The transport arrived on January 21, 1954 at the Fürstenwalde release camp in the GDR . Released from captivity , Schölmerich immediately fled to West Berlin , where he registered as a returnee . In April 1954 he married Ursula Rumin in Berlin , who had also been released from the Vorkuta labor camp.

In 1954, Schölmerich, who now called himself Joseph Scholmer , published under the title The dead return. Report of a doctor from Vorkuta from the publisher & Kiepenheuer Witsch the first eyewitness report of a German war prisoner about the Soviet labor camp system Gulag . In 1963 the book appeared again under the title Doctor in Vorkuta. Report from a Soviet prison camp . Both books achieved multiple editions and have been translated into different languages.

In 1955, Scholmer moved to his birthplace Kasbach am Rhein, from then on worked as a freelance author and journalist and was involved in the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF).

After the divorce from Ursula Rumin in 1959, Scholmer married for the third time in 1963 and started a family. Several GDR refugees lived in Kasbach and Linz am Rhein who were among Jo Scholmer's circle of friends, such as Wanda Bronska-Pampuch , Peter Jokostra , Wolfgang Leonhard , Herbert Kasten , Carola Stern , Hermann Weber and Ingrid and Gerhard Zwerenz . On Scholmers suggestion at that time the young began Ute Erb the novel The chain on your neck to write that while the kibbutz Gal'ed worked in 1960 in the Federal Republic appeared.

Scholmer joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and published as Joseph Scholmer and Jo Scholmer for Vorwärts , Deutsches Ärzteblatt and in the journal The Third Way , which appeared from 1959 to 1964. The magazine stood up for a democratic-socialist Germany and dealt critically with Adenauer's restoration policy in the Federal Republic and the GDR, which under Walter Ulbricht had frozen in the dogma of Marxism-Leninism . In 1970 he wrote some texts for Deutschlandfunk in Cologne. From 1971 to 1984 he wrote three critical books on the increasing commercialization of the health system in the Federal Republic of Germany and took part as a delegate of the SPD district of Rhineland-Hesse-Nassau at the federal party conference of the SPD in 1973 in Hanover.

A long-time good friend of Scholmer was the historian Hermann Weber, who visited him several times after the stroke , gave the funeral oration on April 6, 1995 and mentioned life according to the “left principle” in the book .

Fonts

• The dead return. Report from a doctor from Vorkuta . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1954.
• Doctor in Vorkuta. Report from a Soviet prison camp . Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1963.
• with Winfried Ridder: The DKP. Program and policy . Published by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation . Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, Bonn-Bad Godesberg 1970.
• The disease of medicine . Luchterhand, Neuwied 1971.
• Patient and profit medicine. The health system in the Federal Republic between crisis and reform . Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1973, ISBN 3-531-11237-6 .
• The business of illness. A balance sheet of our health system since 1970 . Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 1984, ISBN 3-462-01651-2 .
• One of the "easier" cases. The doctor Joseph Scholmer reports from his work in the resistance. In: Democratic Health Care. Volume 3, 1986, p. 14 f.

Texts for Deutschlandfunk

• After the liberation. German comrades and Soviet occupying power . Deutschlandfunk, Cologne 1970.
• The second "I" from Karl Marx. Friedrich Engels died 75 years ago . Deutschlandfunk, Cologne, 1970.
• The owners of a dacha. Notes on Soviet Society . Deutschlandfunk, Cologne 1970.

posthumously :

• with Ursula Rumin : Naughty boys and bad boys. Adolescent years on the Rhine . Triga-der Verlag, Gründau-Rothenbergen 2010, ISBN 978-3-89774-764-7 .

literature

• Joseph Schölmerich. In: Hermann Weber , Gerda Weber: Life according to the “left principle” . Christoph Links Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-86153-405-3 , pp. 341–342 and 441–442. (on-line)
• Ralf Forsbach : The Medical Faculty of the University of Bonn in the “Third Reich” . R. Oldenbourg, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-486-57989-5 , p. 599.
• Wladislaw Hedeler , Horst Hennig (eds.): Black pyramids, red slaves. The strike in Vorkuta in the summer of 1953. A documented chronicle . Leipziger Universitäts-Verlag, Leipzig 2007, ISBN 978-3-86583-177-4 , pp. 49, 68, 73, 96, 138, 140, 205, 227, 276.
• Gudrun Hentges : State and political education. From the “ Central Office for Homeland Service ” to the “ Federal Center for Political Education ” . With a foreword by Christoph Butterwegge , Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2013, ISBN 978-3-531-18670-2 , pp. 364, 369, 388-393, 399.
• Gerhard Naser: General Practitioners in the GDR. Relics of Capitalism or Competition for Polyclinics? Eppe, Bergatreute 2000, ISBN 3-89089-603-0 , p. 64.
• Andreas Petersen : Your snout will freeze over in Siberia. A dictation of the century. Erwin Jöris . Marixverlag Wiesbaden 2012, ISBN 978-3-86539-284-8 , p. 454.
• Gerd Laudert: The red doctor. Doctor, communist, anti-Stalinist, author - Joseph Schölmerich (1913–1995). Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-86331-494-1 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Joseph Scholmer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Joseph Scholmer, curriculum vitae. In: Website Workuta.de. Retrieved June 13, 2015 . 
• Biography Joseph Scholmer. In: Website of Memorial / Germany. Retrieved June 13, 2015 . 
• Scholmer, Joseph. In: Bibliography portal on the history of East Central Europe of the Herder Institute . Retrieved June 13, 2015 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ralf Forsbach: The medical faculty of the University of Bonn in the "Third Reich". Oldenbourg, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-486-57989-5 , p. 598 f.
2. ^ Text excerpt from: Joseph Scholmer: Doctor in Vorkuta published by the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial ( Memento from June 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) . Report from a Soviet prison camp . Munich 1963, pp. 15-24.
3. ↑ An OSO was a quasi-judicial administrative instrument under the aegis of the MGB, which, according to the secret police files, passed judgments without hearing the person concerned if the investigative body could not use any evidence, "although the guilt [of the arrested person] is undoubted". See Andreas Hilger, Mike Schmeitzner and Ute Schmidt (eds.): Soviet military tribunals. Volume 2: The conviction of German civilians 1945–1955 (= writings of the Hannah Arendt Institute 17). Böhlau, Köln / Weimar / Wien 2003, ISBN 3-412-06801-2 , on OSO p. 61 f., 111 ff., On Scholmer p. 280, 653.
4. ↑ Joseph Scholmer: Doctor in Vorkuta. (No longer available online.) German Contemporary History, July 8, 2012, archived from the original on June 10, 2015 ; accessed on June 10, 2015 . 
5. ↑ Ute Erb - biography. Grazer Authors Author Assembly (GAV), 2006, accessed on June 11, 2015 .