Celle correctional facility

Gate building of the "institute" built between 1710 and 1724
Information about the institution
Surname	Celle correctional facility
Detention places	460
Employee	320

JVA Celle (watchtower)

The Celle correctional facility ( JVA Celle for short ) is the correctional facility with the highest security level in Lower Saxony and a so-called high - security prison .

Factual and local jurisdiction

Prison wall seen from the opposite bank of the Aller

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In the JVA Celle all male adult prisoners are central to all of Lower Saxony instructed, in its judgment on life imprisonment or a term of imprisonment was recognized by more than 14 years, or against whom preventive detention was ordered. In addition, there is an enforcement agreement with the federal state of Bremen , according to which Bremen prisoners with a life sentence or preventive detention are housed in the Celle prison. Convicts with prison sentences of up to 14 years have not been assigned to the Celle prison since the entry and enforcement plan of the State of Lower Saxony came into force on July 31, 2007. Before this briefing and enforcement plan came into effect on the occasion of the completion of the Rosdorf correctional facility (near Göttingen ) as the last of the three new prison buildings in Lower Saxony (JVA Oldenburg , Sehnde , Rosdorf ), the JVA Celle was responsible for the execution of custodial sentences from 10 years. The currently applicable instruction and enforcement plan for Lower Saxony dates from January 1, 2010.

Organizationally, the JVA Celle was affiliated with the Salinenmoor correctional facility (JVA Celle, Dept. Salinenmoor), in which shorter prison sentences were carried out and open execution was also practiced. Salinenmoor has been closed since 2014.

Since the beginning of 2013 is no longer the JVA Celle central to the preventive detention was responsible in Lower Saxony, but the JVA Rosdorf, newly built on the grounds a guest house for security detention.

Occupancy

The JVA Celle has 460 detention places (main institution 236, the Salinenmoor department 224) (as of February 1, 2010) and with 320 employees in prison, social and works services, it has the best numerical ratio between prisoners and employees of all prisons in Lower Saxony.

history

The "Werck-, Zucht- and Tollhaus" (1748)

The "Werck-, Zucht- und Tollhaus" around 1800

Chur-Hanover coat of arms in the courtyard

The “ Zuchthaus ” in Celle , as it is called in colloquial language to this day, is considered to be the oldest prison in Germany that is still in function. Here, over three centuries, all the important phases of modern penal systems can be seen conceptually and structurally. They range from the “penitentiary” of the early 18th century to the “high security wing” of the late 20th century. This can also be seen from the frequent name changes, around ten times in total.

The prison was built between 1710 and 1724 as a "Werck-, Zucht- und Tollhaus". It was built in the French style by Johann Caspar Borchmann , the chief architect of Duke Georg Wilhelm . At that time the institution was still outside the city in the Westceller suburb. It was founded in order not to leave the prisoners to their fate, but to educate them. However, this central idea was not included in the Latin saying above the gate entrance "Puniendis facinorosis custodiendia furiosis et mente captis publico sumptu dicata domus" (house built from public funds to punish evildoers , to guard the mad and mentally ill). The idea of ​​upbringing was an idea that was first implemented in Holland ( Rasphuis Amsterdam). At that time the very different prisoners were still housed together in halls.

In the historic inner courtyard of the building complex you will find the Chur-Hanover coat of arms with the slogan of the Order of the Garter “ Honi soit qui mal y pense ” (a rascal who thinks evil) and the motto of the English crown “ Dieu et mon droit ” (for God and my right). At the start of construction (1710), Georg I Ludwig , Knight of the Order of the Garter and later King of Great Britain, ruled . In 1833 all the mentally ill were transferred from the house to Hildesheim and the lawyer Georg Friedrich König from Osterode was brought in for freedom of expression. At the end of the 19th century, the facility was expanded to become a cell prison, the "isolation cell wing", a structure that is still valid today. Towards the end of the Weimar Republic it became a Prussian “reform prison” under the director Fritz Kleist. New features included gymnastics, a radio room and readings for the prisoners, as well as a museum. That is why the citizens of Celle gave the prison the nickname “Café Kleist”.

From 1934, as during the time of the Kingdom of Hanover and the Empire, political prisoners were taken into custody, including the Celle KPD chairman Otto Elsner and workers of the Hanomag resistance group . One of the prison director in the era of National Socialism was Otto Marloh . At the end of the Second World War , a total of 228 prisoners died between January and the British invasion on April 15, 1945 as a result of the poor conditions of the overcrowded prison. The dead were not buried in cemeteries but buried on the prison grounds. After the Second World War, the prison was renamed several times, first to "Prison", then to "Prison", and in 1972 finally to "Prison". At this time, the new concrete outer wall and a highly secured special wing for prisoners of the Red Army faction were built . The installation of a modern staircase in the late 1990s was the last major structural intervention.

Known incidents

Historic courtyard

Historic gate tower at the entrance

On 21 May 1984, took prisoner Peter Strüdinger and Norman Kowollik with homemade firearms a prison officials hostage and forced to flee with a BMW and 300,000 Deutschmark ransom. They could be arrested again the next day in Bremen because their escape vehicle was equipped with a tracking device.

On October 21, 1991, four inmates overpowered three prison officers with the help of weapons they had made themselves and put explosive ruffs on them. The perpetrators left the prison with an escape car and a ransom of two million Deutschmarks. The next day the police announced the identity of the refugees: They were Bruno Reckert, Samir El-Atrache, Ivan Jelinic and Dirk Dettmar, who was classified as "extremely dangerous" . After several car thefts and hostage-taking, the four perpetrators were arrested again two days later; El-Atrache and Reckert were picked up in Karlsruhe without resistance , Jelinic and Dettmar after an exchange of fire in Ettlingen .

On May 21, 1995, Peter Strüdinger managed to escape again. With his fellow inmate Günther Finneisen, he again took a prison officer hostage and again forced the prisoners to flee. This time he escaped with a Porsche and a ransom of 200,000 D-Marks. Only after 51 hours did the police manage to arrest the two escaped in Osnabrück again. Finneisen was then placed in solitary confinement, in which he was for more than 16 years. Criminologists and individual politicians rate the case as inhumane and as "torture".

On February 26, 1996 , an inmate incarcerated for murder and rape handcuffed , gagged and raped his 48-year-old social worker during a consultation in the Salinenmoor department. The perpetrator, armed with a knife and scissors, threatened to kill the woman afterwards, which is why the prison director Katharina Bennefeld-Kersten offered herself as a substitute hostage and was able to persuade the perpetrator to release the workers. He mistreated her in the same way before demanding a getaway car and ransom. Only after four and a half hours could the perpetrator be persuaded to give up. The officers found another 20 knives in the prisoner's cell, who had already been placed in preventive detention.

In January 2008, a prisoner was sexually abused by two cell mates in the Salinenmoor department, and the victim suffered life-threatening injuries. In January 2011 another inmate complained of sexual assault, which, however, could not be proven.

Known prisoners

• Paul Arndt
• Hermann Cornelius
• Olaf Däter
• Sigurd Debus
• Karl-Heinz Dellwo
• Dirk Dettmar
• Burkhard Driest
• Knut Folkerts
• Irma Grese
• Rudi Goguel
• Claus Heim
• Dietmar Jüschke
• Hans Leuss
• Rudolf Pleil
• Bernhard Rakers
• Ronny Rieken
• Thomas Rung
• Hans Günther Hermann Stumpe
• Peter Strüdinger
• Lutz Taufer
• Karl Tuttas
• Ferenc Sós

Political affair about the Celler Loch

→ Main article : Celler Loch

On July 25, 1978, the Celle prison was the scene of an explosives attack staged by the Lower Saxony constitutional protection agency in cooperation with the GSG 9 , which went down in history under the name of Celler Loch . With the action, an undercover agent of the protection of the constitution was supposed to be smuggled into this association via the members of the left-wing terrorist group RAF imprisoned in Celle . However, the plan to officially hold the left-wing extremist scene responsible for the attack failed. The affair became public in 1986 through press research and brought the then Lower Saxony interior minister , Wilfried Hasselmann , into distress.

literature

• Bernd Polster, RWLE Möller : The permanent house. History of a penal factory. Berlin 1984.
• Katharina Bennefeld-Kersten: The hostage. A prison director under the control of the prisoner. Hamburg 1998.
• Rainer Hoffschildt : Statistical data on homosexual prisoners in the Celle prison 1938–1945. In: Herbert Diercks (Red.): Persecution of Homosexuals in National Socialism (= contributions to the history of National Socialist persecution in Northern Germany. Issue 5), Edition Temmen, Bremen 1999, ISBN 3-86108-738-3 , pp. 70-76 ( Table of contents ).
• Bernd Polster, RWLE Möller: Celler houses. The penitentiary. In: Celle. The city book. Bonn 2003, pp. 256-257.
• Matthias Blazek: The beginnings of the Celle State Stud and the Celle Penitentiary as well as other institutions in the Electorate and Kingdom of Hanover 1692–1866. Ibidem, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-8382-0247-1 .

Web links

Commons : JVA Celle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Homepage of the JVA Celle
• Drawing of the royal prison in Celle, 1881 (bird's eye view) on Kulturerbe.niedersachsen.de

Individual evidence

1. ^ The former Salinenmoor department website of the Celle prison
2. ↑ Rosdorf for those in safe custody at nrd.de from May 24, 2013 .
3. ↑ 15 years of solitary confinement , in: taz of March 2, 2011 .
4. ↑ Prisoner released from isolation , in taz of May 27, 2011 .
5. ↑ Sabine Rückert: "I felt strong". In: The time. April 25, 2014. Retrieved April 25, 2014 . 
6. ^ Co- inmate raped and tortured , report on Focus.de from March 19, 2008, accessed on June 4, 2014.
7. ↑ Michael Ende: JVA Salinenmoor: inmate complains about sex attacks ( memento of the original from June 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Article on cellesche-zeitung.de from January 14, 2011, accessed on June 4, 2014. 

Coordinates: 52 ° 37 '23 "  N , 10 ° 3' 59"  E