Karli Bandelow

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Karli Julius Willy Bandelow (* 8. September 1905 in Magdeburg , † 11. November 1954 in Dresden ) was in 1954 as the main defendant of a GDR - show trial , the so-called Gehlen process , in East Berlin for espionage in court and was charged with " war and incitement to boycott ”sentenced to death and executed.

Life

Bandelow worked as an engineer and chief engineer in Magdeburg from 1927 to 1942 until he was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1942 . In May 1945 he was captured by the Americans in Austria. After his release, Bandelow returned to Magdeburg in June 1945 and resumed his work as a senior engineer . In the autumn of 1949 he was hired as a consultant for the state government of Saxony-Anhalt in the Ministry of Transport, Road Department. In November 1950 he was dismissed without notice for "violating plan discipline". Then he got a new job as a consultant, later as the main consultant in the State Secretariat for Motor Transport and Roads.

Bandelow had been a member of the SED since 1946 . He was also a member of the Society for German-Soviet Friendship and the FDGB .

Arrest and preliminary investigation

Bandelow was arrested on August 2, 1954 as part of the State Security's "Pfeil" campaign. In this large-scale operation, over 500 people were arrested, the majority of whom were alleged agents of Western intelligence services. The arrest was reported on September 1st in the SED central organ Neues Deutschland . A report of the confession can be found on September 28th.

The trial, to which representatives of Western media were invited, was directed against seven alleged agents of the Gehlen organization . Bandelow was accused of providing the Gehlen organization with minutes of meetings of his department, economic plans and more than 100 photographs of maps and plans a month showing the load-bearing capacity of bridges. In court, Bandelow stated that he had worked for the Gehlen organization for financial reasons, as he had to maintain two households. He ran a household with the co-defendant Käthe Dorn and the others with his wife and three children. On November 9, 1954, the said Supreme Court of the GDR , the death sentence against him and the co-defendants Ewald Misera .

During the negotiation and in the SED press, special emphasis was placed on the "General Order for All", an alleged secret instruction from the Gehlen organization with instructions on how to behave in the event of war, which is said to have been found as a microfilm in the apartment of Bandelow's wife in a light switch .

Bandelow's death sentence was carried out less than two days later, on November 11, 1954 at 4:15 a.m. in Dresden. Not even his public defender, Friedrich Wolff, was informed of the execution date, and four days later he made a petition for clemency to President Wilhelm Pieck . A pardon was evidently ruled out from the outset and a rejection of a corresponding request had already been administratively prepared.

Acquittal after the end of the SED dictatorship

The judgment was overturned on March 4, 1992 by the Court of Cassation of the Berlin Regional Court because it was based on “a serious violation of the law”, because at the time of the conviction there was no criminal liability for espionage in the GDR territory and the use of the article 6 of the GDR Constitution and Control Council Directive 38 represented an analogy that is prohibited in criminal law . Everyone involved in the process was acquitted.

family

Bandelow was married. His son was the German mathematician Christoph Bandelow , who died in 2011 and became known for his books on Rubik's Cube , among other things . His grandson Nils C. Bandelow is head of the Chair for Domestic Policy at the TU Braunschweig .

literature

  • Karl Wilhelm Fricke , Roger Engelmann : "Concentrated blows". State security campaigns and political trials in the GDR 1953–1956. Ch. Links, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-86153-147-X , pp. 130-138 ( Cold war and espionage - the case of Karli Bandelow, Ewald Misera and others ).
  • Richard J. Evans : Rituals of Retribution: The Death Penalty in German History 1532–1987. 1st edition, Kindler, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-463-40400-1 , pp. 995 ff. ( Espionage, Sabotage, “Diversion”: The aftermath of June 17th ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Klug: irreversible judgment. The death penalty. July 12, 2006, accessed May 22, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Jefferson Adams: Historical Dictionary of German Intelligence. Scarecrow Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8108-6320-0 , p. 18 .
  3. ^ Jens Gieseke: The History of the Stasi. Berghahn Books, 2014, ISBN 978-1-78238-255-3 p. 172 .
  4. ↑ Bernd Stöver: Liberation from communism. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, Weimar, 2002, ISBN 978-3-412-03002-5 p.257 .
  5. ↑ a b Judgment of the Supreme Court of the German Democratic Republic of November 9, 1954 . Supplement to Neue Justiz , issue 22/1954, p. 4 f.
  6. ^ "Dead letter boxes" for war preparation - Further evidence denounces the crimes of the Gehlen Organization , Neues Deutschland No. 204 of September 1, 1954, p. 6.
  7. ↑ Secret documents and statements of arrested agents prove: Gehlen saddles the horses for the Ostlandritt , Neues Deutschland No. 227 of September 28, 1954, p. 2.
  8. ↑ a b The Age : Gave East German Secrets to West . 4th November 1954
  9. ^ Judgment of the Supreme Court of the German Democratic Republic of November 9, 1954 . Supplement to Neue Justiz , issue 22/1954, p. 5.
  10. ^ A b Karl Wilhelm Fricke, Roger Engelmann: "Concentrated blows". State Security Actions and Political Processes , Berlin 1998, pp. 130–138 .
  11. ↑ An outrageous document: "Sparks: How did our bombs hit?" , Neues Deutschland No. 201 of August 28, 1954, p. 3.
  12. ^ Karl Wilhelm Fricke, Roger Engelmann: "Concentrated blows". State security actions and political processes in the GDR 1953–1956 , Berlin 1998, p. 137 f.
  13. ^ Karl Wilhelm Fricke, Roger Engelmann: "Concentrated blows". State security campaigns and political trials in the GDR 1953–1956. Berlin 1998, p. 133.
personal data
SURNAME Bandelow, Karli
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bandelow, Karli Julius Willy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German victim of a GDR show trial
DATE OF BIRTH September 8, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Magdeburg
DATE OF DEATH November 11, 1954
Place of death Dresden