Kurt Grünbaum

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Robert Carl Eduard Kurt Grünbaum (born April 5, 1892 in Storkow , † April 9, 1982 in Prerow ) was a German lawyer and consistorial president in the former Evangelical Church of the Church Province of Saxony.

Life

He was born as the son of the Storkow doctor Ernst Grünbaum (* 1853; † 1934) and his wife Hedwig (* 1859; † 1938), and grew up with two sisters in the small town of Brandenburg . The higher education took place through the knight academy in Brandenburg an der Havel, where he obtained the general university entrance qualification in 1911. Immediately after graduating from high school, he studied political science and law at the universities of Heidelberg and Kiel . He passed the first state examination in law, which was shortened due to the war, in August 1914 and then took part in the First World War as a volunteer . He was dismissed from military service as a lieutenant in the reserve in 1918 and was awarded the Iron Cross EK I and EK II . The second state examination he insisted upon completion of the training period in Storkow and Berlin in 1921 and was briefly as Gerichtsassessor operates. From January 1922 to May 1925 he worked as a lawyer in Berlin for a related lawyer, the Justizrat Carl Mengel, who was married to the sister Anna of his father Ernst Grünbaum. Like the lawyer Mengel, Grünbaum was admitted to the three Berlin regional courts at the time. The joint law firm was located at Potsdamer Strasse 90, where Grünbaum also lived with his young family. In addition to his work as a lawyer, Grünbaum took a position as a legal assistant in the Consistory of the Mark Brandenburg in 1923 and then worked there full-time from April 1925 as the newly appointed consistorial councilor. In March 1926 he was initially employed as a temporary employee in the Ministry of Science, Art and Public Education and from April 1, 1928 he was civil servant in the “clerical department”.

Employment in the Nazi state

By the time of National Socialism went by the "Reich and Prussian Ministry of the Interior" and processed by the "Reich and Prussian Ministry of Science, Education and Popular Culture" ecclesiastical matters to a 1935 newly created Ministry of the Reich Church Ministry , over and thus became the Ministerialbeamte Grünbaum taken over. He worked in this Reich Ministry for Church Affairs from mid-1935 under Hanns Kerrl (1887–1941) and Hermann Muhs (1894–1962), without being or becoming a member of the NSDAP because of his family origins. However, he was a member of the Reichsbund der Deutschen Officials and joined the NS-Volkswohlfahrt . He met conspiratorially with leading Protestant and Catholic personalities, in particular with Otto Dibelius and Heinrich Wienken, for discussions. Because of the war in 1943. Green tree workspace along with a special staff of the Reich Church Ministry in the Wittenberg relocated to a building of the Evangelical Theological Seminary. In the final phase of the Second World War, on February 23, 1945, Grünbaum was drafted into the Volkssturm as a simple Volkssturm man, although he had served as an officer in the First World War. On March 23, 1945, the evangelical Christian who had been baptized for generations, was released early because of his Jewish grandfather Eduard Grünbaum (1814–1883), a doctor.

Reorientation after the end of the war in 1945

For the province of Mark Brandenburg created on July 9, 1945 under Prime Minister Karl Steinhoff (SPD / SED), Grünbaum was initially appointed to the senior government council and later to government director. On a full-time basis, he initially worked on the reorganization of church affairs, as commissioned. And then he worked under the 4th Vice President Franz Schleusener (CDU) on the regulation of asset and debt management. Other tasks for Grünbaum in the Brandenburg Ministry of Finance of the Provincial Administration under Minister Walther Kunze ( LDP ) and in the Ministry for National Education, Science and Art under Minister Fritz Rücker (SPD / SED) included clarifying church matters with the government. Grünbaum arranged for the former garrison church in Potsdam , which had belonged to the Prussian state since 1918, to fall to the state of Brandenburg in 1947 after the adoption of the Control Council Act No. 46 for the dissolution of the State of Prussia, and was declared as church property by a land register entry on April 30, 1947 . From 1950 to 1968 the tower of the garrison church ruin was used by the responsible Potsdam evangelical parish as the “Holy Cross Chapel”. In the second half of 1947 he was Ministerialrat in the National Education Ministry of the state government, where he also had to deal with church matters. On September 15, 1945 he joined the CDU, founded three months after the end of the war as a non-denominational Christian political party in Berlin , and was organized as a member of the CDU Brandenburg from mid-October of the same year. In October 1947, the lawyer Grünbaum was dismissed from the service of the state of Brandenburg after being checked by a denazification commission. With this he also resigned from the board of trustees of the " Joachimsthalsches Gymnasium zu Templin Foundation ", of which he was elected 1st chairman on June 28, 1947. Previously, on August 16, 1947, the SMAD had issued Order 201, concerning guidelines for the application of Directives No. 24 and No. 38 of the Control Council on denazification . The Brandenburg denazification commission referred to Grünbaum's activity in the Reich Ministry of Churches and obtained his arrest. After six weeks of imprisonment, Grünbaum was released after intervention mainly by Bishop Dibelius with the Supreme Chief of the Soviet Military Administration, Marshal Sokolowski . The Council of Ministers in Potsdam then granted approval only for the church, but not for the non-church public service. The Protestant provost and co-founder of the CDU in Berlin, Heinrich Grüber, advised Grünbaum against filing an objection to the Brandenburg state government against the restriction of this admission. The Protestant church leadership Berlin-Brandenburg appointed the lawyer and committed Protestant Christian to the cathedral curator of the Brandenburg cathedral with effect from February 1, 1948. He had been a member of the cathedral chapter as an honorary canon "in recognition of his services in the church struggle" since 1946. In April 1949 he also became honorary governor of the Heiligengrabe monastery .

Head of the Liaison with the Churches department in the GDR government

The establishment of the main department connection to the churches was decided on October 20, 1949 by the Provisional Government of the GDR . She was subordinate to the Deputy Prime Minister, Nuschke , who was also the CDU chairman. At the beginning of January 1950 this department started its work in the government chancellery of the GDR. Grünbaum took office on January 1, 1950. At the inauguration of the Bishop of Berlin Wilhelm Weskamm on July 31, 1951 in the Catholic Church of St. Sebastian in the Wedding district , Head of Department Kurt Grünbaum and Nuschke's personal assistant Helmut Enke (* 1916) took part. When Nuschke returned to Berlin from a spa stay in the Soviet Union on February 21, 1952, both Grünbaum and CDU Foreign Minister Georg Dertinger , CDU Secretary General Gerald Götting and GDR State Secretaries Hans-Paul Ganter-Gilmans and Heinrich Toeplitz met to greet him , both also members of the CDU, arrived at Schönefeld Airport .

Until December 31, 1952, Grünbaum was the first head of the "Connection to the Churches" department in the government chancellery of the GDR. The field of activity of this main department included state recognition and the dissolution of religious communities and church legal, property and financial issues. He also had representation tasks to perform. For example, he took part in the funeral services for the deceased Catholic Bishop of Meissen, Petrus Legge , in March 1951, as head of the “Liaison with the Churches” department, together with the personal advisor to Deputy Prime Minister Otto Nuschke, Helmut Enke .

On the occasion of Grünbaum's 60th birthday in 1952, the daily newspaper of the CDU Neue Zeit published a congratulation to Otto Nuschke's “close colleague” with an appreciation of his many years of “work in the field of the state” and hoped that the “Union friend ... would be granted it to be able to work in his responsible position in full health and creativity in the years to come “, without suspecting that the SED superiors would decide to dismiss him from civil service - without Nuschke's involvement - on October 16, 1952. Grünbaum was dismissed from civil service in 1952. His professional competence was beyond question for the GDR functionaries, but from the point of view of the GDR superiors his political stance was assessed as questionable. On November 1, 1952, Nuschke received a message from the head of the GDR government chancellery, State Secretary Fritz Geyer , about the replacement of Grünbaum. However, the Deputy Prime Minister promptly rejected the allegations against Head of Department Grünbaum in a letter to Prime Minister Grotewohl . After his involuntary release from the state apparatus, Grünbaum was even taken into custody for five months. The Stasi had come into possession of a file from the former Reich Church Ministry on the disciplinary proceedings against the confessional pastor Hans Böhm and held Grünbaum in pre-trial detention for having done nothing against such disciplinary proceedings. He was also suspected that he was "involved in the illegal flight of his employees from the ... Department of Relations with the Churches ... or that this happened at his instigation."

The arrest took place almost at the same time as other former church political speakers or party functionaries of the CDU and SED who were well-disposed towards the all-German Protestant Church. In the Stasi report on the day before Grünbaum's arrest, his CDU membership was expressly mentioned. On January 15, 1953, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the GDR, Georg Dertinger (CDU) was arrested by the Ministry for State Security (MfS). In Dertinger's house, Grünbaum was supposed to be convicted of "hostile activity" through an interrogation, in order to specifically recruit him "for secret cooperation" so that he could reveal something "about internal church affairs".

Again in the church service

As early as February 1, 1953, Grünbaum belonged to the Protestant consistory of the ecclesiastical province of Berlin-Brandenburg. He was appointed senior consistorial councilor by the church leadership and was to be introduced to his new office on Saturday, February 21, 1953, by President Kurt Scharf . He was only able to perform his ecclesiastical function as senior consistorial councilor after the arrest warrant issued by the Berlin City Court on February 21, 1953 was repealed and after he was released from custody on July 21, 1953. The actual goal of the Stasi had not been achieved, namely to recruit Grünbaum "for secret cooperation in the fight against the ... Church" as an unofficial employee under false pretenses .

From September 1, 1953, he also worked as an employee in the church chancellery of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) in East Berlin . In addition, he had been a synodal member of the provincial synod of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg since 1947 . He was also an honorary member of the all-German synod of the Evangelical Church of the Union .

On July 1, 1954, he resigned from the service of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg to succeed the Magdeburg lawyer Bernhard Hofmann (* July 19, 1889, † February 10, 1954) as the Consistorial President in the Evangelical Church Province of Saxony under Bishop Müller and from 1955 with his successor Johannes Jänicke . Bishop Dibelius praised the services in the ecclesiastical province of Brandenburg at a meeting of the church leadership. From 1956 he was also Vice President of the " Central Committee of the Inner Mission ". In 1956 Grünbaum took part in the all-German extraordinary synod of the EKD, which took place from June 27 to 29 in Berlin-Spandau , and delivered a “word on the situation of the Protestant Church in the GDR”. Nuschke criticized the fact that Hanns Lilje had the "Grünbaum's report printed in full" in the "Sonntagsblatt" published by him, in which obstacles to church life were mentioned, but only an excerpt from the "report by General Superintendent Jacob from Cottbus", the did not want to go on an unconditional course of confrontation .

On Sunday, October 13, 1957, GDR banknotes were taken out of circulation by a lightning-fast, short-term money exchange campaign by the government of the GDR and replaced by new banknotes with the previous year of issue 1955. In this context, Grünbaum was arrested by the GDR State Security. On October 21, 1957 , Siegfried Klewitz, the head of finance for the Evangelical Church of the Church of Saxony , was arrested. Both were accused of illegally transferring Deutsche Mark (DM / Ost) money from West Berlin to the GDR. The sum of money concerned finances urgently awaited by the church in the GDR in the currency Deutsche Mark (DM / East) . It was church tax from West Berlin Christians who worked in the so-called “ Democratic Sector of Berlin ”, explained the Berlin-Brandenburg President Scharf to the Magdeburg court about the origin of the money. The state collection of church taxes by the tax offices was completely abolished in the Democratic Sector of Berlin as well as in the entire GDR in 1956. Regardless of the fact that church taxes were paid by so-called cross-border commuters in West Berlin with Ostgeld, on January 24, 1958, the Magdeburg District Court sentenced Grünbaum in a show trial to two and a half years in prison and a fine of 10,000 marks “for endangering the proper implementation of the money exchange campaign ". The provincial Saxon church lawyer Herbert Hemprich had prepared the defense documents . The process was preceded by a wave of propaganda in the GDR press under the heading "Money pushing by the middlemen of Bishop Dibelius ". In a statement to the GDR news agency ADN, the Magdeburg CDU chairman Carl Broßmann condemned the “role that Grünbaum and Klewitz had played in the attempted currency speculation” as “degrading and unchristian”. In connection with the show trial, Grünbaum issued a statement according to which “the treatment during detention was always correct and understanding and, within the framework of the regulations, sometimes even friendly. I had my Bible and my hymn book and I would like to express my thanks for them. ”Grünbaum's prison sentence was suspended on probation in the judgment of January 24, 1958 due to his old age, among other things, and he was released from the Stasi remand prison in Magdeburg the next day . After his retirement in 1958, he worked full-time as cathedral curator in Brandenburg from July of the same year and from 1961 to 1971 he was deputy head of the church chancellery of the Evangelical Church of the Union (EKU) in the GDR area.

family

He was married to Johanna-Luise (Annelies) Grünbaum, née Schultze (1893-1976), a pastor's daughter and teacher, since November 27, 1921, who temporarily worked there as a German teacher after the family moved in 1925 from Berlin to Bergholz-Rehbrücke . In 1955 Grünbaum and his family moved to Magdeburg for professional reasons . There he worked from July 1, 1954 at the Evangelical Church of the Church Province of Saxony until October 21, 1957 as Consistorial President . The marriage resulted in seven children: four girls and three boys, of whom Hedwig-Dorothea (* 1922) and Helga (* 1924) were born in Berlin, while the other siblings were born in Bergholz-Rehbrücke. One of the sons - Hartmut (1930–1983) - studied theology and worked from 1974 to 1982 as general superintendent of Berlin (East). Annelies and Kurt Grünbaum celebrated their golden wedding anniversary on November 27, 1971 . The family did not celebrate the 50th anniversary of their marriage in the city of Brandenburg , where they had lived since 1958, but in what was then the East-West meeting place in Berlin's Albrechtstraße not far from the Friedrichstraße train station , the then so-called Christian Hospice . Subsequent to the 85th birthday of the Consistorial President i. R. appeared in the national CDU daily newspaper on the page Der Christ in our Time , which was under the responsibility of the department head of the church editorial office Eberhard Klages , a corresponding message with the information of his church office before his retirement in 1958 in the Evangelical Church of the ecclesiastical province of Saxony. His predecessor, the NZ editor for church policy Herbert Trebs , had complained almost 20 years earlier that "Grünbaum ... has an attitude towards the social order of the GDR (e) that was anything but loyal ."

Resting place of the Neustadt cemetery in Brandenburg

Grünbaum died while staying on the Darß , where his oldest daughter, the dentist Dorothea-Hedwig Affeld (* 1922), lived. Kurt Grünbaum found his final resting place in Brandenburg an der Havel , next to his wife, who died on November 9, 1976, in the Neustädtischer Friedhof, the churchyard of the Protestant community of St. Katharinen. Grünberg's gravestone bears the reference to the Bible verse “Be happy always, pray without ceasing, be grateful in all things; because that is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you ”, which was his confirmation saying , as well as the leadership activities in church service, namely as“ Consistorial President ”and“ Cathedral Curator ”.

Publications (selection)

  • together with Georg Banasch under the main authorship of Walter Koch : The church tax in Prussia according to the state of 1933 , Berlin 1933; DNB 574382976
  • Law of Religious Communities In Illing, G. / Kautz G .: Handbook for Administration and Economics in the Reich and in Prussia , Vol. 2, Berlin 1932, pp. 1397-1517; DNB 366269291
  • Cathedral monastery and cathedral chapter since 1946

literature

  • Schultze, Harald : In the context of intensified attacks on the church. Kurt Grünbaum and the money exchange process 1957/58 , Leipzig 2009; ISBN 978-3-374-02684-5
  • Andreas Schalück: An agency of the churches in the state apparatus? Otto Nuschke and the main department “Connection to the Churches” 1949–1953 , Berlin 1999, ISBN 978-3-05-003467-6 , pp. 34, 71f., 151, 205
  • Goerner, Martin Georg: The treatment of church politics in the state apparatus and in the mass organizations , in: Clemens Vollnhals (Hrsg.): The church politics of SED and state security. An interim balance sheet, Berlin 1996, pp. 139–143; ISBN 3-86153-122-4

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Secret Medical Councilor Dr. med. Grünbaum in Jahn, Fred: Twelve instead of a thousand. Die Stadt Storkow (Mark) , S. (148-153) 152, Berlin 2019; ISBN 3-8280-3499-3
  2. ↑ Schultze, Harald: In the context of intensified attacks on the church. Kurt Grünbaum and the money exchange process 1957/58 , Leipzig 2009, p. 38
  3. ^ Berlin address book, edition 1925; Mengel, Karl Counselor and Notary; Part III, p. 42 column 2
  4. ^ Berlin address book, 1925 edition, Part IV, p. 755, column 2; ( Grünbaum, K. Lawyer, Potsdamer Str. 90 )
  5. ↑ Berlin address book, 1923 edition, Part IV, p. 556, column 2: Lindenstrasse 14
  6. ^ Berlin address book, 1943 edition, part IV, p. 498, column 6: Leipziger Strasse 3
  7. ↑ Schultze, Harald : In the context of intensified attacks on the church. Kurt Grünbaum and the money exchange process 1957/58 , Leipzig 2009, p. 54; ISBN 978-3-374-02684-5
  8. ^ Official Journal of the Control Council in Germany p. 262
  9. ↑ Kitschke, Andreas: The Garrison Church Potsdam. Crown of the city and scene of history , (Ed. Fördergesellschaft für den Wiederaufbau der Garnisonkirche Potsdam e.V.), 2016, p. 188 u. Footnote 105. P. 366 column 2; ISBN 978-3-86124-694-7
  10. ↑ Wegener, Heinz: "The Joachimsthalsche Gymnasium - the Landesschule Templin. A Berlin-Brandenburgisches Gymnasium in the maelstrom of German history 1607 - 2007", Berlin 2007, p. 213; ISBN 978-3-929829-62-4
  11. ↑ Wegener, Heinz: "The Joachimsthalsche Gymnasium - the Landesschule Templin. A Berlin-Brandenburgisches Gymnasium in the maelstrom of German history 1607 - 2007", Berlin 2007, p. 202; ISBN 978-3-929829-62-4
  12. ↑ Schultze, Harald: In the context of intensified attacks on the church. Kurt Grünbaum and the money exchange process 1957/58 , Leipzig 2009, p. 57 f .; ISBN 978-3-374-02684-5
  13. ^ Neue Zeit , April 5, 1952
  14. ^ Richter, Michael : Die Ost-CDU 1948 - 1952. Between Resistance and Synchronization , Düsseldorf 1990, p. 196; ISBN 978-3-7700-0899-5
  15. ^ Neue Zeit , August 1, 1951, pp. 1f.
  16. ^ Neue Zeit , February 22, 1952, p. 1
  17. ^ Neue Zeit , March 16, 1951, p. 2
  18. ↑ Neue Zeit , April 5, 1952, 2
  19. ↑ Schultze, Harald: In the context of intensified attacks on the church. Kurt Grünbaum and the money exchange process 1957/58 , Leipzig 2009, p. 64ff .; ISBN 978-3-374-02684-5
  20. ^ Andreas Schalück: An agency of the churches in the state apparatus? Otto Nuschke and the main department “Connection to the Churches” 1949–1953 , Berlin 1999, SS 72 footnote 2; ISBN 978-3-05-003467-6
  21. ↑ Goerner, Martin Georg: The treatment of church politics in the state apparatus and in the mass organizations , in Clemens Vollnhals (Ed.): The church politics of SED and state security. An interim balance sheet , Berlin 1996, p. 141; ISBN 3-86153-122-4
  22. ↑ Schultze, Harald: In the context of intensified attacks on the church. Kurt Grünbaum and the money exchange process 1957/58, Leipzig 2009, p. 232; ISBN 978-3-374-02684-5
  23. ↑ Goerner, Martin Georg: The working group on church issues in the SED Central Committee , in Clemens Vollnhals (ed.): The church policy of the SED and state security. An interim balance sheet, Berlin 1996, pp. (59-78) 65; ISBN 3-86153-122-4
  24. ↑ Stasi report of February 21, 1953, printed by Schultze, Harald : In the context of intensified attacks on the church. Kurt Grünbaum and the money exchange process 1957/58 , Leipzig 2009, p. 231 f .; ISBN 978-3-374-02684-5
  25. ↑ Schultze, Harald: In the context of intensified attacks on the church. Kurt Grünbaum and the money exchange process 1957/58, Leipzig 2009, p. 66 in connection with p. 232 f .; ISBN 978-3-374-02684-5
  26. ↑ Stasi report of February 21, 1953, printed by Schultze, Harald : In the context of intensified attacks on the church. Kurt Grünbaum and the money exchange process 1957/58 , Leipzig 2009, p. 232; ISBN 978-3-374-02684-5
  27. ^ Neue Zeit , July 8, 1954, p. 2
  28. ↑ Palm, Dirk: We are brothers! , Göttingen 2002, p. 230; ISBN 3-525-55736-1
  29. ^ Neue Zeit , July 19, 1956, p. 3
  30. ↑ Palm, Dirk: We are brothers! , Göttingen 2002, SS 229f .; ISBN 3-525-55736-1
  31. ↑ Law Gazette of the GDR Part I No. 73 of October 13, 1957 (Regulation on the issuance of new banknotes and the cancellation of previously valid banknotes of the German Central Bank) and No. 74 of October 16, 1957 [1. u. 2. Implementing provision]
  32. ^ Neue Zeit , January 25, 1958, p. 2
  33. ^ Church tax without seizure in Neues Deutschland , June 6, 1956, p. 2
  34. ↑ Pollack, Detlef : From the majority to the minority church. The fate of the Protestant churches , p. (49-78) 58, in: The GDR in retrospect: Politics, economy, society, culture , published by von Schultz, Helga / Wagener, Hans-Jürgen, Berlin 2007; ISBN 978-3-86153-440-2
  35. ^ New Germany , January 23, 1958, p. 2
  36. ^ Neues Deutschland , October 26, 1957, p. 2
  37. ↑ Berliner Zeitung , October 27, 1957, p. 2
  38. ↑ Neue Zeit , January 24, 1958, p. 2
  39. ^ Neue Zeit , April 16, 1977
  40. ↑ Neue Zeit, October 29, 1957, p. 2 [Background and context]
  41. ↑ 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, verses 16-18
  42. ↑ In: Jürgen Henkys (Ed.): 800 Years of Brandenburg Cathedral , Berlin 1965, pp. 94–99, DNB 750130288 .
personal data
SURNAME Grünbaum, Kurt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grünbaum, Robert Carl Eduard Kurt; G. (Signum)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer, consistorial president (1954–1958) in Magdeburg
DATE OF BIRTH April 5, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Storkow
DATE OF DEATH April 9, 1982
Place of death Prerow