Kurt Lichtenstein

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Kurt Lichtenstein (born December 1, 1911 in Berlin ; † October 12, 1961 in Klötze ) was a communist , resistance fighter against National Socialism and a member of the state parliament and was shot by GDR border troops because he crossed the German-German border to talk to farm workers . As a journalist, Lichtenstein had been on a reportage trip along the border that led him from north to south for three days . On October 12, 1961, he was between Zicherie and Kaiserwinkel, northeast of Wolfsburg in Lower Saxony .

Lichtenstein was the first person to be shot on the inner-German border since the Berlin Wall was erected in August 1961. The killing was judged in 1997 in a criminal case. The two accused shooters were acquitted of the allegation of manslaughter . Since the 1961 incident, there has been speculation that Lichtenstein was deliberately liquidated as a renegade communist and traitor . According to this thesis, the instruction could have been issued by representatives of the highest SED level, with whom Lichtenstein had known personally since the 1930s.

Memorial at Kreisstraße 85 south of Zicherie for Kurt Lichtenstein, who was shot here in 1961

Life

Kurt Lichtenstein was the son of the Jewish businessman and shoemaker Georg Lichtenstein and his wife, the worker Henriette Lichtenstein, née Haase. He grew up in Berlin in the Prenzlauer Berg district , where he attended elementary school and later secondary school. He left secondary school to earn money, where he worked as a runner in a clothing store. He later trained as a toolmaker , but was unemployed from 1932. In 1933 Lichtenstein emigrated from Germany (see under Political Life). His parents divorced in 1924. You and Lichtenstein's sister Elfriede, who was born in 1913, were deported to Auschwitz in 1941, where they were presumably murdered. On April 23, 1946, Lichtenstein married Gertrud Klapputh, a member of the KPD. The marriage resulted in two daughters, born in 1946 and 1948. He also had a son with a daughter by Stanislaw Trabalski . Professionally, he worked as a journalist for most of his life, initially for communist and later for social democratic press organs.

Political life

Lichtenstein joined the Communist Youth Association (KJVD) in 1928 at the age of 17 and became a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1931 . In 1933 he emigrated to the Soviet Union as a Jew and communist because of his racial and political persecution in Germany . After a short political training, he was deployed to the KJVD in what was then the autonomous Saar area. From that time he knew Erich Honecker personally . After the annexation of the Saar area to the German Reich in 1935, Lichtenstein went to Paris , where he was involved in communist youth organizations. During the time he worked for the KPD, sometimes illegally, he had various aliases to protect himself . These included the names "Herbert", "Lauterburg", "Gaston Bergeaud" and "Jules Bardier".

Spanish Civil War and World War II

At the end of 1936, Lichtenstein went to Spain to volunteer in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. Until 1937 he served in the Thälmann battalion within the XI. International Brigade and held the function of Political Commissioner . At times he worked as a journalist for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Spain , where he was editor of the German edition of the brigade newspaper “Volontaire de la Liberté” and as a radio commentator for a republican broadcaster. During the fighting in the Battle of the Ebro in 1938, he was wounded as a member of the machine gun company of the 35th Division. In the final phase of the war, also in 1938, he was demoted after the withdrawal from Belchite because of “ cowardice before the enemy”. However, the degradation was reversed shortly thereafter. At the beginning of February 1939, Lichtenstein was interned with most of the Inter Brigades, initially in the French camp of Saint-Cyprien , and later in the camps of Guers and Argelès-sur-Mer . The internment period lasted a little over two years.

After the end of the civil war, Lichtenstein fled to France with other fighters from the International Brigades. At the beginning of the Second World War , like other Germans, he was interned by the French state as an enemy foreigner. He was housed in camps in the south of France . Lichtenstein broke out of the camp as it was feared that the Vichy regime would hand it over to the Gestapo . On the instructions of the Communist Party, he joined the Resistance in Toulouse . Also on behalf of the party, he volunteered as a foreign worker in France in 1944 and was sent to Suhl in Thuringia. Under a false identity, as the French citizen Jules Bardier, he officially worked in a company in the arms industry as a toolmaker, unofficially - but not very efficiently - underground as a communist against the Hitler regime. To explain his good knowledge of German, he used the legend that as a child he lived with his German-speaking grandparents in Strasbourg for several years .

When the US Army marched in at Easter 1945, it was handed over to the French armed forces. He was suspected of being a "fascist agent " and was interned in a camp near Vichy . Following the intervention of the French Communist Party, he was released and went to Germany.

post war period

After the Second World War, Lichtenstein rebuilt the KPD as a leading functionary in the Ruhr area . Professionally, he worked as a journalist for various communist-oriented newspapers, including as editor-in-chief of the Neue Volkszeitung . From April 20, 1947 to June 17, 1950, Kurt Lichtenstein was a member of the State Parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia as a member of the KPD in the first electoral period . During internal party purges in 1950, he fell out of favor in connection with the case of the KPD Bundestag member Kurt Müller . In 1953, after three years of party proceedings, he was expelled for anti-party activity and was also dismissed as editor-in-chief of the “Neue Volkszeitung”. For several years he kept himself and his family afloat by doing odd jobs. He turned away from communism and the KPD and applied for admission to the SPD in a letter dated October 21, 1958 to the SPD district of Western Westphalia in Dortmund . In 1958 he got a job with the Social Democrat-oriented Westfälische Rundschau, which appeared in Dortmund .

Deadly reporting trip

Kurt Lichtenstein was on a reporting trip along the inner-German border in October 1961 on behalf of his newspaper. He wanted to travel the entire length of the tour to report on life here two months after the Berlin Wall was built . Lichtenstein started with his eye-catching red car in Lübeck and after three days of travel was on October 12, 1961 near Wolfsburg in Lower Saxony . Around noon he found out about the border at a border post in Zicherie . Then he drove his car on Kreisstraße 85 , which runs along the border, in the direction of Kaiserwinkel . At 6.5 km he stopped to speak to members of an LPG brigade in GDR territory. To do this, he crossed the shallow border ditch and the harrowed ten meter wide border control strip . Two border guards who were guarding the farmers called him. Since Lichtenstein was running back towards the Federal Republic, they shot him down with submachine guns . It remained in the border ditch and is said to have been only one fifth on western territory. Therefore, the border guards transported the seriously injured Lichtenstein to the eastern area, but initially left him lying there. It was only after a long time that he was admitted to the hospital in Klötze , where he died after a short time. His body was cremated without the consent of his family members . The urn with the remains was sent to his widow in the mail.

In October 1961, a funeral service took place in Dortmund-Kemminghausen. The Federal Minister for All-German Issues Ernst Lemmer and Herbert Wehner from the SPD party executive took part as prominent mourners . Wehner, himself a former communist, and Lichtenstein had known each other from their KPD activities since the mid-1930s.

Political reactions

The border incident occurred in the middle of the Cold War, before the policy of détente began in 1969. That is why it was used politically by the West and the East.

In the West it was said in the press and in government statements that outrage and disgust about this act filled all Germans. It was a brutal murder of "Soviet zone border police" on the death strip of the "zone border" and a deportation to "Soviet zone territory". At that time, the expression “zone border” was used to describe the border with the GDR, the former Soviet occupation zone . Kurt Lichtenstein was stylized as a martyr of the " free world ". Respect for the journalist who died while practicing his profession was shown on all sides. Lichtenstein was considered an "eternal communist" in the Federal Republic of Germany during the Adenauer era in the 1950s. Until his death, he argued with state authorities about compensation for his parents, who were murdered by the National Socialists because of their Jewish descent. After his death, his family's compensation was suddenly awarded.

For the east, the incident was a border provocation . The headline of the SED central organ Neues Deutschland read: “Provocateur violated the GDR's state border”. On GDR television , Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler reported about the border incident in the program The Black Channel after a week. According to Schnitzler's comment, Lichtenstein was shot because he fled cowardly (as in the Spanish civil war).

Liquidation theory

There was no doubt about the course of the border incident due to eyewitness accounts from both the west and the east. Nevertheless, rumors surfaced that Kurt Lichtenstein was not (only) killed because of his border violation. According to a theory, which mainly represented his widow, it could have been the liquidation of an ex-communist and traitor on the instructions of the highest SED level. The motive might be doing to the fact that he in 1950 the KPD apostate was and is now operated as a journalist against the GDR. Lichtenstein was personally acquainted with important representatives of the GDR state, such as Erich Honecker , Kurt Hager , Wilhelm Pieck , Otto Grotewohl and Erich Mielke . This went back to the KPD era in the 1930s, with training in the Soviet Union, the Spanish Civil War and the resistance against National Socialism. How hostile he was towards his former comrades and the GDR state is illustrated by a declaration he wrote in 1956 (but not published). According to this, the SED, based on the bayonets of the Red Army , established a regime of terror, arbitrariness and repression.

An indication of a targeted killing is also that Lichtenstein's report trip, which had started three days earlier in Lübeck, must have been noticed by the GDR in a conspicuous car. They were well informed about him because of his previous KPD activities. It is also noticeable that no documents relating to this important border incident could be found in either the SED party archives or the Stasi archives. Not least because of the prominence of the victim with his communist background, something else would have been expected. Therefore, there is a suspicion that these documents have been removed.

The strict execution of the order to shoot against Lichtenstein could also have had another reason. The day before, an LPG farmer had fled to the west in this section of the border . The border guards were then instructed to make consistent use of firearms in the event of another illegal border crossing.

Probation Theory

On the occasion of the funeral, the news magazine Der Spiegel constructed Lichtenstein's motives for the zone border report and spoke of a “probation squad”. Afterwards, the journalist, who last worked as a correspondent in Bonn, complained that he was still seen as politically unreliable because of his communist past. His employer should no longer have reprinted his articles and, as a representative of the Westfälische Rundschau at the seat of government, considered him no longer acceptable. Lichtenstein was quoted as saying: “Then I have to leave Bonn again. Maybe one should write a big report about the zone border at this time. ”The editors agreed with such a probation detachment, with which Lichtenstein could prove his anti-communist sentiments.

Legal processing

The Lichtenstein case was still documented in 1961 at the central registration office in Salzgitter , where it was the first killing recorded. An arrest warrant for manslaughter was issued in 1964 against the two shooters known by name, one of whom was only 18 years old at the time of the crime . In 1991, Lichtenstein's widow filed a criminal complaint against the two border guards against the killing of her husband, but also against Erich Honecker and other high-ranking GDR officials because of the shooting order . However, the preliminary investigation had already been carried out by the Berlin public prosecutor's office (government crime working group) since 1990.

Acquittals in criminal proceedings

In 1997, a criminal trial took place before the Stendal Regional Court against the two former GDR border guards who had shot Kurt Lichtenstein 36 years earlier. The prosecutor requested manslaughter suspended sentences . According to the pleading of their lawyers, the defendants were acquitted . According to the court, it was no longer possible to determine who had fired the fatal shots. According to the court's finding, they acted without intent to kill and merely carried out the order to shoot.

Commemoration

At the point of the border incident, on the western side in the autumn of 1961 a teacher from the community work zone edge houses e. V. laid out the Lichtenstein Cross as a modest memorial (see photo). It consisted of an enclosed wooden cross. A plaque attached to it bore the inscription: "A German, shot by Germans Kurt Lichtenstein † October 12, 1961"

Another explanatory sheet metal plaque at the memorial bore the inscription: "At this point, the Dortmund journalist Kurt Lichtenstein was shot on October 12, 1961 because, as a German, he wanted to speak to Germans over there."

At times in the 1960s there was a large plaque set up by students from the Technical University of Braunschweig at the place of death . It bore the inscription: "On October 12, 1961, a German was sneakily murdered by Germans on Ulbricht's orders."

In the following year 1962, on June 17th, the then day of German unity , a rally was held at the Lichtensteinkreuz with the participation of around 20,000 people.

In September 2011 the memorial was completely renovated. Since then there has been a large wooden cross and a detailed information board.

  • Memorial plaque from students of the Technical University of Braunschweig , 1961

  • Shield, 1967

  • Memorial for Kurt Lichtenstein at Kreisstraße 85 south of Zicherie until September 2011

  • The redesigned memorial with the earlier border behind it, 2020

literature

Movies

  • The first fatal shot - the enigmatic drama about Kurt Lichtenstein on the inner-German border , documentary film, 45 minutes, Germany 2011, director: Hans-Dieter Rutsch, on behalf of WDR and rbb, funded by the Federal Foundation to come to terms with the SED dictatorship, editorial team : Beate Schlanstein (WDR), Jens Stubenrauch (rbb) ( online )

Web links

Commons : Kurt Lichtenstein  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sächsisches Staatsarchiv Leipzig; SED cadre files: 725, SED report on Stanislaw Trabalski, page 2
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Hübner: The urn came in the mail . In: Neues Deutschland , October 12, 2011
  3. ↑ Deadly Probation . In: Der Spiegel . No. 46 , 1961 ( online ).
  4. ^ Acquittal for GDR death shooters . In: Berliner Zeitung , September 11, 1997
personal data
SURNAME Lichtenstein, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German resistance fighter, journalist and politician (KPD), MdL
DATE OF BIRTH December 1, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH October 12, 1961
Place of death Blocks