Meier 19th

Kurt Meier (born September 24, 1925 in Schöfflisdorf ; † November 2, 2006 in Zurich ) was a Swiss police officer and whistleblower .

Kurt Meier was a member of the Zurich City Police . He became publicly known under the police's internal name Meier 19 , which also stands for a police and judicial affair in the city of Zurich in connection with his person. The feature film Meier 19 by Erich Schmid , based on research by Paul Bösch , once again made national headlines in Switzerland in 2001, not least because it became the most successful documentary of the year ( Federal Office of Culture ) in cinema and television.

Life

After an apprenticeship as a mechanic, Kurt Meier joined the Zurich city police in 1948 and rose to become a detective in 1958. After a last promotion to detective sergeant in 1965, Meier was dismissed in 1967 for breach of official secrecy , as he had internal documents published by lawyer Gertrud Heinzelmann about the leniency of the authorities towards prominent traffic offenders . As a result, a series of lawsuits against Kurt Meier resulted in the Zurich judicial and police affair "Meier 19", which occupied the Zurich public until the 1990s.

The starting point for the 19 Meier affair were a series of newspaper articles that were published in various newspapers at the end of February 1967, among others. a. also the tabloid Blick . They reported on the practice of the city of Zurich police in applying the road traffic laws very loosely to wealthy, influential personalities from politics and the military. Specifically, it was reported that various fines had been canceled and that the 75-year-old Colonel a. D. Josef Guldimann, despite serious offenses in traffic and suspected unfit to drive, a previously withdrawn driver's license had been returned.

A criminal investigation was then initiated against detective sergeant Kurt Meier on March 20, 1967 for violation of official secrecy, abuse of office and coercion . The police and the police chief struck a tough pace against the uncomfortable internal critic Meier. He was immediately suspended from duty and was no longer paid. The Zurich district attorney sentenced Meier to 14 days in prison on May 8, 1967, against which Meier immediately appealed and thus forced legal proceedings. Despite the pending proceedings, the then police chief Albert Sieber terminated the employment relationship between the city and Kurt Meier at the end of September 1967.

The court case on August 23, 1967 aroused great interest in the Zurich public. Meier's lawyer, the SP politician Fritz Heeb , described some of the beneficiary cases in detail in court and pleaded for Meier's acquittal and reinstatement, as he was obliged to uphold the constitution (Art. 4 of the Federal Constitution at the time: “All Swiss are equal before the law . In Switzerland there are no subordinate relationships, no privileges of place, birth, families or persons ») and the law valued more highly than the duty of obedience and maintaining official secrecy. The district court recognized Meier's "worthy motives", but pointed out that he should have used the internal administrative route for his complaints. The verdict against Meier was confirmed, but the prison sentence was converted into a fine of 400 francs. Meier took the judgment on to the Federal Supreme Court , where it was confirmed on May 24, 1968.

The case against Meier was taken up by politically active students at the University of Zurich around Thomas Held . For them, Meier 19 became a “key witness of the class struggle”. On August 26, 1967, the Zurich Progressive Student Union (FSZ) organized a rally against the “corrupt police chiefs and their clean friends”. After the rally there was some damage to property and traffic chaos, but there was no escalation like the one during the globe riot on June 29, 1968. Nevertheless, Der Spiegel reported in 1968 that Meier 19 was to blame for the outbreak of the “World Youth Revolt in the Rütli Land”.

The main reason for the public's continuing interest in the Meier 19 case was Meier's accusation against the then head of the Zurich criminal police, Walter Hubatka , that in 1963 he either committed an unsolved theft of around 88,000 francs in wages from the main police station himself or was part of it involved. Meier believed to find evidence of this in the sloppily conducted investigation of the case. This allegation could never be confirmed. For the youth movement, the Meier 19 case was a welcome opportunity to show the corruption of the establishment and the repressive character of the system. In particular after the police attacks on young people after the so-called “Monster Concerts” in Zurich in 1967/68, the police became the ultimate enemy for the youth movement in Zurich well into the 1980s.

In October 1967, a parliamentary commission of inquiry (PUK) investigated the various cases of favoritism, protection, blatant inequality and corruption among the city police, brought to light by Meier. The PUK's final report of June 24, 1968 came to the conclusion that there had been a few cases of “comrade favoritism” and inaccuracies, but these were isolated cases. For this reason, it cannot be said that the city police have measured "again and again with an unequal yardstick".

Meier tried for years, but repeatedly unsuccessfully, to be rehabilitated. Several criminal charges by Meier against individual members of the Zurich authorities caused a lot of dust. In particular, the dispute over the theft of wages in 1963 between Meier and Hubatka occupied the judiciary until 1975. Meier was sentenced to six months in prison for defamation against Hubatka in a leaflet and to the payment of CHF 4,000 in satisfaction and CHF 10,000 Compensation for work convicted. In the judgment, some contemporaries saw a settlement of the bourgeois judiciary with the unpleasant warning, the others the final immobilization of a troublemaker and revolutionary . The Federal Supreme Court reduced the sentence to three months in 1975. The Federal Supreme Court ruled that the Zurich judiciary had slouched during the investigation into the theft of wages and that Meier correctly reported this matter. A leaflet that Meier had distributed about Hubatka, however, was regarded by the court as defamation.

In 1995, after the “landlord corruption case” involving Raphael Huber and the “direction finding aircraft affair ”, Kurt Meier tried for the last time with a request for an “actual investigation” of his case to the Justice Director Moritz Leuenberger to resolve the Meier 19 affair in his favor. The request was rejected by Leuenberger because of the statute of limitations on the cases. In 1997 a book by Paul Bösch was published and in 2001 a documentary by Erich Schmid about the affair and the person of Meier 19. In 1998, Meier received financial compensation for his unjustified dismissal, the Zurich city council paid him 50,000 francs.

On November 2, 2006, Kurt Meier succumbed to cancer. The Swiss Social Archives in Zurich are keeping Kurt Meier's estate and an extensive collection of material on the affair .

literature

• Paul Bösch: Meier 19. An unresolved police and judicial affair . Limmat Verlag, Zurich 1997. ISBN 3-85791-290-1

Movie

• Meier 19 by Erich Schmid , 35 mm, 98 min .; Production: Ariadnefilm GmbH, Zumikon 2001; DVD and VHS edition: Praesens, Zurich. ISAN 0000-0000-D85B-Bäumen5.

Web links

• Holdings: P. Bösch file collection on the "Meier 19" case in the finding aids of the Swiss Social Archives
• Holdings: Meier, Kurt "Meier 19" (1925–2006) in the finding aids of the Swiss Social Archives

Individual evidence

1. ↑ BGE 94 IV 68
2. ↑ Bösch, Meier 19, p. 144.
3. ↑ BGE 101 IV 292