Michael Klause

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Michael Klause (born September 29, 1895 in Mishana ( Russian Empire ), † February 7, 1942 in Berlin ) was a German worker and communist . In 1934 he made himself available as a key witness against the communist main defendant Albert Kuntz in the trial of the murders on Bülowplatz . Klause was sentenced to death , pardoned to life imprisonment, and the case against Kuntz was dropped.

Life

Youth and First World War

Klause was born in Tsarist Russia , his parents were farmers and moved with him to Deutschrode in the province of Posen in 1899 . Klause graduated from elementary school and was employed as a worker by the Royal Prussian State Railway . When the First World War broke out , he volunteered . He was used on different fronts. Since December 1916 he was a member of a storm battalion . He was seriously wounded several times and promoted to sergeant .

Communist during the Weimar Republic

After the end of the war, Klause worked as a metal worker and auxiliary mechanic. He married in 1919 and had a daughter in 1920. In 1922 he joined the KPD . From 1923 he worked for the party's secret " anti-militarist apparatus ". For courier activities, he was arrested in the fall of 1923 and until September 1925 custody held. After an amnesty , the proceedings against him were dropped.

Within the KPD, Klause belonged to the ultra-left " Weddinger Opposition ". In 1926 he joined the Red Front Fighter League and took over its leadership in the Berlin district of Wedding . In autumn 1927 he was relieved of his position after he had become a security guard at the Groß Berliner Wach- und Sperrgesellschaft . He was accused of defection to the fascists . In the autumn of 1928, attempts were made to expel him from the party because of alleged opposition. Joseph Gutsche , military leader of the KPD district leadership Berlin-Brandenburg, prevented this and brought Klause into the party's stewardship. At Gutsche's mediation, Klause attended the military school of the Communist International (Comintern) in Moscow in 1930/31 . Back in Berlin, Klause took over the management of the “Proletarian Self-Protection” or Party Self-Protection (PSS) for Berlin, while he was officially employed by the Soviet trade agency. There he resigned in connection with the police investigation into the murders committed on August 9, 1931 on Bülowplatz and became an employee of the Die Rote Fahne publishing house .

Key witness in the Bülowplatz trial in 1934

On August 9, 1931 , two police officers were murdered and a third seriously injured on Berlin's Bülowplatz , about 100 meters from the KPD headquarters in Berlin . After the investigations, which initially remained largely unsuccessful, had been intensified after the National Socialist " seizure of power ", Klause was arrested by the SA and handed over to the criminal police on July 17, 1933. Apparently the SA had already arrested him on July 16 at 2:00 am and initially taken him to "SA accommodation". It was an interrogation room of the SA in Schwedenstrasse in Wedding, in which the kidnapped person was mistreated. Klauses statements made in 1933 were not used in the second Bülowplatz trial against Erich Mielke in 1991/92 because the probability that Klause was mistreated is considerable and it cannot be ruled out that he made his statements to the criminal police under the impression of what he had experienced .

In 1933, Klause told the criminal police that on August 8, 1931, he had received the order to alert the Wedding stewardship and to order them to Bülowplatz. At this point in time, the political struggle in Berlin had come to a head in the run-up to the referendum on August 9, 1931, to dissolve the Prussian state parliament, which was supported by the KPD . There were crowds and the police repeatedly evacuated Bülowplatz. A worker was shot dead. According to the statements of those involved, the Reichstag member Hans Kippenberger discussed with Klause the plan to shoot the district captain of the police, Paul Anlauf. For this purpose, Klause selected two volunteers, Erich Mielke and Erich Ziemer , as riflemen and five armed stewards as rearguard, as well as other unarmed men, who should block the police's path if necessary. Klause instructed those involved. He did not take part in the actual execution of the attack.

After his admission to the Berlin police headquarters , Klause suffered "a complete nervous breakdown", according to information he gave to the public prosecutor in July 1938. In 1938 he also described that on his return from Moscow Gutsche had already been defeated in a power struggle with Hans Kippenberger and had fled to the Soviet Union . Kippenberger staged the murder of August 9th and entangled him, Klause, in it. Then Kippenberger used him as an instructor without authority in the party self-protection Berlin-Brandenburg. After arguments with the organizational head of the Comintern in Moscow, Ossip Pyatnitzki , he, Klause, sabotaged all orders for the active use of party self-protection. Kippenberger therefore removed him from his position and had him monitored by informers. In mid-March 1933, Friedrich Broede tried in vain to have him shot on Kippenberger's orders. In 1935, Hans Kippenberger reported in a report on the “Antimilitarist Apparatus” that after his return from Moscow, Klause had proven to be completely unsuitable for the task of reorganizing the PSS, despite good school characteristics. Klause was "not only a fundamentally apolitical element, but also personally cowardly".

The historian Andreas Herbst certifies that Klause actually found himself in a hopeless situation in August 1933. He was subjected to intensified interrogations without being able to see what the Gestapo really knew about his involvement in the August 9, 1931 murders. It can be assumed that after some time Klause began to cooperate with the police and the judiciary. Presumably he was promised a prison sentence instead of the death penalty for making incriminating statements against Albert Kuntz . In any case, Klause turned away from his communist ideals and appeared in the June 1934 trial as a key witness against Kuntz. According to the indictment, Klause had "burdened himself with the heaviest", while a large part of the burdens of the other defendants were based on his statements. Along with Kippenberger, Heinz Neumann and Kuntz, he accused top politicians of the KPD. Klause testified that Kippenberger had given him the order to kill the police on August 8, 1931, in the presence of Kuntz. Kuntz denied this and was able to produce the affidavit of a witness that he had not been in the Karl Liebknecht House that day . In addition to Max Matern and Friedrich Broede, Klause was sentenced to death on June 19, 1934 by the jury court I at the Berlin district court for “joint murder and favoritism”. His defense attorney filed a pardon on July 2, 1934, whereupon Adolf Hitler commuted the death sentence on May 2, 1935 to life imprisonment .

In custody

Klause was initially imprisoned in the Luckau prison. According to a Gestapo report, he was boycotted and harassed by all political prisoners at the instigation of Karl Olbrysch and Hermann Dünow . According to Andreas Herbst, Klaus's submissions showed a lonely person who hoped to be released early, but at the same time was afraid of the distant KPD. In February 1939 he was transferred to the Brandenburg-Görden prison and in November 1941 the Gestapo brought him to Berlin as an information person and witness in further proceedings. On February 7, 1942, he committed suicide in his cell in Plötzensee prison . Other information, according to which he became a member of the SS special unit Dirlewanger in April 1943 ( Jochen von Lang ), or was executed in 1942 ( Götz Aly ), does not apply according to research by Andreas Herbst.

In 1964, GDR historian Wolfgang Kießling described Klause as a "Gestapo agent" in his biography of Albert Kuntz. Andreas Herbst warns against this, that today's generations should refrain from accusing the defenseless for their statements before the Gestapo. They were fallible people, people of flesh and blood, with all their fears, weaknesses and doubts, who in many other cases also showed a lot of courage. "

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stefan König: The Bülowplatz Trial against Erich Mielke - From the handling of the judiciary with (their) history. In: Helge Grabitz, Klaus Bästlein u. Johannes Tuchel (Ed.): The normality of crime. Balance sheet and perspectives of research on the national socialist violent crimes. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1994, p. 512, 506. Andreas Herbst names August 15, 1933 as the date of the arrest by the SA. Herbst, Michael Klause , p. 192. July 17 is also mentioned in the report on the investigations in the murder case Anlauf / Lenck (September 25, 1933) . In: Jochen von Lang: Erich Mielke. A German career. Rowohlt TB, Reinbek 1993, pp. 217f.
  2. ^ Jochen von Lang: Erich Mielke. A German career. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1993, pp. 19-21, 219.
  3. ↑ According to Jochen von Lang , the independent worker Fritz Auge was shot on August 7th. Jochen von Lang: Erich Mielke. A German career. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1993, pp. 20f. According to Wilfriede Otto, Auge was killed on August 8th. Wilfriede Otto: Erich Mielke - biography. The rise and fall of a chekist. Dietz, Berlin 2000, p. 23.
  4. ^ Jochen von Lang: Erich Mielke. A German career. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1993, pp. 23-26, 219.
  5. ↑ Herbst, Michael Klause , p. 192.
  6. ↑ Herbst, Michael Klause , p. 190.
  7. ↑ Herbst, Michael Klause , p. 191.
  8. ↑ a b c Herbst, Michael Klause , p. 192.
  9. ↑ Wilfriede Otto: Erich Mielke - biography. The rise and fall of a chekist . K. Dietz, Berlin 2000, p. 41f.
  10. ↑ Herbst, Michael Klause , pp. 187f.
  11. ↑ Herbst, Michael Klause , p. 187.
  12. ↑ Herbst, Michael Klause , p. 189.
  13. ↑ Herbst, Michael Klause , p. 194.
personal data
SURNAME Klause, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German worker and communist
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Mishana ( Russian Empire )
DATE OF DEATH February 7, 1942
Place of death Berlin