Kirsten Heisig

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Kirsten Heisig , née Ackermann (born August 24, 1961 in Krefeld , † June 28, 2010 in Berlin ), was a German lawyer and author . She became known nationwide as the initiator of the Neukölln model in the prosecution of young offenders. The circumstances of the early death attracted a great deal of public interest. Her book The End of Patience: Consistently Against Young Violent Criminals was published posthumously and was on the bestseller list of the news magazine Der Spiegel for several months .

Live and act

Kirsten Ackermann lived in Krefeld until 1969 and then, following the separation of her parents, with one of her grandmothers in the Berlin district of Wedding . She later moved back to Krefeld and attended the Thomaeum grammar school in neighboring Kempen , where she graduated from university in 1981 . Then she went back to Berlin and studied at the University of Free Law .

After taking her second state examination , she joined the Berlin judicial service in 1990. Initially, she worked as a public prosecutor in the field of narcotics crime. She had been a judge since 1992 , initially for general criminal matters and a year later for juvenile offenses. She initially worked in the Pankow and Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg districts . Since 2008 she worked as a youth judge at the District Court Tiergarten to Neukölln district responsible (about 310,000 inhabitants), where as a social focal point of the Rollbergsiedlung is. To counter the high crime rate in this district, where around 40 percent more crimes were committed than the Berlin average, she and a colleague initiated the Neukölln model , which was introduced throughout Berlin on June 1, 2010 after a trial phase.

Kirsten Heisig died, presumably on June 28, 2010, by suicide . She was married to the Chief Public Prosecutor Stefan Heisig and last lived separately from him. She was the mother of two daughters.

Neukölln model

Alongside Stephan Kuperion, Kirsten Heisig became known nationwide as the main initiator of the “Neukölln model for better and faster prosecution of juvenile offenders” (named after her district in Berlin-Neukölln ). Above all, this relies on simplified juvenile criminal proceedings in which young offenders have to answer to court for minor offenses as soon as possible after the offense, before or so that they do not become threshold offenders . They are offenses that can be punished by a maximum arrest of four weeks. The trial should take place no later than three to five weeks after the offense. The speed of the procedure is primarily intended to have an educational effect. An important prerequisite for this is close cooperation between the police, the public prosecutor and the court. In addition, perpetrator-victim talks or charitable work are arranged. The concept was exemplary for the case law in Berlin and has been valid for the whole city since June 2010.

Heisig tried an approach of parental work in such a way that she invited parents, especially fathers of Arab schoolchildren, to lectures and meetings. As a rule, the functionaries of the migrant communities, journalists and social workers appeared.

reception

Heisig's views and suggestions based on her successful book The End of Patience , published four weeks after her death . Consistently discussed against young violent criminals in all media, were known in advance through magazine articles and interviews in the press and TV. After the initially numerous positive reactions to the book, some critical contributions also appeared.

Even before the book was published, based on a preprint in the Spiegel , an article by Tobias Riegel appeared in the daily newspaper Neues Deutschland in which he accused Heisig of drawing a “gloomy picture”, advocating “racial criteria”, blocking the way for Solutions; Their writing helps, so the conclusion, "just as little as the vain monologues of Thilo Sarrazin ".

In February 2009 Spiegel Online researched and reported that criticism of Heisig was surprisingly rare. Safter Çinar from the Turkish Association of Berlin-Brandenburg complained that Heisig had a strong focus on the cultural origin of the offenders, not the lack of education and social problems. Cinar: "We hope that she is more objective in the case law." And some observers feel that her conduct of negotiations is too personal. Kirsten Heisig "often looks more like a strict mother than a judge" to the accused, including to witnesses.

Christian Pfeiffer , former SPD Justice Minister of Lower Saxony and then head of the Lower Saxony Criminological Research Institute , pays Heisig "great respect" for her practice, but believes that she is not sufficiently well versed in criminology and therefore comes to misjudgments and inappropriate criminal policy demands. Pfeiffer rejects her theses of a “creeping brutalization”, which is to be attributed “primarily to the migrants”, as does her recommendation to temporarily place criminal children in closed homes in serious cases. In conclusion, Pfeiffer acknowledges the attitude of the criminologist Wolfgang Heinz , published in 1989 : “Early and drastic interventions are ... dangerous. A 'strategy of waiting' produces better results. Mildness pays off. ”Heisig's book title The end of patience, summarizes Pfeiffer, is exactly the“ wrong message ”.

Werner Sohn from the Criminological Central Office in Wiesbaden contradicts this thesis in a criticism of Pfeiffer's position based on data and statistics. Sohn also points out that Heinz's recommendation to “wait and see” dates back to 1989 and is therefore based on research results even further back. The type of juvenile delinquency , such as the group of intensive offenders with whom we are dealing today, did not even exist back then. Those who still demand gentleness and waiting towards them today recommend "as a solution to the problem that has only exacerbated the problem".

Half a year after the introduction of the Neukölln model for all districts of Berlin, Zeit editors Christian Denso and Heinrich Wefing did research on site and came to the conclusion: “Slowly, it seems, the system is falling back into the old rut. The driver is dead. "You quote the Neukölln SPD Mayor Heinz Buschkowsky :" My impression is: Business as usual has taken over again. "In Bavaria , Heisig's concepts are being implemented. After a trial phase in Bamberg, the accelerated juvenile criminal procedure was "extended to the public prosecutor's offices in Ansbach, Ingolstadt, Munich II and Würzburg" from April 1, 2011.

The juvenile judge Andreas Müller , who was friends with Heisig, portrayed himself as Heisig's successor in the matter in his 2013 book Ending Social Romanticism .

Movies

Güner Balci and Nicola Graef traced the life and work of Kirsten Heisig in their documentary film Death of a Judge - In the footsteps of Kirsten Heisig . The film was on 19 May 2011 in the number of people at first hand the West German television broadcast.

On November 19, 2014 , Das Erste showed the feature film The End of Patience with Martina Gedeck in the lead role under the same title as her book .

Circumstances of death

The circumstances of Kirsten Heisig's death attracted particular public interest. Heisig last worked at the Tiergarten District Court on the morning of June 28, 2010 . She did not show up for duty on the morning of June 29, 2010. The following day the police began looking for her after a missing person was reported . The Berlin Justice Senator Gisela von der Aue (SPD) and police spokesman said there were no signs of kidnapping or other criminal offenses. Heisig's body was in on Saturday, July 3, Tegel Forest in Berlin-Heiligensee to a tree hanged discovered. Already two and a half hours after the body was found, the Senator of Justice announced that Kirsten Heisig had “obviously committed suicide ”, “in order to put an end to the speculation ”. This was confirmed in the next few days by the public prosecutor, other official bodies and the results of the autopsy . Details about the circumstances of death were not disclosed. The public prosecutor's restrictive information policy was repeatedly criticized in numerous Internet forums, but only in one exception in the leading media: in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung , where it was stated that the “circumstances published so far are so questionable that the suspicion of one was covered up Murder cannot be removed from the public eye ”. The youth judge Andreas Müller, who is friends with Heisig, assumes a suicide because there had already been an attempt before.

The journalist Gerhard Wisnewski finally fought before the last instance Higher Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg to lift the public prosecutor's strict ban on news on November 15, 2010. The attorney general was obliged to “provide the applicant with information about the cause and time of death of Ms. Heisig, the location and the situation in which the corpse was found, which facts exclude an external cause of death and which objective indications speak for a systematic approach by Ms. Heisig with regard to her own death ”. The Berlin public prosecutor's office then wrote a four-page report, which it made available not only to the applicant, as instructed, but also to the press in general "for reasons of equal treatment". It confirms the suicide and contains details on the immediate history and the situation where it was found, but not on the motives for suicide, which were not affected by the OVG decision.

Obituaries

Kirsten-Heisig-Platz

Honors

  • 2009: Citizen Prize Liberta of the FDP
  • 2010: Bul le mérite des Bund Deutscher Kriminalbeamter (posthumous)
  • 2016: Designation of a square on Emser Strasse near Karl-Marx-Strasse in Berlin-Neukölln

Fonts

literature

Web links

Commons : Kirsten Heisig  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b The family's obituary in the Tagesspiegel names July 3, 2010 as the date of death (date the body was found). The actual time of death could no longer be determined. The autopsy report mentions a "dead body lying time of a few days" (according to the information report from the Berlin Public Prosecutor's Office dated November 19, 2010, Ref .: Gen AR 82/10). June 28, 2010 is the date of death on the tombstone .
  2. ^ A b Jutta Schütz: Justice publishes secret files on the Heisig case. In: Welt Online . November 19, 2010, accessed July 10, 2014 .
  3. Abitur graduates born in 1981 at the Kempener Gymnasium Thomaeum.
  4. Jennifer Wilton: Why Kirstin (sic!) Heisig does not allow herself to be frustrated. In: Berliner Morgenpost from February 22, 2009.
  5. Young offenders get to court faster. In: Berliner Morgenpost from June 4, 2009.
  6. a b c Jutta Schütz: Autopsy confirms suicide of the Berlin judge. In: dpa / Die Welt , July 4, 2010.
  7. Werner van Bebber, Sandra Dassler: Of unyielding friendliness. In: Tagesspiegel , July 4, 2010.
  8. Neukölln model - quick punishments for young offenders. dpa / Welt Online , April 6, 2010.
  9. Kirsten Heisig: Fear is a bad advisor . In: Der Spiegel . No. 29 , 2010 ( online ).
  10. Tobias Riegel: The end of reflection. In: Neues Deutschland , July 21, 2010.
  11. Mirko Heinemann: Juvenile judge in Berlin Neukölln: Just a little fist here, fist here . Spiegel Online , schulspiegel, February 3, 2009, accessed April 28, 2011.
  12. Christian Pfeiffer : Not all boys are so bad. In: Cicero , No. 9/2010, accessed April 28, 2011.
  13. Werner Sohn: Kirsten Heisig's "false message". In: The police. Trade journal for public safety , issue 2/2011, pp. 57–61.
  14. Christian Denso, Heinrich Wefing: The end of impatience . In: Die Zeit , No. 52/2010.
  15. Merk wants faster punishments for young people. ( Memento from February 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , April 1, 2011, dpa report.
  16. Andreas Müller: No more social romanticism . Herder, Freiburg / Br. 2013, passim, especially chap. A kind of soulmate. Why I feel committed to Kirsten Heisig's legacy , pp. 182–202.
  17. The end of patience - FilmWednesday on the First - ARD. Archived from the original on November 29, 2014 ; Retrieved November 18, 2014 .
  18. Andreas Müller: No more social romanticism! Herder, Freiburg / Br. 2013, p. 200
  19. Neukölln juvenile judge disappeared. In: Focus from July 1, 2010.
  20. Here they found the dead judge. In: Berliner Kurier , July 3, 2010.
  21. Berlin judge Kirsten Heisig found dead. dpa / Welt Online , July 3, 2010.
  22. A very strange suicide. In: EMMA , July 7, 2010.
  23. ↑ Juvenile judge commits suicide. ( Memento of July 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) In: Frankfurter Rundschau , July 4, 2010; Retrieved April 28, 2011.
  24. Joachim Güntner: Legacy of a judge. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , September 15, 2010.
  25. Andreas Müller: No more social romanticism! Herder, Freiburg / Br. 2013, p. 199 ff.
  26. On this extraordinary measure, cf. The case can write press law history. In: Legal Tribune Online, November 19, 2010.
  27. Press release of the OVG Berlin-Brandenburg 28/10.
  28. ^ Message on Berlin.de from November 16, 2010.
  29. ↑ Juvenile judge Heisig hanged herself. ( Memento from November 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) In: Rheinische Post , November 19, 2010.
  30. ^ Liberta Citizens' Prize ( Memento from January 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  31. Bul le mérite
  32. The legacy of Kirsten Heisig . Der Tagesspiegel , March 11, 2016; accessed on March 11, 2016