Nico Huebner

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Nico Hübner (now: Naftali Hibner ) (born February 5, 1955 in Berlin ) is a critic of the GDR regime and a conscientious objector . Because he invoked the demilitarized status of Berlin in the GDR, his case caused a sensation. SED General Secretary Erich Honecker personally signed the process proposal of the Ministry for State Security .

Life

Family and youth

His father, Erwin Hübner, was a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and a research assistant at the SED party college "Karl Marx" . His mother, Lilo Hübner, b. Erbstößer, was also a member of the SED and an employee of the State Broadcasting Committee of the GDR , as a senior editor at children's radio.

In high school he came into conflict with Marxism-Leninism as read by the SED. In 1971 he resigned from the Free German Youth (FDJ), then was kicked out of school. Hübner made contact with Christian circles and was admitted to a reformatory in Mecklenburg, from which he fled to his home. In December 1972 he was sent to the closed youth work center in Torgau to be “brought up in a socialist way”. After reaching the age of majority, he was released from the work yard . Afterwards he received neither education nor work. He was denied participation in a Hebrew course at Berlin's Humboldt University , theology section. In 1974 he refused military service for the first time in the National People's Army of the GDR. He blamed his stepmother, who was a prosecutor, for not being arrested. Since then, he has been suspicious of the GDR authorities. When he invited friends to a meeting to discuss support for an arrested youth, an anti-state incitement trial was initiated against him. These proceedings were also discontinued.

Conscientious objection

He later worked as an extra at the Deutsches Theater Berlin and became a member of the Protestant student community . In the spring of 1977 he submitted an application to leave Germany . When the military district command of the National People's Army summoned him to draft for military service in February 1978, he refused. He declared that the demilitarized status of Berlin , which was decided by the Allies in 1945 and confirmed in the Four Power Agreement on Berlin in 1971, also applies to the eastern part of the city. He was referring to the prohibition of militarization under Control Council Act No. 43. However, the law was only enforced in the western sectors of the city, while the GDR also applied its conscription law in the eastern part of Berlin. On March 14, 1978, Huebner received a summons to the People's Police Station 69 in Prenzlauer Berg. When he answered yes to the question of whether he continued to refuse to do military service in the GDR army, he was arrested.

Hübner was in contact with the West Berlin Working Group for Human Rights , a split from the Society for Human Rights , which supported him and to which he sent material for publication in Western media. On March 30, 1978, the daily newspaper Berliner Morgenpost published an essay by Huebner in which he opposed the political system of the GDR: “Communist social theories, if they are to be implemented in the GDR, always give rise to more or less dictatorial regimes. Opponents of the regime therefore assume that the communist regime cannot be humanized through external forms, where the freedom of everyone is only limited by the equal freedom of all. ”At the same time, he criticized that politics in West Germany refused to“ become moral To become a support in the other part of Germany ".

Public reactions

Solidarity poster of the Junge Union

The case received a lot of public attention. Berlin's governing mayor Dietrich Stobbe and the Berlin House of Representatives unanimously demanded Huebner's release on April 6, 1978. The appeal of the conscientious objector to the demilitarized status of Berlin, so the representatives of all parliamentary groups, is legal. The publisher Axel Springer campaigned for him in letters to Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt , CDU Chairman Helmut Kohl , US President Jimmy Carter and the United Nations . Rudi Dutschke , Marxist and spokesman for the student movement of the 1960s , expressed his solidarity with Huebner and urged him not to allow himself to be mentally “broken”. The Junge Union collected signatures for his release; 10,000 signatures were collected in Lower Saxony alone .

Trial, detention, deportation

The trial against Huebner was controlled by the Ministry for State Security. SED General Secretary Erich Honecker received a detailed process proposal. He personally signed the charges against the conscientious objector. At the same time, he processed the corresponding report from the GDR news agency General German News Service (ADN). The trial took place in camera in the summer of 1978; the witnesses were sworn to secrecy. The central evidence was an expert report by the Institute for International Politics and Economics (IPW) based in the east of Berlin , which Huebner branded as a “traitor to socialist ideals” and accused him of “an anti-social and criminal lifestyle”. On July 7, 1978, Huebner was sentenced to five years imprisonment by the 1st criminal division of the Berlin City Court. According to the reasons for the judgment, he had violated conscription, collected news (Section 98 of the Criminal Code [GDR]) and incited hatred against the state (Section 106 of the Criminal Code [GDR]). Hübner was a prisoner in the Bützow correctional facility for 13 months . On October 11, 1979 he was given amnesty at the same time as Rudolf Bahro and on October 18, 1979 he was deported from the GDR to the West. His first wife and son were also allowed to travel with him.

Life in the west

In June 1980, Hübner joined the Free Democratic Party (FDP) together with 30 former GDR prisoners, including the ex-GDR writer Siegmar Faust . There he supported the founding of the Young Liberals and spoke at FDP events during the 1980 federal election campaign. Hübner criticized the demand of the young democrat chairman Christoph Strässer to recognize GDR citizenship . "Stabilizing a dictatorial regime on German soil cannot be the task of liberal politics," wrote Hübner in the Berliner Morgenpost .

In 1986 he converted to Orthodox Judaism , emigrated to Israel in 1988 and did basic military service in the Israeli armed forces . He took the name Naftali Hibner, attended a rabbinical school and worked as a builder. Seven years he lived with the writer Rachel Abraham together later he married his second wife one of Saint Petersburg native German studies .

Honors

In 1979, Hübner was awarded the Konrad Adenauer Freedom Prize of the Germany Foundation . Bavaria's Prime Minister Franz Josef Strauss presented it to the Bavarian State Chancellery .

Fonts

literature

  • Axel Springer: Until Niko Hübner finally got out of prison. Appeals and telegrams . In: Axel Springer: Out of concern for Germany. Testimonials from a committed Berliner , Seewald Verlag, Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-512-00572-1

Web links

Commons : Nico Huebner  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Offenburg Tageblatt: Youth in Divided Germany, September 11, 1980
  2. ↑ Die Zeit: "That's what I sat for," November 9, 1979
  3. ↑ a b c Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk: Back then in the East: The conscientious objector Nico Hübner is sentenced mdr.de, accessed on November 1, 2018
  4. ↑ Speech of the Governing Mayor Dietrich Stobbe, in: Protocols of the Berlin House of Representatives 1951-1990: Session 80, Issue 7/80, Volume IV / V  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective . Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , April 6, 1978@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / collections.europeanalocal.de  
  5. ↑ Lothar Obst: Nico Hübner: Biographical Notes ( Memento of the original from March 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , September 1979 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.berliner-mauer.de
  6. ↑ Berliner Morgenpost, March 30, 1978
  7. ↑ Minutes of the Berlin House of Representatives 1951-1990: Session 80, Issue 7/80, Volume IV / V  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , April 6, 1978@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / collections.europeanalocal.de  
  8. ↑ Jochen Staadt, Tobias Voigt, Stefan wool: Feind-Bild Springer: a publishing house and its opponents . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-525-36381-2
  9. ↑ Rudi Dutschke: "... and mentally won't break your back": To Nico Hübner  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , May 1, 1978@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / bahros-alternative.de  
  10. ↑ Lothar Obst: Nico Hübner: Biographical Notes ( Memento of the original from March 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , September 1979 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.berliner-mauer.de
  11. ^ Institute for International Politics and Economics: Expert opinion in the criminal case against Niko Huebner, May 29, 1978, in: Bespitzelt Springer! A film by Tilman Jens , Phoenix, April 17th, 2010
  12. ^ RIAS Berlin: Report on the conviction of Rudolf Bahro and Nico Huebner , July 7, 1978
  13. ↑ Neues Deutschland: Instigated to Crimes by Subversive Agencies , July 8, 1978
  14. ↑ 1979 in the GDR on jugendopposition.de ( Federal Center for Political Education / Robert Havemann Society eV), viewed on March 27, 2017.
  15. ^ Offenburg Tageblatt: Youth in Divided Germany, September 11, 1980
  16. ↑ Der Spiegel: Political parties: Nico Hübner , April 21, 1980
  17. ^ Offenburg Tageblatt: Youth in Divided Germany, September 11, 1980
  18. ↑ Der Spiegel: FDP: Tamtam in the Flea Circus , June 2, 1980
  19. ^ Offenburg Tageblatt: Youth in Divided Germany, September 11, 1980
  20. ↑ Berliner Morgenpost: To be liberal means to expand freedom, August 3, 1980
  21. ↑ tilt. Magazine against conscription, compulsory service and the military: None of us! , 1/1996
  22. ↑ Horst Buder: What is Niko Hübner actually doing , in: Monika Zimmermann (Ed.): What is actually doing ...? 100 GDR celebrities today. Links Verlag, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-86153-064-3
  23. ↑ PEN Center for German-Language Authors Abroad: Rachel Abraham ( Memento of the original from December 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.exilpen.de
  24. ↑ Horst Buder: What is Niko Hübner actually doing , in: Monika Zimmermann (Ed.): What is actually doing ...? 100 GDR celebrities today. Links Verlag, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-86153-064-3
  25. ↑ Munich City Archives: October back then: Remarkable, curious and everyday things from the Munich city chronicle , October 22, 1979
personal data
SURNAME Huebner, Nico
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Huebner, Niko
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German conscientious objector
DATE OF BIRTH 5th February 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin