Otto Šling

Otto Šling (born August 24, 1912 in Nová Cerekev , Austria-Hungary ; † December 3, 1952 in the Pankrác prison in Prague ) was a Czechoslovak politician and high functionary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KPČ) as well as a member of three national assemblies in Czechoslovakia in the years 1945 to 1950. In the 1950s he was the victim of the Stalinist show trials and sentenced to death in the so-called Slansky trial and executed.

Life

Otto Šling was the third child of the Jewish entrepreneur and social democrat Emil Schling, who saw himself as a Czech and called himself Šling (he was deported to the Maly Trostinez extermination camp in 1942 and murdered there). Only twelve years old, he joined the KPČ youth organization in 1924 and then the KPČ in 1930. After high school in Teplice , he attended the medical faculty of Charles University in Prague . He broke off his studies because he volunteered for the interbrigades in the Spanish Civil War , where he worked as a military doctor from 1936 to 1939. After being wounded, he went to London; There he met his wife Marian, whom he married in 1941. He stayed in London until 1945, where he also worked for the Czechoslovak government in exile .

Political engagement after 1945

In the post-war period, Šling was politically active for the communist party, namely:

• 1945–1949 as the district political secretary of the KPČ district committee in Brno
• 1949–1950 chief district secretary of the KPČ district committee and chairman of the National Front Action Committee in Brno
• 1945–1950 Head of the District Secretariat of the District Committee of the KPČ in Brno
• 1946–1950 member of the Central Committee of the KPČ
• 1948–1950 Chairman of the District Committee of the National Front Action Committee (and as such involved in the February revolution of 1948)

For the communist party he was appointed and elected several times as a deputy:

• 1945–1946 member of the so-called Provisional National Assembly of Czechoslovakia
• 1946–1948 member of the so-called Constituent National Assembly of Czechoslovakia
• 1948–1950 member of the National Assembly

Otto Šling was expelled from the party in November 1950 in the course of an investigation into an alleged “subversive conspiratorial center”.

process

In 1950 his career came to an end. The party leadership was convinced that a conspiracy had also taken place in the CPČ and was determined to uncover a correspondence to the László Rajk case in Hungary among their number. Here, among other things, she had the opportunity to deliberately misinterpret a (possibly forged) letter Šling from 1939 to one of his acquaintances, which was reinterpreted as Šling's obligation to espionage. Otto Šling was arrested on October 6, 1950, at the same time his wife Marian Šling was brought to Prague with the children and held in prison for two years until the trial was over. During the interrogations, some of which lasted more than 30 hours without a break, Šling was subjected to strong psychological pressure and he was also beaten. After his forced confessions, an “extraordinary commission for the Brno case” was immediately set up in the party, whose task it was to convict the “conspiratorial center in Brno”; Over 6,000 party members, many of them Šling's employees, were checked and several of them arrested. At this time, however, the Soviet advisers decided that the preparation of the processes in fact initiated that only regional functionary could not be the head of the conspiracy, and the attention of investigators recorded the highest officials of the Central Committee, including the Secretary Rudolf Slansky soon who had driven the conception of the process preparation until then.

Šling's indictment was dealt with in the show trial with Rudolf Slánský (from November 20 to 27, 1952) before the newly established State Court, along with charges against 13 other high party officials and members of the government. The main defendant Rudolf Slánský , previously Secretary General of the party, distanced himself from Šling during the trial. Šling's vita fit in well with the constantly changing scheme of political processes in Czechoslovakia: he was of Jewish origin, the son of an entrepreneur and an interbrigadist . During the war he also worked for the government in exile in London, he held several party functions.

On November 27, 1952, eleven death sentences were pronounced, including against Otto Šling, and three life sentences. The death sentences were on 3 December 1952 at the court of the prison Prague-Pankrac in the early morning hours by hanging enforced .

Otto Šling had two sons. Jan Šling was arrested in 1972 and deported to Great Britain, Karel Šling , one of the signatories of the Charter 77 Declaration , emigrated to Great Britain in 1984.

Otto Šling was rehabilitated post mortem in 1963 .

swell

• Jan Gerber : A trial in Prague. The people against Rudolf Slansky and comrades . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2016, ISBN 978-3-525-37047-6 .
• Zakázaný document. Zpráva komise ÚV KSČ o politických procesech a rehabilitacích v Československu 1949-68 (Prohibited document. Report of the Commission of the CPC Central Committee on the political processes and rehabilitation in Czechoslovakia 1949-68), Europa-Verlag, Vienna 1970 (Czech edition), Introduction and closing words by Jiří Pelikán (appendix with biographies)
• Trial against the leadership of the anti-state conspiratorial center headed by Rudolf Slánský , publication by the Institute for Historical Studies at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf (as part of a study on show trials in Eastern Europe), online at: schauprozesse.phil.hhu.de/
• Politické procesy v ČSR v 50. letech. Proces s vedením protistátního spikleneckého centra v čele s Rudolfem Slánským. Průběh vlastního procesu , multi-part process documentation, portal totalita.cz, online at: www.totalita.cz/...03_02.php
• Politické procesy v ČSR v 50. letech. Proces s vedením protistátního spikleneckého centra v čele s Rudolfem Slánským. Hledání československého Rajka - Otto Šling , multi-part process documentation, portal totalita.cz, online at: www.totalita.cz/...01_04.php
• Karel Schling (Šling): Otto Šling - příběh jednoho komunisty , In: paměť a dějiny 2012/04, publication of the Institute Ústav pro studium totalitních režimů , online at: ustrcr.cz / ...
• Otto Šling , short biography on the Brno City Internet Encyclopedia, online at: encyklopedie.brna.cz/