Otto Busdorf

Otto Busdorf (* 1878 ; † August 19, 1957 in the Brandenburg-Görden prison ) was a German detective . Between 1927 and 1934 he was head of the “Department for Forester Murders, Poaching and Certain Burglary Matters” in the Berlin police headquarters and after the Second World War he was a teacher at the Brandenburg Police School in the Soviet zone of occupation . In 1950 he was sentenced in the third trial to come to terms with the Köpenick Blood Week .

Life

Otto Busdorf began his professional career with the Berlin police in 1902. Around 1911 he persecuted the three perpetrators of a robbery in Myslowitz around the world. With travel expenses over 26,810 kilometers billed, he arrested one of them after being chased through what was then Cisleithan Galicia while leaving a steamer in the port of New York. This was later delivered to Germany. He found one in a prison in Silesia , where he was imprisoned under an assumed name, and arrested the third in Siberia , where he was later sentenced to death and hanged .

In 1914, Busdorf received a personal invitation to the “Coronation Festival” in the Berlin Palace as recognition .

Poaching increased considerably after the First World War . Busdorf developed into an expert in the elucidation of poaching and the killing of foresters and game guards that occurred again and again. In 1926 Busdorf clears up a murder case in Magdeburg, which was later filmed largely authentically under the title “ Affaire Blum ”. In 1927 he was appointed head of the "Department for forest killings, poaching and certain burglary matters" at the police headquarters on Alexanderplatz. He also created a slide show, which he presented for education at the invitation of hunting clubs and also in the training of foresters all over Germany. Between 1927 and 1931 he gave over 100 lectures. In 1928 he published the first volume of “Poaching and Förstermorde”, originally intended as a textbook. In terms of work, he received good ratings:

“For about 15 years, Busdorf has been charged with solving particularly difficult crimes outside of Berlin. Danger to life, exemplary courage, fearlessness, good results. A number of poachers (murderers) shot in hand-to-hand combat and in self-defense. "

- Extract from the personnel file

At the end of the twenties, Busdorf was a well-known personality. A portrait of him appeared in the Berliner Illustrirten Zeitung and articles about him were published in daily newspapers on his birthdays. The NSDAP party newspaper The attack warned against him in 1929. He would only accept invitations from nationally minded landowners to hunting events in order to secretly look for weapons hiding places. Busdorf then sued the Gauleiter Joseph Goebbels , who was responsible for press law , with the support of the Police President and the Social Democrat-oriented Association of Prussian Police Officers . Since he did not appear for the hearing, he was briefly detained in Moabit . In the proceedings in which Paul Stenig was the prosecutor, Goebbels was sentenced to a fine of 900 Reichsmarks . According to von Busdorf, his neighbor Heinrich Becker, who was employed as Goebbels' secretary, came to him during the trial in February 1931 and convinced him to donate to the NSDAP as a "sympathizer". Busdorf was also a member of the SPD . Busdorf was probably essentially apolitical and primarily wanted to continue his previously successful police career undisturbed by external influences.

After the " seizure of power " Otto Busdorf was picked up at home by the SA during the Köpenick Blood Week , even though he was off duty that day. Busdorf should hear from Paul von Essen . He confirmed that he was allowed to own the rifles with ammunition originally found on him as a game warden. A rifle that was then shown identified Busdorf as a “poacher's rifle”. According to a statement from Busdorf, this interrogation lasted twenty minutes and he went home again. Witnesses later contradicted this and testified that Busdorf must have seen the mistreatment of von Essen, with whom he was personally acquainted.

At the end of March 1934 he was dismissed from the police force as "unreliable" and then worked as a clerk in a cattle industry association. Busdorf complained about the dismissal in more than 200 petitions and repeatedly pointed out that he had only done his duty as a police officer at all times, regardless of the person. He also pointed out at the time that he had been a member of the NSDAP since May 1, 1933, as well as an SA Unterscharführer and as such head of a department in Standarte 15. At that time, Busdorf complained to the highest party court of the NSDAP for party membership , which but he was denied. Due to its allegedly defamatory statements in its submissions and publicly he came in 1936 for three weeks in Gestapo -haft and in 1937 for four months as a prisoner in protective custody in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp internment.

After the occupation of Berlin by the Red Army , Busdorf made himself available to the now communist civil administration to set up new structures, where he then worked as the deputy head of inspection in Köpenick. The communist mayor of Köpenick at the time confirmed that he was clearly anti-fascist and politically reliable. With reference to his concentration camp imprisonment, Busdorf was recognized as being persecuted by the Nazi regime . He later applied to the police in Brandenburg and was employed as a teacher at the police school. After a former neighbor and Nazi denounced him, he was released, but he responded with letters of complaint.

In February 1948 he was arrested for the first time on suspicion of participating in the Köpenick Blood Week. After the arrest warrant was lifted in May 1949 and Busdorf was released unconditionally, his family tried to convince him to flee to the western occupied sectors of Berlin. Busdorf refused because he was not aware of any guilt and also in order not to lose his house. After only three weeks in freedom he was arrested again and in the summer of 1950 he was one of the 61 defendants in the third trial of the Köpenick Blood Week before the East Berlin District Court. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison, 5 years in prison and confiscated his property, i.e. his house. After several of his co-defendants had been pardoned in January 1956, his lawyer asked the public prosecutor's office in the GDR whether they could also be released on pardon. This was rejected on the grounds that Busdorf certainly did not mistreat any victims himself, but that his interrogations were used by the SS and SA as a reason for these and also for the subsequent murders of anti-fascists. With that he played an even worse role than his co-defendants.

A year later, the 79-year-old Busdorf was declared incapable of imprisonment by the prison doctors . Although the Public Prosecutor's Office now also approved his dismissal, the GDR Interior Ministry spoke out against it. A short time later, Busdorf died in the Brandenburg-Görden prison .

Otto Busdorf lived in his own house in the Uhlenhorst settlement in Köpenick. At the time, the house was close to nature and isolated on the edge of the forest and still had the advantage that the police headquarters at Alexanderplatz could be reached by S-Bahn in 30 minutes. Busdorf was an avid hunter , as evidenced by the decoration of his house with the hunting trophies of hunted animals. He was married and the father of two daughters. His relatives had to leave the house after his conviction, in which his property was confiscated. They found a new apartment in the neighborhood. In 2015, one of his granddaughters continued to live in the immediate vicinity in Uhlenhorst.

Afterlife

In 1992 Otto Busdorf's descendants and the Berlin public prosecutor applied to the Higher Regional Court for the judgment of 1950 to be overturned. Under the law of cassation, the court only had to decide whether the disputed judgment was politically justified and whether it came about under serious legal errors without taking any new evidence. The application was denied because the court was of the opinion that Paul von Essen had been tortured and killed as a result of the interrogation by Busdorf.

Works

• Poaching and forester murders (Volume 1), Berlin, 1928 DNB 365410217
• Poaching and forester murders (Volume 2), Berlin, 1929 DNB 365410225
• Poaching and forester murders (Volume 3), Berlin, 1931 DNB 1155263421

literature

• Marco Gröschl: Detective Inspector Otto Busdorf - A German Police Fate in the Middle of the 20th Century , 2012, Bachelor thesis at the Brandenburg Police College
• Eberhard Panitz : Tatort Köpenick: Blood Week, June 1933 , Berlin, 1993, ISBN 978-3-928999-19-9

Web links

• Image taken during the 1950 trial (at Gedenkstaette-koepenicker-blutwoche.org )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} The inspector from Köpenick - Otto Busdorf. A career as a police officer from the German Empire to the GDR , February 8, 2015, transcription as pdf, accessed on January 9, 2019
2. ↑ Website for the SWR feature “The Commissioner from Köpenick”, accessed on January 9, 1019
3. ↑ Claus-Dieter Sprink : The unit makes it possible , TAZ of August 14, 1992, p. 10