Paul Reckzeh

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Paul Reckzeh (born November 4, 1913 in Berlin ; died March 31, 1996 in Hamburg ) was a German doctor and the Gestapo spy who at the end of 1943 extradited the members of the Solf Circle to persecution by the People's Court . Reckzeh was sentenced to 15 years in prison at the Waldheim trials in 1950 and later lived as a doctor in the GDR .

education

Paul Reckzeh was born as the son of the medical professor Paul Reckzeh. At the age of twenty he joined the NSDAP . He studied medicine from 1933 to 1939. After receiving his doctorate in 1940, he worked as an assistant doctor in the Birkenwerder hospital , at the Reich Chamber of Physicians and in the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories . In 1944 he worked as a medical officer in the Todt Organization . Since June 1943 he was the Gestapo spy "Robby" under the detective Herbert Lange . On his behalf, Reckzeh went to Switzerland in August 1943 to research contacts between the German emigrants and the Allies .

Denunciation of the Solf circle

The name " Solf-Kreis " is used to describe a loose group of opponents of National Socialism who were known to one another and who met irregularly at private invitations. The people's trust in one another led to them speaking openly about the political conditions in the “Third Reich”. Participants in the Solf circle were partly involved in active resistance activities by other groups.

Via a personal recommendation that Reckzeh got from German emigrants in Switzerland, he received an invitation to one of the tea societies of the Solf circle with Elisabeth von Thadden on September 10, 1943. Besides Thadden and Reckzeh, Hanna Solf was among the participants , Kiep, Zarden and Hilger van Scherpenberg .

"With regard to the conversations that had been held, I stated in the report that was later submitted to Lange that the majority of the people gathered at the tea party were concerned with the idea of ​​overthrowing the regime that was then ruling."

Reckzeh went back to Switzerland in September, handed Thadden's letter to Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze , where he was in contact with the former Chancellor Joseph Wirth and through him in turn to Franz Halder . Members of the Solf circle were warned by confidants from the Goering Research Office that they were being monitored by telephone.

The arrests began in January 1944:

  • Hanna Solf and her daughter Lagi Countess Ballestrem were arrested on January 12, 1944.
  • Arthur Zardens and his daughter Irmgard (married Ruppel; born October 5, 1921; † 2018) were also arrested on January 12, 1944 . Arthur Zarden committed suicide in prison on January 18, 1944.
  • Elisabeth von Thadden was arrested on January 13, 1944 in Meaux (France). From there she came to Paris for a 24-hour interrogation, then back to Berlin to the interrogation center on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, on to Oranienburg and finally to the Ravensbrück concentration camp .
  • Otto Kiep was arrested on January 16, 1944 .
  • Further arrests followed, and in the end there were over 70 people from the Solf district.

Trials before the People's Court

In the trial against Kiep and von Thadden before the People's Court, Reckzeh was the main witness and received judicial praise for “exposing the activities of enemies of the state inside and of emigrants outside”.

"It is true that the defendant Kiep's defense attorney treated the witness in a way that wanted to attack his credibility because he himself did not object at the meeting during the tea party."

  • Elisabeth von Thadden was executed on September 8, 1944
  • Otto Kiep was hanged on August 26, 1944.
  • Hilger van Scherpenberg was sentenced to two years in prison
  • Irmgard Zarden was acquitted for lack of evidence and released from prison on July 6, 1944
  • further trials and death sentences followed, especially after the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 .

Condemnation in the GDR

After the end of the war, Reckzeh was arrested by the SMERSch on May 10, 1945 because of his Gestapo work , and was initially taken to special camp No. 6 in Frankfurt (Oder) , which was moved to Jamlitz in September 1945 . In 1946 the judicial administration of the Soviet occupation zone investigated Reckzeh and Lange, but returned the documents to the Soviet authorities . Reckzeh remained without a trial until 1950, now interned in the Mühlberg special camp and then in the Buchenwald special camp . He was finally handed over to the GDR Ministry of the Interior for judgment and charged with being a “ spy and denouncer who initiated proceedings against others because of their political opposition”. On June 3, 1950, Reckzeh was sentenced to 15 years in prison by the Small Criminal Chamber of the Chemnitz Regional Court in the course of the Waldheim trials .

From the grounds of the judgment:

“ He reported disparaging remarks by non-fascists, especially listening to enemy stations . The accused had to appear repeatedly as a witness in political trials. Because of his information, high penalties were then very often imposed. "

From Reckzeh's statements in court:

"In order to carry out my task, it was necessary that I once again act anti-Nazi, which in principle also corresponded to my inner attitude."

“I was constantly under the mental pressure of a threat from Kriminalrat Lange and was far too afraid of him to report anything wrong or to color the reports. I always had to assume that I was being monitored. "

"On the other hand, with regard to my voluntary reports, the need for recognition that I already mentioned may have played a role in that, probably acting subconsciously, I wanted to show Lange what kind of man I was."

"I believe that due to the length of my detention, 7 years, and the severity of what I experienced in the individual concentration camps, my guilt has been atoned for ..."

“In addition, the behavior of the persons concerned was punishable under the laws of the time. I very much regret my behavior, and during my really difficult detention I realized that the people I spied on apparently wanted to serve the fatherland after all and were idealists in their sense of the word. "

Doctor in the GDR

After seven and a half years in prison, Reckzeh was given amnesty in October 1952 and was supposed to work as a doctor in the health service of the GDR, but he fled to West Berlin . There survivors and relatives of the victims sought an arrest warrant and an indictment, which initially failed because Reckzeh had already been convicted in this matter by the Waldheim trials ( ne bis in idem ). In 1954, the West Berlin Court of Appeal declared the Waldheim judgments null and void. When the obstacle to the process was cleared, Reckzeh fled back to the GDR on March 24, 1955 and asked for asylum there. There he was not extradited because he was persecuted by the class enemy , but was employed as a senior physician at the Perleberg district hospital until 1958 and then as a senior physician at the outpatient clinic of the VEB Schwermaschinenbau Heinrich Rau .

In the GDR, the Antifa Committee tried in 1964 to get the Ministry of State Security to ban the profession in the GDR, but the application was rejected. Reckzeh was also protected by the GDR from research by the German-Canadian historian Peter Hoffmann . In addition, the State Security Service wanted to win Reckzeh as an IM , but it did not succeed.

In 1978 he betrayed his daughter Barbara to the MfS when she wanted to flee to Hamburg.

Retrial

After the fall of the Berlin Wall , Irmgard Ruppel, daughter of Arthur Zarden , tried to reopen the case against Paul Reckzeh for aiding and abetting the murder of Elisabeth von Thadden and Otto Kiep , so the public prosecutor's office resumed the 1954 investigation in 1991, but opened it in 1993 due to statute of limitations.

In May 2007, during her visit to Germany, Irmgard Ruppel contacted the Federal Archives through her lawyer at the time, Alice Haidinger, and offered her collection of documents to reopen the case against Paul Reckzeh for aiding and abetting the murder of Elisabeth von Thadden and Otto Kiep. These documents have since been kept there as Biographical Collection BSG 7 Irmgard Ruppel .

Fonts

  • Studies on the erythrocyte count in human blood , Berlin, Med. Diss., 1940, Stralsund 1940.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Father Paul Reckzeh at DNB ; VIAF = 55110586
  2. ↑ The course of the meeting is described in detail in: Irmgard von der Lühe: Elisabeth von Thadden: A fate of our time. Eugen Diederichs Verlag, Düsseldorf / Cologne 1966. pp. 200ff. Also: Walter Wagner: The People's Court in the National Socialist State. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1974, ISBN 3-486-54491-8 , pp. 664f.
  3. ↑ Reckzeh, without further details cited in Weigelt, Landeszentrale 2005, p. 182
  4. ↑ Irmgard Ruppel in the Federal Archives  ( 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.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.bundesarchiv.de  
  5. ↑ Marianne Wellershoff : Career of a Nazi Spy: "He had such a quabbling face" . In: Spiegel Online . April 30, 2019 (Interview with Irmgard Ruppel)
  6. ↑ Martha Schad: Women against Hitler. Fates under National Socialism. Munich 2001, p. 162.
  7. ↑ Excerpt from the judgment against Thadden, Kiep and others of July 1, 1944, facsimile print from Andreas Weigelt, Landeszentrale 2005, p. 183
  8. ↑ Quote from the indictment in Leide
  9. ↑ Quote from the judgment in Leide
  10. ↑ Reckzeh's submissions in the investigation proceedings 1952/54, printed by Landeszentrale, p. 183
  11. ↑ Presentation in Leide, pp. 196–199.
  12. ^ Order of the Berlin Chamber of Appeal of March 15, 1954 (PDF file; 255 kB)
  13. ↑ Pankow gives Reckzeh asylum. Gestapo spies fled to East Berlin , BZ , April 16, 1955, facsimile at Landeszentrale, p. 183
  14. ↑ see suffering
  15. ↑ Harry Waibel : Servants of many masters. Former Nazi functionaries in the Soviet Zone / GDR. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2011, ISBN 978-3-631-63542-1 , p. 260.
  16. ↑ Request for resumption  ( 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.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.bundesarchiv.de  
personal data
SURNAME Reckzeh, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor and Gestapo informant
DATE OF BIRTH November 4, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH March 31, 1996
Place of death Hamburg