RIAS process

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The so-called RIAS trial (official name of the criminal case against Wiebach and others ) was a show trial that took place in 1955 before the Supreme Court of the GDR . In these criminal proceedings , five citizens from East Berlin and the GDR were charged because they were in contact with the radio in the American sector of Berlin ( RIAS ) and passed information on to employees of the station. On the instructions of Walter Ulbricht , one of the accused was sentenced to death .

The details of the process and the verdict were only known after the political change in the 1990s.

The RIAS

The anti - communist- oriented information and entertainment program of the RIAS, which was founded by the US military administration, set an antipole to the Soviet occupiers' monopoly on news and opinion during the Cold War . One of the focal points of the program was reporting and commenting on what was happening in the GDR or - as was the usage at the time - "in the zone". Well-known RIAS broadcast series were, for example, Berlin speaks to the zone , Aus der Zone - for the zone and working day of the zone , which were targeted at the citizens of East Berlin and the GDR. With these series of programs for the heyday of the Cold War, the RIAS was more of an intervention than an information channel .

As a result, the station was a thorn in the side of the GDR regime; especially after the uprising of June 17, 1953 . Countermeasures by the regime included jammers and the Stasi employees spying on RIAS employees .

The action ducks

In November, planning began for the large ducks campaign . The operational plan for this action was signed in February 1955 by Erich Mielke , at that time Deputy Head of the Ministry for State Security. The aim of Aktion Enten was “not only to smash the RIAS agencies and bring them to their just punishment, but also to inflict such a blow on the RIAS through correct political and operational measures that makes it possible for this American broadcaster to be in front of the entire German people To expose the world public as the spy center of the American secret service. ”For this purpose 49 so-called RIAS agents were arrested in East Berlin and the GDR. Presumably a notebook with names and addresses stolen by a Stasi informant led to the arrest of the East German citizens. The people arrested came from all walks of life. During visits to West Berlin they contacted the RIAS and leaked a wide variety of information about the GDR to the station, such as economic information, reports on the mood of everyday life in the GDR, but also reports on the remilitarization of the GDR . The information was intended for the RIAS broadcast programs, but more sensitive information was passed on by RIAS employees to the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) of the US Army .

Before the trial

Joachim Wiebach on June 24, 1955 before the Supreme Court

From the 49 people arrested by Aktion Enten , five men were arbitrarily selected for trial before the Supreme Court of the GDR. These were:

The five defendants were arrested between April 5 and 16, 1955. They first met at the beginning of the trial in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court at Scharnhorststrasse 37 in Berlin-Mitte . During their pre-trial detention, they were tortured in the remand prison in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen through sleep deprivation and physical abuse .

Wiebach worked at DEWAG . He was arrested on April 6th. He was charged with several offenses. Since April / May 1954 he is said to have provided two RIAS employees (Franz Siegel and Lisa Thum alias Lisa Stein) with internal information from his company and about DEWAG's orders and clients. He is said to have shared this information with employees from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution . In February 1955 he is said to have been recruited for military espionage by the CIC. The latter point in particular made him the main defendant. Siegel and Stein mixed their journalistic activities with their intelligence service, which put their informants at considerable risk. They are also said to have threatened their informants if they wanted to end their cooperation.

On June 14, 1955, Walter Ulbricht , First Secretary of the Central Committee of the SED , received a three-page internal communication signed by Klaus Sorgenicht and written by Josef Streit , which had been prepared by the Department of State Bodies in the SED Central Committee. The first sentence of the communication is a preliminary conviction of the defendants: "The defendants are agents of the RIAS and by providing espionage information of a political, economic and military nature supported the conduct of acts of sabotage and diversion and contributed to the preparation of a new war." a brief description of the charges. The letter ends with the note: "The following punishments are intended: Wiebach - life imprisonment , Baier - fifteen years imprisonment, Krause - life imprisonment, guest - twelve years imprisonment, Vogt - eight years imprisonment."

Ulbricht crossed out "life imprisonment" with Joachim Wiebach and wrote "proposal: death sentence ". Then he signed the notice with “I agree / W. Ulbricht ”.

The process

The defendants Joachim Wiebach, Richard Baier , Günter Krause, Willi Gast and Manfred Vogt in the 2nd row
Joachim Wiebach in court. Kurt Schumann in the center of the picture. To the left of him presumably Helene Kleine and to the right Hans Rothschild.

The trial before the 1st Senate of the Supreme Court of the GDR took place on two days on June 24th and 25th, 1955, in front of the general public. Kurt Schumann , President of the Supreme Court, chaired the meeting . Helene Kleine and Hans Rothschild , who were both chief judges at the Supreme Court, acted as assessors . The prosecution was represented by Attorney General Ernst Melsheimer and Public Prosecutor Walter Piehl. Three lawyers from East Berlin, Halle / Saale and Löbau represented the defendants.

During the main hearing, 14 witnesses were interrogated, all of whom were witnesses to the case. On June 27, 1955, the verdicts were announced. In the grounds of the judgment, the RIAS was referred to as a “spy center” and a “criminal organization”.

"The main hearing before the Supreme Court of the German Democratic Republic confirmed the correctness of the prosecutor's charge that the RIAS broadcasts serve the sole purpose of poisoning the atmosphere in international relations by slandering the countries of the peace camp, of staging provocations, to spread the poison of chauvinism and the incitement to war and to create every possible unrest in order to prevent under all circumstances that Germans from East and West eliminate all that divides through negotiations. "

- From the reasons for the judgment

With the imposed penalties, the court essentially followed the guidelines from the Central Committee of the SED. Joachim Wiebach was sentenced to death - according to Ulbricht's instructions. Richard Baier received 13 years in prison for passing on information he obtained from the GDR press, of which he served 6 years and 9 months. Günter Krause was sentenced to life imprisonment. He had provided open information to the RIAS. The punishment was aggravated by the fact that he passed on data on the building and the number of employees of the local People's Police District Office, the relocation of a unit of the Barracked People's Police and the dissolution and relocation of Soviet offices. Willi Gast received a sentence of 15 years in prison. Before his arrest, he worked as a clerk in Stralsund in the state district office for agricultural needs. He was a member of the SED. In the grounds of the judgment, he was accused of having deliberately unsettled the population of the GDR with his information and thereby attacked trust in the government and the local state organs. The "dangerousness of his reporting", his "tenacity", his voluntary service to the RIAS and his disguise as a "member of the party of the working class" were credited as particularly serious offenses. Manfred Vogt was sentenced to eight years in prison. Until his arrest he worked in the VEB steel and rolling mill in Brandenburg . According to the interrogation protocol, Siegel spoke to Vogt on the street in West Berlin. Vogt initially refused to cooperate, but was put under massive pressure by Siegel twice. He then gave Siegel information that only concerned his business. Vogt's refusal to cooperate with Siegel was also recognized by the court: “[...] the defendant [is] credited with having made two attempts to break the connection with the RIAS and through threats [...] of further espionage was initiated. "

After the verdict was pronounced, New Germany wrote : “Our people must learn the lessons from this trial to abhor the RIAS inflammatory broadcasts. It is not people who speak there who have the cultural interests of the population in mind, but common warmongers. "

The execution of the sentence

On September 14, 1955 at 2 a.m., Joachim Wiebach's death sentence was carried out by guillotine in Remand Prison I in Dresden, the former central execution site in the GDR . His parents learned of the verdict from the newspaper. Her request for clemency was rejected by Wilhelm Pieck , the President of the GDR. The judges of the First Criminal Senate supported the pardon. Wiebach's suicide note was put on file and not given to his parents. The parents did not find out about the execution of their son until two months after the execution.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Judgment of the Supreme Court in the criminal case Wiebach and others. BStU, ZA, AU 163/55, BA, Vol. 6 Bl. 372-421 of July 9, 1955.
  2. ↑ Fricke, Engelmann, p. 176.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Karl Wilhelm Fricke : The GDR show trial against the RIAS. In: The Political Opinion , Edition 427, 2005, pp. 63–67.
  4. ↑ Norbert F. Pötzl: Foolish and deadly. In: Spiegel Special. July 29, 2008, accessed July 23, 2015 (pp. 34–37.).
  5. ↑ Fricke, Engelmann, p. 176.
  6. ↑ Fricke, Engelmann, p. 177.
  7. ↑ Gunter Holzweissig: Source studies notes on GDR historiography. Bundesarchiv, 2006, ISBN 978-3-865-09444-5 , p. 16 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  8. ^ Siegfried Lokatis: Secret readers in the GDR. Ch. Links Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-861-53494-5 , p. 180 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  9. ↑ Death sentence was fixed before the trial. In: New Germany. January 21, 1995, accessed July 27, 2015 .
  10. ↑ a b Fricke, Engelmann, p. 178.
  11. ↑ Andreas Dippel: Beginnings at the end. In: pro - Christian media magazine. Issue 5, 2009, pp. 26-29.
  12. ↑ a b Fricke, Engelmann, p. 179.
  13. ↑ RIAS spider web for catching agents. In: Neues Deutschland , June 28, 1955.
  14. ^ Karl Wilhelm Fricke : Committed to the truth. Ch. Links Verlag, 2000, ISBN 978-3-861-53208-8 , p. 262 ( limited preview in Google book search). According to other sources, Wiebach was executed on September 13, 1955.