Rainer Hildebrandt

Rainer Hildebrandt (born December 14, 1914 in Stuttgart ; † January 9, 2004 in Berlin ) was a German historian and journalist, resistance fighter against National Socialism , co-founder of the combat group against inhumanity and founder of the Wall Museum at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin.

Life

Rainer Hildebrandt, son of the art historian Hans Hildebrandt and the painter Lily Hildebrandt , first studied physics in Berlin, later philosophy and sociology at the Faculty of Foreign Studies and did his doctorate with Franz Rupp on a subject in work psychology. From 1939/40 onwards, a lively group of resistant lecturers and students gathered at his university. Among them were Harro Schulze-Boysen and Horst Heilmann , Professor Albrecht Haushofer and the student Rainer Hildebrandt. He was in contact with the wider circle of conspirators from July 20, 1944 and was a member of the Haushofer circle: “ The companions have a long look. I lost my best friends, Albrecht Haushofer and Horst Heilmann, in the Nazi Reich and was imprisoned for 17 months myself. I learned to fight against injustice. “Hildebrandt was imprisoned for“ undermining military strength ”and connections to resistance groups.

Co-founder of the KgU

After the beginning of the Cold War , Hildebrandt, together with the writer Günther Birkenfeld , the then chairman of the Junge Union Ernst Benda and the former FDP city councilor Herbert Geisler (1921–1986) as license holder of the Allied Command, founded the anti-communist combat group against inhumanity, which was financed by secret services ( KgU). This combat group was headed at the beginning by Rainer Hildebrandt, whose main aim was initially to set up a tracing service to search for the many arrested and missing or kidnapped, missing and deceased people in the Soviet occupation zone . At the same time, there were other files, such as one of informers who had taken fellow citizens to prison or those that provided information about the political, economic and military situation. As early as 1948, the American secret service CIC was interested in the files that had been built up. Since Hildebrandt was willing to cooperate and the activities of the combat group concentrated more on spying, from 1949 onwards, American government funds flowed largely through the secret service CIC and later the CIA . Other secret services that worked in Berlin were also interested in the KgU.

There were three kidnapping attempts against Rainer Hildebrandt, among others by the GDR State Security . According to Hildebrandt's memories, the first attempt at kidnapping failed on July 24, 1949.

After the license expired as an association, the KgU was entered in the register of associations at the Berlin-Charlottenburg District Court on April 2, 1951. Due to differences with Ernst Tillich , who joined the management in 1950 , Rainer Hildebrandt withdrew from the management in November 1951. He completely left the association in mid-1952, after the KgU, in addition to propaganda and espionage, had carried out further massive sabotage and arson attacks and carried out explosive attacks. Railroad tracks were blown up under his leadership, or "tire killers" were issued on the occasion of the 1951 World Festival . On September 4 and 8, 1951, the KgU started fires in department stores in Leipzig during opening hours using phosphorus ampoules .

1952 until death

In the street Am Schlachtensee in Berlin-Nikolassee Hildebrandt had a villa . Mourad Kusserow , who temporarily stayed here in 1954 after fleeing the GDR, described the conditions there as follows:

“Trade unionists, artists, journalists and students, politicians and refugees from the East, sometimes failed existences, secret agents and informants from all secret services, the American and British defense, the French Deuxième Bureau , the West Berlin State Security and the Gehlen Organization , the West German intelligence service , including informers who worked for East German espionage services, gave each other a hand in the villa on Schlachtensee [..]. "

- Mourad Kusserow : Flaneur between Orient and Occident , Verlag Donata Kinzelbach, Mainz 2002, ISBN 3-927069-59-0 , p. 10

Kusserow had already got to know an action initiated by Hildebrandt at Pentecost 1954. At the large FDJ mass rally on the occasion of the East Berlin Germany meeting of young people, it suddenly rained leaflets with anti-communist texts that had been carried over from West Berlin by white balloons. In the villa, Kusserow also met Margarete Buber-Neumann and also Winfried Müller, who later headed the Algerian repatriation service for Foreign Legionnaires in Morocco as Si Mustapha-Müller . Kusserow had been with him since 1960.

After his withdrawal from the KgU, Hildebrandt devoted himself mainly to public relations and then to the August 13th working group that was founded shortly after the Berlin Wall was built . Honorary members of the working group included the Green politicians Petra Kelly and Gert Bastian . Hildebrandt headed the Wall Museum , which documents the history of the Wall victims and refugees, until the very end.

On October 1, 1992, the founder of the Wall Museum in Berlin was awarded the Order of Merit of the State of Berlin ; in 1994, Roman Herzog awarded him the Federal Cross of Merit , 1st Class .

Rainer Hildebrandt died on January 9, 2004 at the age of 89. His wish was to be buried near his friend Albrecht Haushofer on the Wilsnacker Strasse cemetery for the victims of war and tyranny in Berlin-Moabit . However, this is a cemetery for victims of war and tyranny, on which, due to its special status under the Graves Act, only people can be buried who have died in war and tyranny, which is why this wish could not be fulfilled by the responsible Berlin district office.

His wife Alexandra Hildebrandt , who married Hildebrandt in 1995 and is the director of the Wall Museum and executive chairwoman of the August 13th working group, has since been committed to ensuring that Rainer Hildebrandt's last will is still fulfilled. Hildebrandt's urn with the number 173126 has been in the Berlin-Ruhleben crematorium since the cremation , because the widow refuses to accept another place of burial. Actually due storage fees are not charged by the Berlin administration. An official forced burial has also been waived so far.

Hildebrandt's widow initiated the Dr. Rainer Hildebrandt Medal in 2004 . This International Human Rights Prize is awarded on Human Rights Day to people who have campaigned for human rights without violence.

Works (selection)

• Rainer Hildebrandt: … the best minds you can think of. A tragic prelude to the division of Germany and the Wall, edited by Alexandra Hildebrandt , Verlag Arbeitsgemeinschaft 13. August, ISBN 978-3-922484-48-6 (extended new edition, supplemented by numerous comments, photos and original documents, of the publication We are the last. From the life of the resistance fighter Albrecht Haushofer and his friends , Michael-Verlag, Neuwied / Berlin).
• When the chains fell ... Nine destinies in one riot. 2nd Edition. 1969.
• From Gandhi to Walesa - nonviolent struggle for human rights.
• The wall speaks.
• It happened on the wall. 22nd edition. Publishing house at Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin 2006.

literature

• Alexandra Hildebrandt: A person Rainer Hildebrandt - encounters. Verl. Haus am Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-922484-41-7 .
• Christine Richter : The freedom fighter . In: Berliner Zeitung , January 10, 2004, obituary.

Web links

• Literature by and about Rainer Hildebrandt in the catalog of the German National Library
• CV at jugendopposition.de
• Secret services / Tillich - "Later werewolf". In: Spiegel from July 2, 1958 on spiegel.de
• obituary

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Be careful when talking . In: Der Spiegel . No. 25 , 1949 ( online ).
2. ↑ Rainer Hildebrandt in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
3. ↑ Rainer Hildebrandt: … the best minds you can think of. A tragic prelude to the division of Germany and the Wall, edited by Alexandra Hildebrandt , Verlag Arbeitsgemeinschaft 13. August, ISBN 978-3-922484-48-6 (extended new edition, supplemented by numerous comments, photos and original documents, of the publication We are the last. From the life of the resistance fighter Albrecht Haushofer and his friends , Michael-Verlag, Neuwied / Berlin) . Verlag Arbeitsgemeinschaft August 13th , 2003, ISBN 3-922484-48-4 (New edition of the publication first published in 1948 ... the best minds you can think of ).
4. ↑ Christine Richter: The freedom fighter . In: Berliner Zeitung , January 10, 2004, obituary
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} secret services / Tillich - "later werewolf". In: Spiegel from July 2, 1958 on spiegel.de
6. ^ Karl Wilhelm Fricke , Roger Engelmann : "Concentrated Strikes": State Security Actions and Political Processes . BStU series of publications , 11, p. 87, books.google.de
7. ^ Rainer Hildebrandt on  jugendopposition.de  ( Federal Agency for Civic Education  /  Robert Havemann Society  eV), viewed on March 13, 2017.
8. ↑ Heinz Höhne: The war in the dark. Ullstein, 1988, ISBN 3-548-33086-X , p. 516.
9. ↑ Enrico Heitzer: "Affair Walter". The Forgotten Wave of Arrests , 2008, p. 59.
10. ↑ Enrico Heitzer: "Affair Walter". The forgotten wave of arrests , 2008, pp. 112, 191 ff.
11. ↑ Mourad Kusserow: Make it over ... A childhood and youth in the Soviet zone of occupation / GDR , Verlag Donata Kinzelbach, Mainz 2008, ISBN 978-3-927069-88-6 , p. 162
12. ↑ Without considering this legal situation: Tobias Miller, Anne Vorbringer: Senate does not allow Rainer Hildebrandt any rest . In: Berliner Zeitung , July 3, 2006. The statements that no one has been buried in the Wilsnacker Strasse cemetery since 1952 and that Haushofer was buried there in a mass grave are incorrect. Bernd Hildebrandt / Ernst Haiger: End of the war in Tiergarten. The history of the war grave cemetery Wilsnacker Straße , Lehmanns Media, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86541-312-3
13. ↑ No peace in his ashes . In: Tagesspiegel , September 1, 2010
14. ↑ mauermuseum.de ( Memento of the original from June 18, 2012 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.