Reinhard Strecker (activist)

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Reinhard Strecker before receiving the Federal Cross of Merit on August 24, 2015 in appreciation and recognition of his services to coming to terms with the Nazi past.

Reinhard Strecker (born September 8, 1930 in Zehden an der Oder ) is a German political activist , member of the SPD and the former SDS , publicist and initiator of the historical exhibition Unpunished Nazi Justice from the late 1950s to the early 1960s . This exhibition accompanied political actions that triggered extensive reporting at home and abroad and stimulated in-depth judicial and personnel policy debates at federal and state level.

family

Reinhard Strecker comes from a family of lawyers. Grandfather Otto Strecker worked on the BGB ; the father Walther Strecker (* 1890) was in the 1930s and 1940s judge of the chamber judge in Berlin.

Life and education

Reinhard Strecker was born in Zehden (Oder) in 1930 and grew a. a. in Celle . He obtained his university entrance qualification ( Baccalauréat universitaire) at the École internationale des langues orientales ( EILO ) in Paris . In 1954 he returned to Germany and began studying Indo-European languages at the Free University of Berlin . In addition to his studies, he worked as a research assistant for Jacob Taubes . Strecker later worked for the Berlin Goethe Institute . Today he lives in Berlin-Friedenau.

Political activity

Exhibition from 1959 to 1962

Reinhard Strecker was the initiator of the "Action Unpunished Nazi Justice" of the SDS and the exhibition Unpunished Nazi Justice . In cooperation with political youth groups and student associations - u. a. the Socialist German Student Union (SDS), the Liberal Student Union of Germany (LSD), the Evangelical Student Community (ESG) - he used photographic copies of National Socialist special court files to create a traveling exhibition that was shown at ten university locations in West Germany and West Berlin from 1959 to 1962 was first on November 27, 1959 in Karlsruhe, the seat of the Federal Constitutional Court . After its premiere in Karlsruhe, the exhibition “Unatunited Nazi Justice” went to West Berlin, where it was on view from February 23, 1960 to March 7, 1960 in the Springer Gallery on Kurfürstendamm in the Charlottenburg district. Both exhibitions, the one in Karlsruhe in 1959 and the one in Berlin in 1960, were officially remembered 60 years later (see Awards and Recognitions ).

Exhibitions based on the exhibition material were carried out after the Berlin Show in Leiden , Amsterdam , Utrecht and Oxford , and at the invitation of an All-Party Committee initiated by Barbara Castle and Sydney Silverman , translations of the material were carried out in the House of Commons , the British, in the spring of 1960 House of Commons, presented to the MPs.

petition

As part of the preparations, Strecker initiated two petitions to the German Bundestag in which the inadequate legal processing of the National Socialist medical crimes and judicial crimes as well as the continued employment of the doctors and judicial lawyers involved in the crimes were criticized. In 1958 the General Student Committee ( AStA ) of the Free University of Berlin approved and supported the petition.

complaint

In January 1960, Strecker and Wolfgang Koppel, on behalf of the SDS federal executive committee, filed criminal charges against 43 re-serving former Nazi judges on suspicion of perverting the law in unity with manslaughter . These actions received extensive coverage in the local, national and international press. Numerous public prosecutors throughout Germany started investigations against acting judicial lawyers and , based on the copies of files collected by Strecker, the Bundestag legal committee debated the new version of Section 116 of the German Judiciary Act (DRiG), which should enable the early retirement of politically charged judges.

Documents on Hans Globke

In 1961, in a printed collection of documents, Strecker presented excerpts from files that proved that Hans Globke, the head of the Chancellery at the time, was a lawyer in the Nazi civil service. The files showed, for example, that Globke was involved in the 11th ordinance on the Reich Citizenship Law , through which the assets of Jews deported to the East fell to the German Reich. Globke sued the publication of the book and achieved that after the first no further edition was printed. The book is now out of print.

Memberships

Strecker is a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the International League for Human Rights . As early as the 1950s, it tried to stimulate critical public reflection on the National Socialist past. Its members understand the self-critical education about the National Socialist dictatorship as a central part of a human rights commitment.

Awards and recognitions

55 years after the Berlin exhibition “Unpunished Nazi Justice” at the end of February / beginning of March 1960, official bodies - state institutions and public institutions - began in 2015, at the age of 85, Strecker's educational work since the end of the 1950s and at the beginning of the 1960s:

  • On August 24, 2015, Reinhard Strecker was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany with the Order of Merit in recognition of his services to educating the German public about Nazi crimes . On behalf of Federal President Joachim Gauck , Tim Renner , State Secretary for Cultural Affairs of the State of Berlin, presented the medal. Regarding the awarding of the Federal Cross of Merit to Strecker, the Federal Minister for Justice and Consumer Protection Heiko Maas said: “With his legendary exhibition 'Unpunished Nazi Justice' in 1959, Reinhard Strecker did what the West German post-war justice system had neglected for too long: the perpetrators in their own To determine and prosecute ranks. "
  • In the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection, the event in honor of Reinhard Strecker - pioneer of critical politics of the past - took place on October 7, 2015 in the Gustav Heinemann Hall . On the occasion of his 85th birthday, the State Center for Political Education in Berlin organized this joint event in cooperation with the Forum for Justice History and the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the TU Berlin (ZfA). Two historians who had researched and published the history of the exhibition "Unforced Nazi Justice" took part in the award: Stephan Alexander Glienke gave the keynote address and Michael Kohlstruck led a panel discussion with Strecker.
  • On Sunday, November 27, 2016, Strecker received the Arnold Freymuth Prize 2016 from the Arnold Freymuth Society at a ceremony in the forum of the Gustav Lübcke Museum in Hamm . The eponymous Dr. Arnold Freymuth was senior judge in Hamm from 1911 to 1918, a judge from 1921, President of the Senate at the Berlin Superior Court from 1923 to 1925, and in this position he was explicitly involved in the republic. In 1926, after a public conflict with the executive "state dismissal with retirement", since then a writer in Berlin, Freymuth fled in 1933 from the new National Socialist Reich government into exile in France, where he committed suicide in July 1933 in Paris. Historian Michael Kohlstruck gave the laudatory speech in honor of Reinhard Strecker for the 2016 Arnold Freymuth Prize .
  • The event The “General Plan Ost” of the National Socialists on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the General Plan East in the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany on September 28, 2017 connected the Memorial and Museum Sachsenhausen as well as the Foundation Topography of Terror together with the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany with a laudation and a reception in honor of Strecker. The eulogy in honor of Mr. Reinhard Strecker held Günter Morsch .
  • On April 5, 2019, the Berlin Senator for Justice, Consumer Protection and Anti-Discrimination, Dr. Dirk Behrendt ( Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen ), Strecker personally, to officially apologize "for the hostility from my predecessor Valentin Kielinger". Valentin Kielinger (CDU) was only City Councilor for Justice from 1947 to 1963 and since 1951 Senator of Justice for the State of Berlin. In 1960, in this role, he tried to prevent the exhibition "Unpunished Nazi Justice" and vilified Strecker.
  • The Berlin SPD took the 60th anniversary of the exhibition in Karlsruhe in autumn 2019 as an opportunity to honor Reinhard Strecker with the certificate of honor from the SPD regional association Berlin. On October 26, 2019, state chairman Michael Müller thanked Reinhard Strecker “for his special commitment as the initiator of the historical exhibition 'Unpunished Nazi Justice'” on his behalf .
  • On November 27, 2019, the city of Karlsruhe honored the 60th anniversary of the premiere of the exhibition in November 1959 with the event “Unpunished Nazi Justice” 60 years ago in Karlsruhe and a lecture by Stephan Alexander Glienke in the presence of Mayor Frank Mentrup in the Stephanssal.
  • The Museum Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf honored the 60th anniversary of the Berlin exhibition of February 1960 in the Villa Oppenheim on February 19, 2020 with an event in honor of and in the presence of Strecker and the lecture "Unpunished Nazi Justice". Stories from an exhibition by Michael Kohlstruck.
  • On the occasion of its 60th anniversary, the members' circular of the Active Museum Fascism and Resistance Association dedicated a cover story on August 10, 2020 to the exhibition “Unpunished Nazi Justice” in Berlin in 1960 with the headline In the Tension Relationship of Coming to terms with the Cold War and a cover photo showing the then 29th -year-old Reinhard Strecker in front of the exhibition poster. The cover story is from the pen of Stephan A. Glienke.

Fonts

  • Dr. Hans Globke . File extracts, documents. Rütten & Loening, Hamburg 1961.
  • with Günter Berndt (Ed.): Poland - a horror tale or brainwashing for generations. Historiography and school books. Contributions to the image of Poland among Germans. Reinbek near Hamburg 1971.
    • therein: brainwashing for generations. Pp. 16-53.
  • The Nuremberg war crimes trial in 1945 and its "consequences". In: Jan Peters (Ed.): National “Socialism” from the right. Berlin 1980, pp. 69-87.
  • The significance of the fascism discussion in the 1960s. Lecture series on May 4, 1988 with Wolfgang Lefèvre and Reinhard Strecker. In: Siegward Lönnendonker, Jochen Staadt (Hrsg.): 1968. Prehistory and consequences. Documentation of the lecture series from the summer semester 1988 at the Free University of Berlin. On-line
  • Blemished past. Online text In: Ossietzky , Heft 22, 2005. (About the editions of the war crimes trials in Nuremberg, inter alia from 1945 and in the following years)

literature

  • Michael Kohlstruck : The second end of the post-war period. On the change in political culture around 1960. In: Gary S. Schaal, Andreas Wöll (Hrsg.): Coping with the past. Models of political and social integration in West German post-war history. Nomos, Baden-Baden 1997, ISBN 3-7890-5032-6 , pp. 113-127.
  • Michael Kohlstruck: Reinhard Strecker - “Can you expect your children to live in Germany again?” In: Claudia Fröhlich, Michael Kohlstruck (Ed.): Engaged Democrats. Politics of the past with critical intent. Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster 1999, ISBN 3-89691-464-2 , pp. 185-212.
  • Stephan Alexander Glienke: The exhibition “Unpunished Nazi Justice” (1959–1962). On the history of coming to terms with Nazi judicial crimes. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2008, ISBN 978-3-8329-3803-1 .
  • Michael Kohlstruck: Laudation for Reinhard Strecker . On the award of the Arnold Freymuth Prize 2016. In: Yearbook of Contemporary Legal History, Volume 18 (2017), Issue 1, pages 259–266. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2018. ISSN 1869-6899 (print), ISSN 1869-6902 (online).
  • Gottfried Oy, Christoph Schneider: The sharpness of the concretion. Reinhard Strecker, 1968 and National Socialism in West German Historiography. Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster 2013, 2nd, corrected edition 2014, ISBN 978-3-89691-933-5 .

Movie

  • Christoph Weber: File D (1/3) - The failure of the post-war justice system. Documentation, 2014, 45 min. With Norbert Frei ( commentary on Phoenix.de from Nov. 2016)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ For example in the news magazine Der Spiegel , No. 3/1960 of January 13, 1960, under the heading NS judge: On photocopies .
  2. ↑ The date of these 43 criminal charges, sent individually in mid-January 1960, cannot be clearly determined. In October 2003, the historian Stephan Alexander Glienke wrote in an article about the results of his investigation: "The criminal charges themselves are undated, but in the individual cases examined by the author, they usually reached the public prosecutor's offices on January 19, 1960." ( Aspects of change in dealing with the Nazi past . PDF on ResearchGate available online, page 110, footnote 26 - the date of arrival it applies the receipt stamp of the respective prosecutor) the 18 January 1960 as the date of Abschickens the ads is therefore plausible because of this. Day in West Berlin a demonstration against the "anti-Semitic wave of smear" of December 1959 took place.
  3. ↑ For example in the news magazine Der Spiegel , No. 8/1960 of February 17, 1960, under the heading NS judge: Easy cases?
  4. ↑ Reinhard Strecker (Ed.): Dr. Hans Globke: File extracts, documents . Rütten & Loening, Hamburg 1961.
  5. ^ Martin Rath: Adenauer's controversial State Secretary. LTO, September 29, 2013, accessed March 21, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Velten Schäfer: Of guilt and debt. Neues Deutschland, October 9, 2015, accessed on March 21, 2020 .
  7. ↑ Federal Cross of Merit for Reinhard Strecker . Communication from the SPD parliamentary group in Tempelhof-Schöneberg dated September 6, 2015.
  8. ^ Jan Eckel: L. Wildenthal: The Language of Human Rights in West Germany. In: H-Soz-Kult , August 19, 2013.
  9. ↑ International League for Human Rights: Reinhard Strecker, long-time member of the league board, received the Federal Cross of Merit on August 24, 2015 . Blog entry from August 31, 2015.
  10. ^ Senate Department for Culture: Federal Cross of Merit for Reinhard Strecker . Press release from August 25, 2015.
  11. ↑ Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection: Federal Cross of Merit for Reinhard Strecker . Press release from August 25, 2015.
  12. ↑ State Center for Political Education Berlin: Reinhard Strecker - pioneer of critical politics of the past . Invitation to October 7, 2015.
  13. ↑ Michael Kohlstruck: Reinhard Strecker. Pioneer of critical politics of the past . Blog entry from September 17, 2015.
  14. ↑ Award of the Arnold Freymuth Prize 2016 to Mr. Reinhard Strecker . Website of the Arnold Freymuth Society eV, menu item Events (archive).
  15. ↑ Freymuth, Arnold name entry on the website Das Bundesarchiv , Reich Chancellery files 1919–1933.
  16. ↑ Michael Kohlstruck: Laudation for Reinhard Strecker . In: Jahrbuch der Juristische Zeitgeschichte, Volume 18 (2017), Issue 1, pages 259–266. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2018. ISSN 1869-6899 (print), ISSN 1869-6902 (online).
  17. ^ Günter Morsch: Laudation in honor of Mr. Reinhard Strecker . Event on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the “General Plan Ost” in the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany on Thursday, September 28, 2017. Published on the blog of Prof. Dr. Günter Morsch .
  18. ↑ Tweet from the Berlin Justice Senator Dirk Behrendt on April 5, 2019 . With a photo of the reception from Reinhard Strecker on Twitter.
  19. ↑ Honor for Reinhard Strecker - An enlightener against all odds . Communication from the SPD Berlin, Tempelhof-Schöneberg department. Published on November 17, 2019.
  20. ↑ Exhibition “Unpunished Nazi Justice” 60 years ago in Karlsruhe . Lecture with panel discussion by Dr. Stephan Glienke on November 27th . Communication from the Press and Information Office of the City of Karlsruhe from November 20, 2019.
  21. ↑ Pay tribute to the exhibition “Unpunished Nazi Justice” on Kurfürstendamm . Printed matter 1260/5 of the District Office Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf with the resolution of the District Assembly of November 21, 2019.
  22. ^ In the tension between coming to terms with the Cold War. The exhibition "Unatunited Nazi Justice" 1960 in Berlin . Cover topic of the members' newsletter 83 of the association Active Museum Fascism and Resistance from August 2020.
  23. ↑ Strecker published the volume under the name "Reinhard M (aria) Strecker", with which he had already signed the criminal charges against 49 re-officiating judicial lawyers. This is not his birth name, but explains why he is sometimes referred to in the literature under "Reinhard Strecker" and sometimes under "Reinhard-M (aria) Strecker". Based on interviews with Reinhard Strecker Glienke 2008, p. 208, FN 885, and Oy / Schneider 2013, p. 61 ff.
  24. ↑ The anti-Semite of the post-war period, referred to there as “Zint”, is really called “Zinth”, a widespread family in Offenburg. The external facts were, apart from the correctly presented core, a little different, see  ( page no longer available , search in web archives: online ), for a brochure from that time@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / forum.spiegel.de
personal data
SURNAME Strecker, Reinhard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Strecker, Reinhard Maria
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political activist
DATE OF BIRTH September 8, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Toes (or)